wow, this is getting a hot subject now...
I am not a lawyer, but if this answer is real, Contax is risking a lot with this kind of statement.
The international warranty is called international. That is a fact. It is not called International-ex-US or Non-US warranty.
Therefore it should legally not make any difference, whether you buy that stuff within the US or outside the US. It is still the same international warranty.
The extended 3 year US warranty is just cosmetic. It is nice to have it, but this is not deleting any international 1 year warranty.
I think it might not be the right place to discus this here in the internet in detail. Of course Contax will try to motivate costumers to pay the higher US prices (although US prices are still cheaper than the prices in Europe). But for me this is just bullshitting/pokering with the fear of potential costumers.
I am not aware, that the US is not a free trade country. I am not aware that the import of Contax equipment into the US is illegal. As long as it is legal, Contax has to act according his warranties.
If Contax states out a truly (black and white on a piece of paper) international warranty, they have also deliver this warranty without any kind of restriction. Otherwise they have to rename this warranty paper.
I do not know how Nikon etc. is doing this, but as far as I know, they do not offer this international warranty. products of i.e. Minolta have different names for the bodies just to segment the market better.
In Europe, some car manufacturers tried something similar. They tried to make the life hard for people who bought their car either directly abroad, or via a dealer in Germany as a grey-market car. The car makers got several times a huge fine, because they acted agianst the law.
Again, I am not a lawer, and I do not think that any statement in the internet can give us clear facts, because we can not verify the author.
But I think everybody should use common sense and differentiate between marketing efforts and logical realities.
Every company has the right to take different prices in different countries, but in a free country, every costumer has also the choice to buy where he wants to and use excactly this discrepancies the manufacturer is trying to hold up artificially for his own benefit.
Another thought for the super-cautious people out there: There is just one factory for Contax and Zeiss Products, which is in Japan. No matter where you buy your boxes, they are all the same and all from the same factory. There is no mediocre quality inbetween these products.
If you think about it, it seems more and more just marketing and the silly hope (or dream?) of a manufactuerer to segment the world into countries with walls. And that in a time where everybody can fly for a few bucks everywhere and the internet is blowing old attitudes in seconds away.
Just my 2 cents
dirk