Regional lockout |
Regional lockout is the programming practice, code, chip, or physical barrier used to prevent the playing of media designed for a device from the country where it is marketed on the version of the same device marketed in another country. It is a form of vendor lock-in.
=Examples=
The main regions are:
The Nintendo DS and the Playstation Portable do not have regional lockout, though some reports claim the later firmware revisions may contain some regional lockout enforcements; because of this, import games can be played on those systems. In other words, a Japanese game would work on an American unit, albeit the game would likely not be in the user s native Language and might be different from the product as released in other countries. Many hard core gamers import games, usually from Japan, if the game is released much earlier in that country than in their own. Often, the later releases of the game are superior to the initial one, with gaming glitches fixed and new content added, leaving many importers with buyers remorse.
The 128-bit era have regional lockout, so games imported from other countries cannot be played on foreign versions of those consoles.
=Technical design=
Regional lockout usually requires hardware manufactured by someone who can be trusted to support the methods chosen. For example, manufacturers need a license to produce DVD players, and games consoles are generally produced by only one company per console. The hardware is typically instructed to play only media designated as for a particular region, and that region is then encoded onto the media.
For instance, a Japanese GameCube game disc is encoded with a marking NTSC-J (NTSC Japan), and GameCube consoles from Japan are programmed to only play games with that marking, not PAL or NTSC-U (NTSC USA) game discs.
=Legal design=
In addition to technical measures, regional lockout schemes are generally supported by legal measures. For example, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has a circumventing a scheme used to restrict access to copyrighted material clause which may be used to criminalize people who ignore, circumvent, or crack a regional lockout scheme.
Often such regional restrictions are in conflict with national law, for instance in pioneering regions such as Hong Kong, where parallel import is expressly allowed and supported by government bodies. Also, the High Court of Australia has recently concluded that modification of devices to circumvent region lockout is allowed under Australian law[http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/PlayStation-ruling-a-victory-lawyers/2005/10/06/1128562928349.html].
=Benefits=
=Criticisms=
=Effect on society=
Because regional lockout is commonly used to enforce price fixing (or price differentiation ), the disparity in the price of an item between different locations enourages consumers to import goods privately.
For both videogames and movies, there is a so-called import scene or import community. In many cases, fans and collectors buy Asian or Japanese movies or games from online stores and eBay sellers prior to their release at home. Often these titles are not even scheduled for release overseas (Animes) or fans want to see and play the titles in their original unaltered form (i.e. uncut or in Japanese).
The largest import communities are the (Asian) martial arts community, videogames, and the Anime community. Because of Anime s increasing number of releases on videogame systems, the two different communities are slowly merging together. Naruto (manga) and One Piece are big hits on DVD, in comics, and on game systems.
Members of import communities usually need a way to circumvent regional locks. In many countries region free DVD players are available to the dislike of media companies, and there are ways to make game consoles region free, via modchips.
In certain countries such as Hong Kong and Australia, these technical lockout mechanisms are in conflict with local legislation. The law allows the free sale of imported goods, but technical barriers are put in place by game system and DVD player manufacturers. In Hong Kong, DVD players are usually modified by the distributor and sold region free without extra cost, while buyers of PlayStation or PlayStation 2 consoles have to pay extra for a pre-installed modchip in their game console.
It should be noted that the benefits listed above are all on the side of the distributors, while the costs are all on the side of the consumer, which promotes an adversarial relationship between the producer and consumer.
=Economic effects=
Because of Sony s region lock in UMD movies, Japanese (and die-hard fans with import consoles) have to buy their UMD version of The Punisher for $40 (Yen 3.990), while the very same film is available in the US for $13.99. It is perfectly legal in Japan to import movies and even prohibited by law to restrict imports, but thanks to the region locking made impossible.
From the consumers point of view, the economic effect is overpriced items that could be available cheaper, and being dictated on what they can buy (and play) and what not.
From the region lockers point of view, the economic effect is a higher income, less intra-brand competition because there is no free trade and rivalry, and absolute control in markets where the law usually prohibits monopolistic methods.
=Defeating regional lockout=
=See also=
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