Regional lockout

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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.

Contents

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 "hardcore 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 sixth generation of video game consoles have regional lockout, so games imported from other countries cannot be played on foreign versions of those consoles.

  • DVDs are the most famous and visible example of regional lockout. Computer DVD drives come from the factory with RPC (Regional Playback Control), either RPC-1 (older drives) or RPC-2 (newer drives). The difference between the two is that RPC-1 means the player software has the responsibility of enforcing the region control, while in RPC-2 it's enforced by the drive's firmware.

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 DMCA 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[1].

Benefits

  • Allows items to be launched at different times in different places, without allowing people to obtain the item 'ahead of time' by purchasing from abroad
  • Allows price differentiation between markets, thus increasing the potential revenue from worldwide sales
  • Ability to restrict content which may be illegal in some countries (e.g. Nazi material in Europe, or pornography in the Middle East)
  • When distribution contracts for each area are awarded to different companies, it allows a company to avoid "stepping on someone else's toes"

Criticisms

  • Regional lockout may promote copyright infringement, software cracking, and modding, as it makes the 'official' version of something less desirable due to the restrictions placed on it
  • It allows items to be launched at different times in different places, so eager customers in some countries must wait for the items to be sold locally (which may never happen) instead of importing them sooner
  • It allows price-differentiation, which may be illegal in some areas
  • It presents a barrier to free trade, which may be illegal in some areas such as the EU
  • Works may not be enjoyed in their original language due to localisation (e.g. dubbing) for the products.
  • Works may be released with different features in different regions. Especially early DVD releases were almost always released with more special features in Region 1 (USA) vs Region 4 (Australasia).

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 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 without additional technological effort to play a disc from another region.

From the consumer?s 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

  • Region free, especially in DVD players, means that the device is shipped by the manufacturer without the ability to enforce regional lockout.
  • Most handheld video game systems, including all Game Boy systems, are made region free. Sony PlayStation Portable has regional lockout for UMD movies only. The Nintendo DS does not have regional lockout. The Play-Yan, currently a Japan-exclusive device, can be imported and works on other models.
  • Japanese GameCube consoles can be modified with a simple bridge (jumper) to allow playing of US game discs.
  • Some countries' laws consider regional lockout to constitute unfair restraint of trade; all DVD players sold in those countries must be region free.
  • Devices like regional converters are used to bypass regional lockout without circumventing copy protection.
  • Console emulators are region free, even when emulating consoles that originally had regional lockout. The emulation community is also opposed to regional lockout.
  • DVD computer drives can usually have their firmware reflashed for less-stringent regional control (i.e, RPC-1 instead of RPC-2); See RPC-1 firmware site.
  • The advent of HDTV may spell an end to regional lockout. Seventh-generation consoles will be region free, according to the console manufacturers Microsoft and Sony, because of the advent of HDTV.

See also


References

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