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.

Examples

Video games

• In the video game industry, Nintendo was the originator of regional lockout. Regional lockout in video games is when a piece of hardware is designed such that only software for that region is compatible. Most commercially-released video games have region encoding.

The main regions are:

• Asia (NTSC-J)
• North America (NTSC U/C)
• Europe and Oceania (PAL, PAL/E)
• China (NTSC-C)

The earliest cartridge-based electronic games, such as the Speak & Spell lacked regional lockout, however in the case of the Speak & Spell the intended 4-12-year-old fanbase tended to restrict their use regionally by preference. Some modern consoles targeted at children such as V-Tech's V.Smile series of consoles are also known to be region free.

Most of Nintendo's handheld systems do not have regional lockout; because of this, import games can be played on those systems. In other words, a Japanese game would work on an American unit, although 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 people import games if the game is not released in their region or if it was released years or months before in a different region before it is released in the importer's region.

The immediate successor to the Nintendo DS, the Nintendo DSi, is region-locked, but only in terms of its downloadable games. Physical DS game carts will play on it regardless of region of origin (DSi-only and even DSi-enhanced games are region-locked though).

The PSP has no region locking for UMD games, except for a single title: BattleZone. However, UMD movies are locked by region. Furthermore, the firmware will disable features based on region. For example, Asian region PSPs will not display the "Extras" option on the XMB despite having been upgraded to the US version of Firmware 6.20, preventing owners of such PSPs from installing the Comic Book Viewer and the TV Streaming applications. Sony's states that the "Extra" function will remain disabled on Asian PSPs until the feature is officially launched in the region, and gives no reason for the option being disabled aside from that it isn't yet launched. Nevertheless, this denies Asian PSP owners from using the above mentioned applications on Asian PSPs, as the applications are installed through a PC and users from the region are not blocked from downloading the application, allowing installation on non-Asian PSPs that have been imported into the region.

Two of the seventh generation of video game consoles have regional lockout, so games imported from other countries cannot be played on foreign versions of those consoles without some form of alteration to bypass the lockout. However, a number of games for the Xbox 360 have been confirmed as region free and will play on a unit from any region, although it is up to the publisher if a game is region free or not. Like the CD-i and the Panasonic 3DO, the PlayStation 3 is one of the few home consoles to be advertised as region-free. However, while region free for PS3 games, there is region locking for backwards compatible PS2 and PS1 games, as well as DVD and Blu-ray Disc movies. Additionally, some games separate online players per region, such as Metal Gear Solid 4 Online. A PSN store only contains content for its own country, for example the UK store will not supply you with usable map packs for your Imported US copy of Call of Duty 4. The PS3 actually supports hardware region locking for PS3 games as well, based on Blu-ray regions, but as of current it is unused and all current region lockouts and separations are about online services. The PS3 also restricts the access to its online store and other online features in PS3 by region.

Amongst personal computer games, regional lockout is more difficult to enforce because both the game application and the operating system can be easily modified. Subscription-based online games often enforce a regional lock by blocking IP addresses (which can often be circumvented through an open proxy) or by requiring the user to enter a national ID number (which may be impossible to verify). A number of other games using regional lockout are rare but do exist. One of the examples of this is the Windows version of The Orange Box, which uses Steam content delivery service to enforce the regional lockout.

Advantages for producers

• Allows items to be released at different dates in different regions. This is most advantageous in the case of movies, where the costs of localizing and promoting a film make it prohibitively expensive to release in more than one part of the world at a time. Regional lockout theoretically prevents consumers from obtaining the item "ahead of time" by buying the item from a foreign exporter. (For example, buying the DVD of the latest foreign hit movie before the movie has even reached local cinema screens.)
• Allows price discrimination between markets, thus increasing the potential revenue from worldwide sales and/or making products affordable in markets not tolerating the prices of other regions.
• Allows the correct upstream copyright owner to receive royalties for each copy, where copyright terms or exclusive licensees differ between countries, notably as in the case of Peter Pan.

Criticisms

• It can complicate, or entirely prevent, legitimate enjoyment of works and products which were legally obtained in a different region. (e.g. Purchased while traveling, given/sent as gifts, obtained from stores dealing imported DVDs or online stores dealing imported DVDs, or brought when moving internationally.)
• 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 instead of importing them sooner.
• Thousands of works are exclusively released to one single region and never will be released in any other region, and if locked, become permanently unattainable without DVD player manufacturer codes being entered or DVD player hardware modifications that will void the warranty, with no monetary benefit even to the media producers.
• It allows price-discrimination, which may be illegal in some countries.
• It presents a barrier to free trade, which may be illegal in some areas such as the European Union. Since the accession of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia there are two regions in the European Union, restricting trade in the bloc. This state of affairs has yet to be tested in court.
• Allows market control which may violate anti trust laws in some countries.
• Limits access to distribution thus restricting consumer choice. (eg. Movies produced in Hong Kong produced not released in Region 4 or released limit people in this region access to these movies limiting its potential consumer base as less as restricting the availability and choice to the consumers in Region 4)
• Localisation may be unsatisfactory to the consumer for the work. (e.g. Inferior dubbing or voice-acting, mistranslation and misrepresentation of cultural contexts, inferior or less desirable soundtracks, missing features, complete unavailability of the original language, outright censorship, unoriginal format.) Another example of this is John Woo's "Red Cliff" which was released as two movies in Asia. In western releases, the movie is released as a single movie reducing the work from 280 minutes to 148 minutes.
• Regions inevitably isolate some cultures and language groups from others, forbidding the educationally minded from using works from other regions to learn more about that region's languages or cultures.
• Regional lockout may actually promote copyright infringement, software cracking, modding, and product pirating as it may make the 'official' version of a product seem less desirable due to the restrictions placed on it.e.g In Mexico for example all DVD players ended being region free or at least able to play region 1 and 4.
• The term Fried Gold is often used to refer to the release or substantially greater extras available in one country compared to another, this is often true of cult movies and TV series, or films that have different rights owners in different regions.

Effect on society

Because regional lockout is commonly used to enforce price discrimination (or "price differentiation"), the disparity in the price of an item between different locations encourages consumers to import goods privately.

For both video games 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 (e.g., some anime), or fans want to see and play the titles in their original unaltered form (e.g., uncut or in Japanese).

Members of import communities usually need a way to circumvent regional locks. In many countries, region free DVD players are available, and there are ways to make game consoles region free via modchips.

In certain regions, such as Hong Kong, 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.

Economic effects

Because of Sony's region lockout for Universal Media Disc (UMD) movies, the Japanese (and fans with import consoles) have to buy their UMD versions of movies for about $40 (¥3,990), while the same film is available in the US for $13.99. It is legal in Japan to import movies and even prohibited by law to restrict imports, but due to region lockout it is impossible to play a disc from another region without additional technological measures.

From the consumer's point of view, the result is products that could be available more cheaply elsewhere, and being questionable restrictions on what they can and cannot buy (and watch).

From the region lockers' point of view, the result is a higher income, less intra-brand competition (because there is no rivalry or free trade between competing territories), and greater control of price in affected markets.

See also

• NTSC
• NTSC-J
• NTSC U/C
• PAL
• Import gamer
• Regional converter
• Copyright misuse
• DVD region code
• Fan translation
• Trusted Platform Module
• Modchip
• Parallel import

Bibliography

• hishmat, -ga. "how can i legally defeat regional lockout?". Google. Retrieved 2007-05-18. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |curly=, |coauthors=, and |month= (help)
• "Definitions of regional code on the Web". Dvd-makers. Retrieved 2007-05-18. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |curly=, |coauthors=, and |month= (help)
• "DVD Terms: RAM -- R-Y". Autery New Media. Retrieved 2007-05-18. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |curly=, |coauthors=, and |month= (help)