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

1 Examples
2 Technical design
3 Legal design
4 Advantages for producers
5 Criticisms
6 Effect on society
7 Economic effects
8 Defeating regional lockout
9 DVD codes that bypass regional lockouts
10 See also

Examples

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

The main regions are:

Japan (NTSC-J).
North America and NTSC territories.
Europe, Australia and PAL/SECAM territories.

The Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable do not have full 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, or for other reasons.

The PSP does have partial regional lockout, and uses the same regions as DVD. As of February 2006, the lockout is only used for UMD movies and not for games, although Sony have hinted it is up to the developers if they want to include region protection in their games.

The sixth generation of video game consoles has 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.

DVDs are the most infamous 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 is 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-M (NTSC US/Canada) game discs.

Legal design

In addition to technical measures, regional lockout schemes are generally supported by legal measures. For example, the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has a clause that covers "circumventing a scheme used to restrict access to copyrighted material" that may be used to prosecute 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[link]. And also violates the international copyright treaty [link], Article 4[link], which equates, from the copyright point of view, electronic media with that of other literary works, such as books, where the copy owner has the right to buy, read, and sell the material anywhere in the world, as well as Article 10[link], which prohibits the introduction of national legislation that limits copy owners normal use.

Advantages for producers

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 certain European countries, 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

It prevents legitimate enjoyment of a product that a consumer has legally bought in a different territory. People who emigrate can often find their entire collections, which they legally own, unable to be played in their new country of residence.
Regional lockout promotes copyright infringement, software cracking, and modding, as it makes the 'official' version of a product 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-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. It should be noted that 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 challenged in court.
Works may not be enjoyed in their original language due to product localisation (e.g., dubbing)
Localisation may be less than satisfactory for the work.
Works may be released with different features in different regions. For example: early DVD releases were almost always released with more special features in Region 1 (Americas) than in Region 4 (Australasia).

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

The largest import communities are the Asian martial arts community, video games, and the anime community. Because of the number of anime tie-ins produced for video game systems, the latter two communities have a great deal of overlap. For example, 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, 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.

Economic effects

Because of Sony's region lockout for Universal Media Disc (UMD) movies, the Japanese (and die-hard fans with import consoles) have to buy their UMD version of "The Punisher" for about $40 (¥3,990), while the very 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 thanks to the 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.

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, Saturn, and Mega Drive 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.
A game console or DVD player could be imported from the correct region to play imported, region-encoded games. This approach would likely require voltage and/or video converters to prevent damage to the system, and for the video to display correctly.
Console emulators can ignore region-control hardware, even when emulating consoles that originally had regional lockout. Some consoles use different BIOS ROMs depending on region.
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].
PlayStation 3 will be region free for gaming, according to Michael Ephraim of Sony of Australia. Sony Computer Entertainment has abandoned the practice of regional lockout. Publishers will have the choice to release region free Xbox 360 games.
In some countries such as Australia, DVD players are sold region free or with instructions to remove region locking.

DVD codes that bypass regional lockouts

There are a few established websites on the Internet dedicated to defeating DVD regional locks on home DVD players. Many DVD player models have a unique region defeating unlock code that can be tapped into its remote control to make it region-free, allowing the owner to watch DVDs bought from anywhere in the world. [DVD Unlock Database] is an example of a subscription website that gives DVD player owners these privileges. It contains a large database of DVD unlock codes that will make a player multi-region using the routines explained above. A free database of codes can be found at the [DVD-Unlock] website.