Australian Commisssion Defends Playstation Mod-Chipping

newt writes "The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is intervening in a court case to defend Sony Playstation owners' right to modify their consoles to play imported games. The ACCC is submitting a friend of the court brief, arguing that Sony's regional playback controls are unlawful. This has implications for DVD region zoning too: The ACCC has previously published its concerns about DVD regioning, and its latest press release about this case reiterates the problems presented to Australian consumers by Sony's practices."

Comments

Re:Finally some high up agency doing something

[ryants]

I doubt it would ever happen in the United States, which would also mean it probably wouldn't ever happen in Canada either

The real problem here (Canada), I believe (which is code for "I'm talking out of my ass, but it kind of makes sense, so bear with me") is that consumers are apathetic: except for a few tentacle Anime loving freaks, nobody here cares about region coding, because we're in Region 1, and get all the Hollywood flicks pretty cheap.

In other regions, where the region coding is used as a price control (read: gouging), consumers are little more irrate. Hence government action.

Consumer friendly policy

[bertok]

The ACCC is extremely consumer-friendly. I think their theory is that as long as there is demand, there will be a supply, but the reverse isn't true. The drug trade exemplifies this: Even though it's illegal to sell drugs, the demand is there, so people do it. The ACCC is simply applying the same philosophy to more ordinary situations: Keep the consumers happy by making their purchases safe for them, and they're likely to continue being consumers.

Over here, the government guarantees a "reasonable" minimum warranty on all purchased items, ignoring any "lets screw the customer" EULA-s or the like. I suspect that suing Microsoft for faulty software would succeed in Australia, but would fail in the US.