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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."
In other regions, where the region coding is used as a price control (read: gouging), consumers are little more irrate. Hence government action.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
All they have to do is make sure that all their releases have some content that is banned in Australia, and sponsor raids against the importers. Then they get legislation passed REQUIRING them to add region control.
It would seem that the U.S. is no longer the defender of the free world - for a country which values freedom so much, we are doing less than others to protect it. Why is it that Australia, the EU, and Russia (yes, our former enemy) are going to bat to defend the liberties of individual citizens while our government is actively taking them away?
I used to be proud to be an American.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
... when I purchase a piece of hardware, can't I do whatever I want with it? Recognizing that it might void the warranty, of course...
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Countries don't have sense. People do. Australia's internet policy is so astoundingly fucked up, and the environment there becoming quite censorious. This one development is a good one, but the civil liberties grass is NOT greener on that side of the Big Lake.
A good description of (psx) mod chipping can be found here:
http://www.vguys.com/modchip.htm
Basically, modchips allow the console to boot discs from another region, by changing CD subcodes to a universal format. It makes it so that other region disks boot, with the side effect of allowing CD-R copies to be played. So it's a region and copy protection go around.
Other consoles (Gamecube, Saturn) have simple switch mods that allow region changing, and some (Xbox, Gameboy color/advance) have no region checking.
BBK
I buy DVD's, but the feature I care most about is the multiple audio track and subtitle feature. However, finding versions of my CD's with English, French and Spanish is actually quite difficult. I find it irritating that I could get the same title in Europe with those languages and more, but I'm not into hacking my DVD player.
Unfortunately, bilingualism just isn't as big here as in the rest of the world.
If I had my way, every DVD would have at least 3 languages and subtitles and/or closed captions.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
I would rather live in a country founded by convicts, that one founded by puritans.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
As far as I know, VHS can be played everywhere (pal/ntsc versions) and computer software isnt limited to specific regions, so why are DVDs and Video Games?
Anything else limited this way? I can understand that diffrent countries have diffrent ratings and what not, but the fact that digital formats can block usage in diffrent regions of the world seems like a backwards thing to be doing in this time of freedom and what not.
spend money here
Of course, Australia has to beat the region controls first. Let's assume they do.
I'm guessing the remedy would be to require players sold in Australia to be capable of playing all regions.
This would result in Australian DVD players being exported to other countries. This gets done already but usually they require mods or they're expensive. But if you have a legit source of "official" DVD players, I think they'll prove popular.
US DVD Player manufacturers will either see this as a threat(because people will buy Aussie DVD players instead of American ones) or as an extra cost of business(because they'll have to effectively produce two different types of the same players) and start lobbying for the right to produce region-free players here as well.
...
Then Sony brings down the wrath of the WTO and crushes this newly gained freedom in Australia and the fantasy comes to an end.
Given what the U.S. did to the Ukraine recently, I wouldn't be surprised if success by the ACCC would eventually find Australia up against sanctions. If the mod chips are allowed, then dvd region encoding will have a much easier time being banned or legally cracked in Australia. Any government that bans or allows cracks of region-encoding is circumventing the DMCA and even though the DMCA isn't international law you can be damn sure we're going to protect ourselves from terrorists like those in Australia. USA! USA! (Come on, chant with me...) Attica! Attica! I mean... USA! USA!
Isn't 1/20 americans in Jail now?
...we know the real reason behind it.
The politicians can't get enough Hentai Dating Simulation games. Never underestimate the power of a school girl uniform and a 20 foot long penis-tentacle.
..industry groups have been heavily pressuring the government to remove the current head of the ACCC (Dr Fells, who is rapidly becomming a hero of mine) and to limit their powers :P
This guy has challenged the CD monopoly of studios within Australia, is currently going after the British publishing houses that have sewed our book market shut..and now region coding..
Any wonder they are trying to remove him?
Outside of the US though, all we see is that we are paying higher prices to get movies long after they have been released in the US. It just feels anticompetitive to us as we could often import them more cheaply or buy them on holiday in the US.
Now the music companies are also trying to make music CD's you can't play/copy onto computers. I was interested to read that, Philips who licences the CD formats to other companies, isn't going along with this. Apparently if the music companies modify CD's not to play on computers, they mustn't use the standard "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo, as their modifications fall outside of this standard according to Philips. Philips is even looking at making CD writers that could cope with the modified CDs anyway.
See the article: Philips, the co-creator of the CD, is refusing to play along with music CDs that are designed to prevent playback on PCs
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.
Imagine if your car would only accept gasoline from your homestate (let's say California).
When you take a vacation to Arizona, the gas is much, much cheaper, but alas won't run in your car because the signature chemical is missing. You have to buy special "California" gas at a premimum.
Techincally, there's no difference between an AZ car and a CA car, except that artificial price controlling mechanisms have been put in both cars making the fuel from one state non-interchangable with the other. It's a way to create an artificial market and shut out competition.
Do you get it now?
I wonder how long DVD region encoding would've lasted if it was the USofA that had to wait months for titles to be released (if at all)?
I want my Hollywood revisionist history epics now, dammit!!!!
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Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not in favor of this, I'm just speculating as to the motivations behind it.
The problem I forsee is that Sony could stop selling Playstations in Austraila altogethor. If they think they might lose money over it, I'm sure they would seriously consider it.
Instead of making laws, why don't governments simply educate the general population as to how much they are getting ripped off by DVDs, Playstations and Microsoft. If I was in charge I would fund a series of adverts that showed people exactly how much profit these companies make, how cheap it really is to press a CD, and how production costs aren't that high when split over millions of customers.
I would show them how they could live in a world where DVDs could be watched anywhere, where they weren't restricted as to when they could fast-forward, or copy, and how these massive companies bribe governments to restrict freedom. I would introduce them to the idea of operating systems other than Microsoft Windows(R) that were free and open so you couldn't hide malicious code in them.
You would think people would know this already, but you would be surprised how many non-slashdot readers honestly think that it costs _that_much_ to make a DVD, even though the studio has already made a massive box-office profit. People actually don't realise how much they are being ripped off and controlled. They have been completely conditioned.
Obviously I would probably be sued if I had these public-service-announcements made and showen, but thats how the world works.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
In Australia, we don't tend to talk about "God Given Rights", we know that we don't have a right to remain silent - so when someone comes along to take away what we do have, even if it is just the ability to play games for the US market, then a lot of people take notice.
Just don't come here by boat - we'll send you somewhere else or lock you up in the desert!
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: ... (xviii.) Copyrights, patents of inventions and designs, and trade marks
Unlike the U.S. Constitution, this doesn't even specify a weak "limited times" guarantee. Therefore, Australia's Parliament has the right to pass a perpetual copyright on a given work.
Also it is a reasonably common enough occurance for the Commonwealth to convince all the states to pass a law, in effect making a commonwealth law that they are not supposed to make.
The US does this too, saying in effect "Pass these laws, or we take away your highway construction money." It puts a new spin on the term "highway robbery."
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sometimes it seems Australia is the only place that actually has a good stance on the various region protection systems and copyrights. Shame they go and screw it all up with their censorship laws.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Anyone remember this article only a couple of weeks ago? More and more, courts from around the world are disagreeing with one another in regards to copyright issues and technology. Are DVDs software or film?
This is only the beginning of a slew of court rulings and laws that will confict with each other and throw the already confused state of affairs into absolute chaos.
And why would someone like me want to study this in grad school? Because it's f**king cool - that's why =)
taco
"Corrupting our youth one mind at a time"
may not be screwed out of all the PS2 games that they were on PSX. As an avid PSX RPG fan, I'd have been damn pissed if Final Fantasy Tactics was released late, slightly censored, and with new ugly text boxes.
That got butchered in Europe too, only the japanese and american versions didn't. I wonder why?
Lucky Australians!
Unfortunately we still have that luddite of the Millenia "Brian Harradene", grrr. I must admit that i like the ACCC they seem to be the only government department that actually sticks up for the little people!
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
This is not the case on the PSX because the region code serves as the copy protection. Sony's engineers are a bunch of weenies.
...in this regard. Sure, they're on the "right side" in this one particular case. But Grand Theft Auto 3 is illegal in Australia, while it's the best-selling PS2 game in the U.S., where it's perfectly legal.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
That would make sense if only new DVDs come out with regional encoding, but my copy of "Alien" here - which was released quite a while back - is limited to Code 2. Everything gets coded, ancient or still on the big screen. This makes the "delay" argument look kinda silly.
I mean, people are bitching about how their rights are being taken away and everything, but let's face it: How many of them are actually using imports?
In Europe (somewhat more than 360 million people, I should point out), a lot of people. This is because there is a greater selection of DVDs in the U.S. than in Europe. Also, some DVDs are in German translation only ("Flash Gordon", the new version with Queen's music, is one of them). And third and most important, DVDs from different countries are censored in different ways. Europeans (especially Germans) take out the violence (the German version of "Fight Club" is somewhat of a joke), while the U.S. has this problem with nudity and sex ("Color of Night" is one that comes to mind).
If you want to see the film the way the director intended, sooner or later you're going to have to import you stuff.
They drive on the left, along with basically all former British colonies outside of North America.
It's an interesting little historical digression as to why different countries drive on the sides of the road they do. It actually all goes back to Napoleonic Europe. Before Napoleon, everyone used the left side of the road. It just sort of naturally happened that way, most people are right handed after all, and if that passer-by jumps at you as he goes by, you want your strong hand (which might well be holding a sword, after all) between you. Or if you were in a chariot, or on a horse, the weapon typically would be in the right hand, the reins in the left - which leads to the same thing. So for centuries everyone in europe used the left side of the road.
Then came Napoleon. And the Napoleonic wars. Horrid bloody confused battles, gunsmoke obscuring view, troops arriving late and needing to tell friend from foe quickly when they marched into view along a roadway. Plus Napoleon was a bit of an iconoclast anyway. So he came up with a way that his armies could quickly tell friend from foe, even under the most confused conditions. He decreed that the French would now use the right side of the road, not the left. Anyone marching on the left side of the road was the enemy. He conquered nation after nation, and when they were conquered, they switched sides and used the right side of the road.
The British were never conquered. They still use the left to this day. So do their former colonies (with the exceptions mentioned.)
Sweden also he did not conquer. However, back in the 1960s, the Swedes did finally change over to be compatible with the nations around them. They had some rather confused motorists for a bit, as you might imagine, but eventually everyone got used to it. Most other European nations that Napoleon didn't conquer (such as Switzerland, for instance) nevertheless made that adjustment long before, for the sake of commerce with their neighbors.
Ahh but now the strange exception in North America. We actually went through a period of relative chaos on this issue - most early Americans were from England after all, but then again, we fought the British and those French had helped us... so there was some disagreement and regional variation, although the right side was probably more popular, particularly early on. Henry Ford actually was the one that put an end to it. He had a bit of a fetish about efficiency - you may know that he only put out his cars in one colour, for instance, to simplify the painting stage of production, not to mention his supply logistics. So it was natural he would want to decide to put the steering wheel on one side or the other, not both (an option his competitors catered to.) He settled on the left, it is said, because his left arm was weak from a childhood illness and he found it difficult to shift gears with it. So he put the steering wheel on the left, shifted with his right, and his cars became so successful that the entire continent was soon driving on the left side of the road.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
"but when they are available, what honest justification is there to support the ones that override copy protection? "
How about this justification:
"When I buy a piece of hardware, its mine to do with as I want"
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
No, it's 1 in 20 will spend some time in prison during their life at current rates of imprisonment.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
how may car races have you seen where there are two opposing lanes of traffic???
You need to try Burnout then - LOTS of oncoming traffic, cross-traffic, semi trucks and so on. The only way to win is to take risks in oncoming traffic and in the gaps between lanes.
It has the same sort of feel as the car chases in movies like Ronin, or the final city part of the newer Gone In 60 Seconds.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
No retailer wirth his salt will sell a regionlocked DVD players. Consequently they are all designed to be piss easily unlocked (like have a miniscre switch on the PCB & a tiny access hole at the back that lines up with it). They only charge $100 for unlocking a DVD player when they think they are dealing with a complete moron who'll let him get away with charging him $100 extra.
Gez, right now they are selling DVD/MP3 players at the computer markets for about$170, unlocked (multi-region, not region-free, which makes them compatible with the latest Sony Studios DVDs too - the latest Sony DVDs won't work on DVD players set to regin 0, which is the regionfree setting, so you have to have a DVD player with a multi-region setting, where it automatically changes the region to match the DVD)