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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"
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
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.
...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.
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.
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!
...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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