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Lik-Sang.com Taken to Court By Sony
Joe writes "As published on Lik-Sang's Website Sony has taken legal actions against Hong Kong's largest exporter of videogames and videogaming gear. One month before the official european launch and 9 months after the initial release of the PSP, this action looks very late at first sight. Since it's highly doubtful that Sony can permit the resale of the japanese PSP consoles in Hong Kong no matter if on the local market or for export, it looks like this is planned to be one of the not the bright marketing ideas of the Sony HQ. The japanese PSP has the same Region Code for UMDs as the ones which will be sold in europe in september. Since the shipping at Lik-Sang is free, the console is even cheaper to import than to buy it locally."
Those region codes are SO convenient for consumers. I just LOVE travelling abroad and not being able to watch my dvds. I shouldn't be suprised that SONY would think to do this with UMD too. bah.
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
I thought companies want a global market and are pressing the G7/8 (depends on how you count) to help them in that. But when the market acts back in a global way by protesting against region codings, delayed movie releases (thus watching the copies from the internet), the same companies protest by using their legal means and shear size.
In short: Sony, stop acting like a little kid, just be global, dump region codings, dump price strategies and just sell you products for a fair price all over the globe.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Sony is being greedy over a few dollars. This company is buying and selling mass amounts of usits. Sony should be happy they are getting there wholesale rate, im sure it doesnt change that much from country to country, its all relative. The whole point of internet commerce is having the ability to find competitive prices and order from anywhere in the world.
See, companies like Sony complain about people importing their products, but if they'd just bring their products to us quicker, this wouldn't happen. Can someone give me one good reason they couldn't launch the PSP in Europe at the same time they launched it in America? If companies can make it more of a priority to bring products to overseas markets quicker, or at all in many cases, than they are going to have to deal with the reality of importing as a consumer solution. For the record, I totally back Lik-Sang.com. They're where I import my Gamecube games from. Awesome site. Down with Sony!
It's charmingly naive to believe that juidicial or legislative bodies are concerned with free trade. Mainly, they represent power interests and as such the laws created by and for those interests. "Free trade" comes onto the agenda when there is an advantage to be gained: mainly, in access to a market otherwise protected by anti-import legislation.
As another poster in this thread pointed out, free trade is rarely done out of principle, not even by institutions such as the WTO that claim this as their reason for existence.
Thus, the USA can subsidise its own cotton farmers to the point where countries like Niger cannot sell their cotton on the world market for a fair price. That's ok. But when Airbus get cheap loans from governments, that's not ok.
"Free trade" is excellent in theory and nice when it actually happens, but don't imagine it's the top priority for many people except economists.
Your games are region-protected because as a consumer, you don't actually have any rights except to spend / not spend your money. If you don't like companies that rip you off, don't buy their products.
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