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Sony's Win a Major Blow for Importers
Joan Cross writes "Sony won a battle in the UK Courts over the importing to Europe of Playstation Portables by Lik Sang. They say that 'Ultimately, we're trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that does not conform to strict EU or UK consumer safety standards, due to voltage supply differences et cetera'. Of course, the PSP comes supplied with a 100-240v adapter which is safe worldwide. Lik Sang has posted their reaction to the court decision. Could be bad news for those wanting PS3 Consoles on import."
Because when I think Sony, I think consumer protection.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
So is a reverse apostrophe a sort of counter-possessive, denying Sony's ownership of the win?
There seem to be a small error in the summary so I fixed it.
'Ultimately, we're trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that is cheaper than what can be bought locally'
Regional pricing == Price fixing && Price fixing == Sucks
Exploding batteries, irrational comments on the PS2/3, etc. $10 says that the Sony execs are joining hands and singing : "Pass the doobie on the left hand side, pass the doobie on the right hand side..." :P
Don't like it ? Vote with your wallet, don't buy one.
This is another side to globalization. As the world as a whole becomes more interconnected thanks to the internet and cheap international shipping, the marketting notion of making products available in different contries at different times is not going to hold up.
It's the same issue you already see DVD region encoding, and with digital music services: people complaining about albums being available in some countries and not others when everyone is getting their tunes from a server on the Internet.
In the future corporations are going to need to stop thinking they can easily dictate the geographical spread of their goods and start thinking of their product launches as a worldwide event. The entertainment industries need to stop setting up distribution deals for invidual regions and make their deals for global availablity. If they don't they will only see their products pasisng through black-market channels and piracy rings more readily instead of generating more revenue for them.
Do they realise that if I buy a PSP or a PS3 on import I will pay for it? there isn't a magic way of stealing them through this system, they still make money... OH! I remember, they don't on the PS3 - could this be a ploy to stop Sony from losing so much money?
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
If only certain corporations would realise that its often not so much their predictable actions of self-interest which disgust people, but their wilful dishonesty.
If they'd just say, "We brought this action to ensure that us and only us get to squeeze every last penny-worth of value out of our product and we don't have to share with anyone"... perhaps not a flowers-and-rainbows kinda sentiment but sheesh at least it'd be honest!
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
I didn't know people actually wanted a PS3 to begin with
Price Japan will export just about anything Japanese to anyone in the world. Some years ago I bought a Sony HS-20 video projector from that site, because it wasn't available in the US at the time. It still works just great. But perhaps court judgments like this will ultimately kill companies like Price Japan.
So, does this mean that Sony can legally prevent private international re-sale of their product line too? Where is the demark line between what is and what is not permissible?
Why should these companies realistically care anyway? It's not like consumers are buying those crappy knock-offs of consoles you could get during the days of the SNES. And as for safety reasons? What the hell? How would Sony be liable? Most hardware I've bought contains pages and pages of legalese saying where it's intend for use in, what voltage it takes etc. The fact is, this is all about control. Companies are scared of not having 100% control over where customers get their products from. If they really want to regain control, they should try not only equalizing prices, but actually ensuring there's a simultaneous release of their products across the world. Releasing the PS3 in March in the UK certainly doesn't help things.
As for Sony's comments that the PS3 'will not play European Blu-Ray movies or DVDs', I wouldn't buy a PS3 or a X-Box 360 for playing HD DVDs. Certainly, neither's HD facility will be region-free. And there are myriad titles that never get released in a certain region. Unless you only have an interest in watching mainstream blockbusters, a region-free player is a must. And the PS2's DVD performance was laughable. Not because it was poor quality, but because when you tried to watch any film in RGB mode, it green tinted the picture. Apparently this was some kind of copy protection measure. Yes, even though DVDs have macrovision. Who's to say the PS3 won't have some daft similar limitation.
If they don't like my ability to sell something I've bought to someone else, and buy similarly, then I have a simple solution for them. They can vote with their products and not sell them.
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
If Lik Sang were to bulk-buy PSPs from Japanese retailers (legal) in Japan, have the purchased PSPs delivered to the home addresses in Japan of minimum-wage Japanese workers who open the PSP retail box/packaging and use the PSPs for at least a month (legal), the consoles would then be used goods which could be legally exported and sold anywhere in the world including the EU and UK. Even after shipping costs and customs taxes are taken into account, it should still be profitable given the relatively very high prices in the EU and UK of brand new PSPs.
Scroogle
C'mon pals, click here: http://malfy.org/
Heck, the fact that it won't play European region Blu-Ray Movies is one reason people buy second consoles. It's not uncommon at all to buy a second player if you import a lot of movies from another country, especially if you feel legally queasy about modding your DVD player to ignore regions.
I read the internet for the articles.
And developers base their platform choices on the number of platforms in circulation I propose that we buy thousands of these machines for the purpose of epoxying them together into a giant angry penguin statue, 4 stories tall, to be erected across the street from the Sony corporate headquarters. Developers will know that thousands of the machines will never be used for gaming, Sony loses tens of thousands of dollars from their per-unit loss and we get to build a 4 story angry penguin statue out of consumer electronics. It's a win-win!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is nothing new. It's what happens when you have two neighbouring areas with different market prices (due to cost of living, salaries, etc. etc.)
In 'The Good Old Days'(tm) this wasn't a problem. Goods, services and the workforce were not mobile - companies could charge according to the local market and achieve the maximum profit for that region. The workforce itself is kept in place because staying put is comparitively cost effective to moving (in both financial and personal sense).
Not anymore. Cars can be bought in Europe and imported over to the UK, Japanese games can be imported to the US. While labour is still relatively static (I aint moving anytime soon) goods are comparitively free to move around and they happily do. They will continue to do so - even with customs intervention (look at drugs).
Higher prices in affluent areas will come under pressure from cheap imports *until* wages in the other areas rise to create an equivalent cost. Companies should stop trying to fiddle with things and just let people buy where they can & want. Unless they're gloriously underselling in one region (more fool them) the effort required to prevent is probably not cost effective.
Who's betting Nintendo offer help with importing. They're doing everything else right...
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
I keep posting the "Friends dont let friends buy Sony" comment on most Sony related articles.
/.ers, help me fight aganst the evil Sony agents and mod this up.
I now wonder if Sony are monitoring me. They certainly are modding these posts flaimbait consistently.
Are they going through my thrash, and obtaining my phone records as well?
Anyway I boldly repeat here again:
Much of the money you spend buying Sony gear goes to support anti consumer efforts from DRM, Infected CD's, Unusable due to DRM Blu-Ray HD-DVD. They may actually help kill the entire HD DVD effort.
Fellow
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
I'm dubious of any true safety concerns. Does Sony want it shouted that: Sony sells unsafe PS3's everywhere in the world except the UK, because only UK law won't allow it!
If the PS3 is truly unsafe, are they going to be stopping travelers returning from other markets overseas and siezing their lawfully purchased PS3 consoles on safety concerns? I doubt it.
The only way you'll fix this in the UK is by a vote for people who will reliably overturn laws that screw the consumers at large to artifically protect monopolies. Should we shout, Is anyone in the UK listening?
What am I doing for my part? Not voting for John Kyl who instituted the Internet Gaming Ban in the USA, and had to sneak it through as part of another, more important, bill because no one wanted their vote on record over this issue.
Who else here in Slashdot land is doing their part, no matter how small, this year?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And consumers might get a better product after a month burn-in to eliminate the Infant Mortality problem of all complex electronics.
Of course, Sony would have to deal with an inordinate number of warranty calls from the same address. But that still might be better than the house actually burning down, as might well have happened with so many early release XBox 360's all crammed into the same location. :^)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
> Advance Wars for the GBA, for example, only hit the UK 6 months after its US release. The same thing applies to DVDs - many titles are available in the US well before the UK.
The reason for this is because traditionally companies either buy or sell distribution rights to items. In the land of consoles we call them 'publishers'. The publishers job is to encourage retailers to purchase copies of a new game. This is usually done by someone that has a relationship with the company. In the UK you want your publisher to have a relationship with games.com, and whatever brick and mortar video game stores there are. In the US you want a publisher that have good relationships with gamestop and walmart. Major titles that launch worldwide on or about the same date usually have a publishing house behind them with global power, other games (such as 'Worms') will come out in Europe long before they get a US release because Team17 has distribution channels in europe, but doesn't in the US.
When people circumvent these publishers by self importing, it makes it a lot riskier for a publisher to do business which hurts large companies like Sony.
Wouldn't that be a: Win-win-win? (Not to be confused with Win 3.0)
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I thought WTO rules forbid this from occurring... Oh wait a second. I forgot who I was talking about. Carry on eveybody.
The United Kingdom - great place to sell a few dozen cargo ships of 'gently used' bargain batteries?
"Ultimately, we're trying to protect consumers from ..
- The PSP has a power supply for 100 - 240V, I'm told, and besides let's not pretend that Sony doesn't have to build all its various Playstations to be acceptable worldwide, shall we?
"is not - in PS3's case - backwards compatible with either PS1 or PS2 software"
- again, similar situation all around the world, what does this have to do with anything?
"will not play European Blu-Ray movies or DVDs"
- because YOU built in restrictions to fuck us over with!
"and will not be covered by warranty."
- strictly by your own decision, there's nothing to prevent you extending the manufacturer's warranty i.e. another way by which to fuck us over.
Perhaps a subtlety on the last point might be an expectation that a faulty unit would have to be returned to the importer - but that's the buyer's choice / risk to take. And it would be interesting if "grey" importers then found it profitable to set up local offices in rip-off parts of the world.
You know, in financial and commodity markets the principle of arbitrage is pretty well accepted. There's just no damn reason why manufacturers like Sony should be allowed to create articifical barriers to otherwise well accepted market mechanisms. As has been pointed out elsewhere, as long as people have to suck it up and bear it with market effects like outsourcing, the corporates shouldn't be able to give themselves exemptions.
What is to stop people from buying stuff on vacation?
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
You know, I wouldn't mind if they just came clean and said that the reason they were restricting the overseas sales was that they wanted more control over the distribution network. But no. They have to insult us. First, they insult us by insinuating they have control over their products once they have been sold to another company, and then they basically say we are too stupid to handle setting it up in the wrong country, so they are doing us a favor by restricting sales. What jerks. Die Sony.
P.S. The anonymous coward thing is kinda annoying. I come here all the time, I'm just too lazy to sign up...
Not least because we can get stung for import duty
;)
well its not that bad (try importing a big ticket item like a car and then see how expensive it gets)
add 17.5% VAT then add 10% to the sum of the total and voila you get the full legal price
unless of course you go on holiday there
At least when you look from the perspective as a U.S. citizen. Locally bought consoles were always cheaper then having them shipped from overseas.
Hmmm... Pie...
It's funny, this is the same thing happens with pharmaceuticals in the U.S. The industry doesn't want people importing Canadian drugs (which are much cheaper) and one thing mentioned is that they have concern the drugs do not meet U.S. quality standards.
I have yet to hear anyone ask if that's true doesn't that mean they are giving Candaians sub-quality prescription drugs. You think there would be a Canadian-consumer uproar with such simple logic.
It would be useful to know exactly what law had been broken - the links that I can find just quote the judge saying that "the offer for sale had taken place not in Hong Kong but in the EEA". Is this just "Asda and Tesco vs Levi" again?
/ cmselect/cmtrdind/380/38009.htm
i cy-issues-trademarks/policy-issues-trademarks-para llel/policy-issues-trademarks-parallel-parallelcas elaw.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1261829.stm
has a summary of that (grey imports from the rest of the EEA legal; elsewhere not)
Also see:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899
http://www.patent.gov.uk/policy/policy-issues/pol
has a link to the judgement (those last two links may cause you to lose the will to stay awake, though).
If it IS just a trademark issue, what's to prevent some sort of "Iceweasel" solution to this? For example advertise the consoles as being of certain dimensions and able to play certain titles - but no more.
As a heads up ... in the UK you can usually guess a products price by using the dollar price. Effectively we're paying nearly twice as much as in the US. And we usually wait about 6 months longer to have a product available.
Doesn't matter to me. I can only afford one meal a day anyway.
I'm curious to listen what Sony have to say about countries not served importing units.
You know, they never released any playstation here in Brazil.
I now wonder if Sony are monitoring me. They certainly are modding these posts flaimbait consistently.
No. *I* mod your posts down.
Are they going through my thrash, and obtaining my phone records as well?
A.) You are delusional. B.) You are not important.
Much of the money you spend buying Sony gear goes to support anti consumer efforts from DRM
Ditto for.. *every* consumer electronics, software, and media giant. Indeed, Microsoft is probably doing more than any other company to stuff DRM down our throats at the moment. Noone needs games and hi-def movies. Many people need to buy new Windows machines now and then. Why don't you go beat up on them in the Xbox 360 stories? Or do you? If not, then you're just a hypocrite with an axe to grind.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I bought a Nintendo DS lite in July, I didn't pay any import tax whatsoever... and I was told I would do because of who Lik Sang used, to ship it to me.
Jonathanjk.com
Lik-Sang also ships from within Europe, to get rid of the import tax...
Of course many of those delays affect Nintendo's own titles which have a guaranteed publisher in Europe, namely Nintendo of Europe.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
This is simple price fixing. Everyone is at it...
For example, in the UK a Nintendo DS costs £110 with your choice of one crappy game. In Japan, the DS is around 16,000 yen, or about £71. That's £40 cheaper, less than 60% of the UK price. Sure, no free game, but £40 can buy you three new games for the DS.
The free game is either just a way of making price comparison impossible ("Sorry, we can't price match so-and-so because it's a different package") or adding "value" to an overpriced product, without costing the retailer much. In fact, you are helping the retailer to dump unsaleable stock.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
While a valid point, I got it shipped from outside the EU.
Jonathanjk.com
The real concern for me is things like Xenosaga or the first Katamari Damacy, which never were and never will be released in Europe, because the maker just cannot be bothered to sell them here. Xenosaga is the one which finally forced me to modify my PS2 to play import games. Or games like Disgaea, which was released in Europe but in a crippled form - the Japanese audio track was left out, so you're forced to listen to the sub-par American dub (while in the US release, both audio tracks are present and you can choose to listen to the original anime-grade audio track).
It's more like: companies sell "distribution rights" to publishers and/or retail companies for cash - a store can pay money to ensure that they get the game and their competitors don't get it. However, there's legally no such thing as a distribution right (in fact it's completely illegal - attempting to enforce one is typically a violation of antitrust or price-fixing laws, or both). So, the companies try to abuse related laws, like "safety" laws, to try and create an artificial distribution right which they can then sell.
Voting with your wallet is exactly what the companies have convinced the government to restrict. They're intentionally segmenting the market, allowing them to price discriminate upon ability to pay. You've got the money, so you should pay a lot more. In this case, more than what would be charged if someone bought it somewhere else, and sold it again in your territory at a profit for them. A free market restricts this sort of gouging to reasonable levels, but an artificially segmented market, especially when segmented by the force of government guns, offers no protection and choice to the consumer.
When the government says you can't do something, it's time to stop voting with your wallets and start voting with your votes.
The ______ Agenda
What a horrible ruling. Or rather, a horrible prescident. Up until this point the "distribution" clause in copyright disputes has been a non-issue. Who goes after a distributer of legally produced goods? Why care? The first sale doctorine effectively makes this a non-issue, as once you've sold it once it is legally out of the copyright holder's hands. The copywrited work becomes an object which is owned and treated as usual with the exception of a lack of duplication rights.
But imports? Aha! If you own the copyright to a movie, and you sell it in a different territory, legally that movie can't be imported into the US and sold because the person in the US does not have distribution rights. Furthermore, if a company were so inclined, the primary company could make the copy overseas (legally) and import it (legally) but have legal sheilding from the first sale doctorine (I.E. no reselling that movie on Ebay). This overseas manufacturing is not only common, but totally normal. Under this interpretation of the law, NO used sales should be legal.
On the other hand, a physical PSP should not fall under copyright laws at all. There is basically no expressive quality in the unit, as it is merely a player of other media. Where does IP law fit at all?
IP law isn't just "the creators get to say whatever happens to something." There are specific rights. Know which rights the content creators actually have, and you know which rights you have as a consumer.
The ______ Agenda
Actually, HD-DVD doesn't have region locking, wheras Blu-Ray does.
Which is why I've just bought a 360, and will be buying the HD-DVD add-on once it comes out. Sony's attempts to stop me playing imports were the deciding factor, given that the add-on pushes the 360's price up to around that of the PS3.
I buy most of my movies from the US, to avoid the wait, save a little money and sidestep what can often be inferior quality of the UK releases, as they reduce video bitrate or drop advanced audio to make way for language tracks I don't need. But I can't be bothered to import videogames most of the time, as I appreciate the ability to swap them with friends who don't have import consoles.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Why would you feel legally queasy about making your DVD player region-free? Regions are a silly restriction by the manufacturers, with the only remotely valid reason given is thta it minimizes piracy from China. So, be queasy about pirating DVD's from China, but why worry about making the player itself region free?
And I'd just like to make an addendum to this: the law protects our right to format shift (under fair use) and to resell (first sale law). If our legal system were actually serving us and not the corporations, it would be illegal to sell products which deliberately interfere with these rights.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They may be hurt by the lack of selling the PS3 console but how have they made money this long? They sell other products and a Sony ruling does not automatically apply to everything else they sell and there are more places then Europe to sell imports. It seems to me Lik-Sang closed shop way too fast and abruptly. I'll throw a consipracy angle out here and suggest maybe someone of bought out Lik-Sang or made a nice agreement for them to shut down ASAP. Sounds too fishy for me.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Well, I care how much it costs, and I care about rootkits, so I won't be buying one, although I did buy a PS2 and a PSP.
Just as people underestimate the impact of Sony's consumer hostility, I think you're also overestimating people's desire for Final Fantasy games. I don't know about you, but I am the geek among my family and friends, and if I say, "The PS3 sucks, you need to get a Wii instead," that actually has an impact on their buying decision.
But being a geek, I have to be careful that when I tell my family and friends, "The PS3 sucks, you need to get a Wii instead," I don't say, "Because they put rootkits on CDs," I say, "Because all the really cool geeks know that the Wii is a lot more innovative and fun. Have you seen that new controller?"
I'm not saying that I'm the only influence on my friends and family, but as a geek, we do have some measure of sway. Assuming, of course, we actually bother to use it and, unlike you, just give up and resign ourselves to that just being the way it has to be. Remind me again who the sheep are? ;-)
So does this mean people cant sell them on Ebay either? Whats to keep some Japanese seller to buy up a bunch and resell them on Ebay worldwide? Or an American seller?
Personally, Lik Sang knew the risks of what it was getting into, and got what was coming to them.