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Regional lockout is the programming practice, code, chip, or physical barrier used to prevent the playing of media designed for a device from the country where it is marketed on the version of the same device marketed in another country. It is a form of vendor lock-in. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, or more simply, lock-in, is a situation in which a customer is dependent on a vendor for products and services and cannot move to another vendor without substantial switching costs, real and/or perceived. ...

Technical design

Regional lockout usually requires hardware manufactured by someone who can be trusted to support the methods chosen. For example, manufacturers need a license to produce DVD players, and games consoles are generally produced by only one company per console. The hardware is typically instructed to play only media designated as for a particular region, and that region is then encoded onto the media.

Legal design

In addition to technical measures, a regional-lockout scheme generally incorporates legal measures to support itself. For example, the DMCA has a circumventing a scheme used to restrict access to copyrighted material clause which may be used to criminalize people who ignore, circumvent, or crack a regional-lockout scheme. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a controversial United States copyright law. ...

Benefits

• Allows items to be launched at different times in different places, without allowing people to obtain the item 'ahead of time' by purchasing from abroad.
• Allows price differentiation between markets, thus increasing the potential revenue from worldwide sales
• Ability to restrict content which may be illegal in some countries (e.g. Nazi material in Europe, or pornography in the Middle East)
• When distribution contracts for each area are awarded to different companies, it allows a company to avoid "stepping on someone else's toes"

The Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ... Pornography (from Greek πορνογραφια pornographia — literally writing about or drawings of harlots) is the representation of the human body or human sexual behaviour with the goal of sexual arousal, similar to, but (according to some) distinct from, erotica. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ...

Criticisms

• Regional lockout may promote copyright infringement, cracking (software), and modding, as it makes the 'official' version of something less desirable due to the restrictions placed on it.
• It allows price-differentiation, which may be illegal in some areas
• It presents a barrier to free trade, which may be illegal in some areas such as the EU

For copyright issues in relation to Wikipedia itself, see Wikipedia:copyrights. ... Modding is a slang expression for the act of modifying a piece of hardware or software to perform a function not intended or authorized by the original manufacturer. ... Free trade is an economic concept referring to the selling of products between countries without tariffs or other trade barriers. ...

Examples

• In the video game industry, Nintendo was the originator of regional lockout for video games. Regional lockout in video games is when a piece of hardware is designed such that only software for that region is compatible. Most video games have region encoding.

The main regions are: Japan, North America, Europe and PAL Territories and Australia The computer and video game industry is the economic sector involved with the development, marketing and sale of video and computer games. ... Nintendo (Japanese: 任天堂; TSE: NTDOY) was originally founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards, for use in a Japanese playing card game of the same name. ... Hardware is equipment such as fasteners, keys, locks, hinges, wire, chains, plumbing supplies, tools, utensils, cutlery and machine parts, especially when they are made of metal. ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ... Computer and video games A screenshot of Tetris for the Nintendo Game Boy A console game (better known as a video game) is a form of interactive multimedia used for entertainment, which consists of a moveable image displayed on a screen that is usually controlled and manipulated using a handheld... World map showing location of North America A satellite composite image of North America North America is a continent in the northern hemisphere, bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west... A satellite composite image of Europe Europe is geologically and geographically a peninsula, forming the westernmost part of Eurasia. ... For other meanings of PAL see PAL (disambiguation). ...

The Nintendo DS and the Playstation Portable do not have region encoding; because of this, import games can be played on those systems. In other words, a Japanese game would work on an American unit, albeit the game would likely not be in the user's native language and might be different from the product as released in other countries. Many gamers (often called "hard core gamers") import games, usually from Japan, if the game is released much earlier in that country than in their own. Often, the later releases of the game are superior to the initial one, with gaming glitches fixed and new content added, leaving many importers with buyers' remorse. Titanium, the first color of the Nintendo DS Electric Blue, released in North America on June 6, 2005 Graphite Black,, exclusive to Japan Mew, exclusive to Japan The Nintendo DS is a dual-screen portable handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. ... PSP shown with Value Pack retail box including accessories. ... Hard core gamers is a term used to refer to those who play video games to which some may consider excess. ... Glitch City, a Pokémon programming error that creates a jumble of pixels A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system. ...

The sixth generation of video game consoles have region encoding, so games imported from other countries cannot be played on foreign versions of those consoles. The 128-bit era (or sometimes the Handheld era or Nostalgia era) is the sixth generation of video game consoles and the current video game era, which features the Nintendo GameCube, Sony PlayStation 2, and Microsoft Xbox. ... Console may be: An organ term for the area of an organ including the keys, stops, and foot pedals manipulated by the organist. ...

• DVDs are the most famous and visible example of regional-lockout

DVD is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for storing data, including movies with high video and sound quality. ...

Effect on society

Economic effects

Defeating regional lockout

• Region free, especially in DVD players, means that the device is shipped by the manufacturer without the ability to enforce regional lockout.
• Most handheld video game systems, including all Game Boy systems, are made region free. Sony PlayStation Portable has regional lockout for UMD movies only. The [[Nintendo DS does not have regional lockout. The Play-Yan, currently a Japan-exclusive device, can be imported and works on other models.
• Some countries' laws consider regional lockout to constitute unfair restraint of trade; all DVD players sold in those countries must be region free.
• Devices like regional converters are used to bypass regional lockout without circumventing copy protection.
• Console emulators that emulate consoles that had regional lockout are region free.

The original Game Boys design set the standard for handheld gaming consoles. ... Sony Corporation (Japanese katakana: ソニー) (TYO: 6758), (NYSE: SNE) is a global consumer electronics corporation based in Tokyo, Japan. ... PSP shown with Value Pack retail box including accessories. ... The Play-Yan is a Game Boy Advance media player. ... A console emulator is a program for a computer, or other computing device, that can emulate a video game console or handheld, so a computer can be used to play games that were created for that console or to develop games for that console. ...

See also

• console converter
• fan translation
• Fritz-chip
• copyright misuse
• region encoding

A regional converter is a hardware device used to bypass regional lockout, especially on a video game console, allowing imported media units to be played on domestic devices. ... A fan translation is an unofficial translation of a computer game or video game, into a language that it was never marketed in. ... The Fritz-chip is a nickname for the hardware component of a software-execution monitoring system. ... Copyright misuse is an equitable defense against copyright infringement in the United States based on the unreasonable conduct of the copyright owner. ... Regional lockout is the programming practice, code, chip, or physical barrier used to prevent the playing of media designed for a device from the country where it is marketed on the version of the same device marketed in another country. ...

External links

• The Firmware Page, a resource for making computer DVD drives region-free