Xbox 360 Marketplace Territory Controls Strengthened Options

[Xbox-Scene]

Xbox 360 Marketplace Territory Controls Strengthened Posted by XanTium | May 3 20:38 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From gamerscoreblog.com (FYI: MS owned blog): [QUOTE] Some Xbox LIVE members may experience some changes when downloading Marketplace content, as we strengthen the territory controls on the service with the Spring Update coming next week. As you may have noticed over the past few months, Xbox LIVE Marketplace has seen tremendous growth with tons of additional gaming and entertainment content, as well as a number of new partners. We are committed to providing great content to all of our users, however not all content is available for use in all countries. For example, as indicated in our Terms of Use, the movies and TV shows available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace are currently available only for use in the United States. Some of our contracts and agreements with content partners, particularly in the area of entertainment, restrict in which countries we may make certain content available. There are a number of reasons for these restrictions, including legal rights and regulations. In addition, various countries such as Germany have regulations when it comes to what content is acceptable for distribution to their residents. As a digital distributor of content, we are responsible and accountable to comply with those government regulations and the licensing agreements we have with our partners. As a general policy we try to get global rights to content, but in some cases, it's not possible because of legal restrictions. In other instances, we have to get legal rights on a country-by-country basis, which unfortunately results with us having content on the service that has to be filtered based on geographical location. So what does this mean to you? Well, if you have an account that matches the country where you are located, then you will probably notice little to no difference. However, if you have set up an account that does not match the country where you are located, you will find that these new security measures will only allow you to purchase and download content that is licensed in the country where you are located. For example, if you are not located in the US, but have created a US Xbox LIVE account, you will not be able to download TV shows and movies that are currently available for use only in the US. Again, for most people this will not be an issue, but we have heard that there are a few folks out there who have tried to access restricted content this way. We understand that this may be frustrating for some users, and hope they understand our responsibility, and the necessary security requirements that need to be in place in order to comply with applicable laws and honor our agreements with content providers. [/QUOTE]

[devilstrider]

They just dont want us getting demos.

[mlapaglia]

didn't they fix this a long time ago?

[Maverick-DBZ-]

I'm glad this came out! This explains everything and why people can't get Video Market Place in certain countries. Blame you're country and it's restrictions, not ms.

[TheIrishLad]

^^ + 1. Got to love America.

[BoNg420]

couldnt users just use a proxy or something to get this content still

[Tiuk]

I'm glad this came out! This explains everything and why people can't get Video Market Place in certain countries. Blame you're country and it's restrictions, not ms.

Isn't it more a fact of MS needing to license content for each country, and them needing to decide if a given country will be profitable? That's what I always figured.

[kermit007]

The main issue is that this is a case of some pretty fucking stupid PHB getting in in their head that they can track which country your in by IP or CC's billing country. A few different providers (like Skype, and the BBC) try to keep people from doing things based on their IP. Does nothing to those that want the content, but just infuriates those who want to be legitimate, and could give two fucks about country specific licensing restrictions. Would be much happier if they did it by your CC's illing country though. Makes it easy to get around, but stringent enough to satisfy the big media conglomerates (ex. iTunes cards I get from Japan). At the end of the day, policies like this just cause others (such as myself, and many others here) to justify piracy when theres no legitimate means to get our mits on content. We have money, and want to spend it. What kind of business savvy people are they to say, "oh sorry, we don't want your money".

They could go either way though. Track via the IP your 360 comes in on that day, or your billing address. I'm betting they'll go the route of your IP address though by how the article sounds. Would certainly legitimize the whole thing if they'd allow you to change your country code this way if you moved to another country instead of being half-assed about it like I'm sure they will be.

[GeekyMonkey]

This pisses me off. I'm an american living in Europe and would love to be able to download some of these shows. Its a major reason for me considering buying a 360. I probably wont bother now.

OK - assume that there are some licencing problems between countries. But why does America get 100% of content and the rest of the world gets 0%? We don't get local shows - we get nothing. They say they are attempting to get licencing, but they aren't. It just won't happen.

No wonder Japan hates XBox. Microsoft has a USA myopic attitude. It surprising because they do have branches around the world. I've met with their local people. But the branch offices dont have any effect on what Redmond does.

[richks]

The message here is clear:

Microsoft and their partners do not want your money. Essentially they are saying "You want this content? Well, we sure as hell don't want to sell it to you." In a world where pretty much any movie or TV content can be downloaded for free, alienating part of your potential customer base is a profoundly bad move.

I'm a Wii owner. I live in the UK, but own a US Wii because the support for PAL region consoles is appalling. I've bought a handful of Virtual Console games because I wanted them. But if they said I could only have the EU games, I'd probably ditch the whole thing and just use emulators on my XBox and download the roms from usenet. They'd get zero cash.

Really bad move.

[sirsmacketh]

That's a pretty good response from M$. However, all the content that's available on XBOX Live Video Marketplace in the US, is available to us Canadians over Cable and Satellite. If the legislations allow for us to view the same content over traditional distribution, why is it taking so long to approve it so Canadians can access the same content through XBOX Live.

I strongly feel that Microsoft has a chance to capitalize on digital distribution and the infrastructure needs to be in place in order to handle more people accessing the same content. Everyone remembers what happened when they first launched Video Marketplace - the whole Live network went down for a few hours!

I'm patiently waiting the release of Video Marketplace in Canada.

[89c4l98]

couldnt users just use a proxy or something to get this content still

I agree it is a ip based block so just spoof a proxy for japan and still get those demos

[Sinar]

If fony can manage with psone titles to download and share them between regions within a month,
Surely M$ can manage content to europe. Then again tv shows come out later here so there could be fights over exclusive rights for first showings, different movie/tv ratings systems (BBFC for uk) requires some things are cut for general audience viewing.
Wii VC is also affected by licensing, in the end its up to M$ to make the service better in other ways for regions not getting the best content on offer.

[Fantmx]

The message here is clear:

Microsoft and their partners do not want your money. Essentially they are saying "You want this content? Well, we sure as hell don't want to sell it to you." In a world where pretty much any movie or TV content can be downloaded for free, alienating part of your potential customer base is a profoundly bad move.

I'm a Wii owner. I live in the UK, but own a US Wii because the support for PAL region consoles is appalling. I've bought a handful of Virtual Console games because I wanted them. But if they said I could only have the EU games, I'd probably ditch the whole thing and just use emulators on my XBox and download the roms from usenet. They'd get zero cash.

Really bad move.

Yeah, businesses don't want your money... The reason this was implemented was explained perfectly clear in the article. It has to do with licensing; there is absolutely nothing Microsoft can do about it. It also has to do with copyrights in a country vs. international.

[Deihmos]

Yeah, businesses don't want your money... The reason this was implemented was explained perfectly clear in the article. It has to do with licensing; there is absolutely nothing Microsoft can do about it. It also has to do with copyrights in a country vs. international.

I think it was explained well. Microsoft does not own the content and has to abide by laws. It is a pity some people are just to ignorant to understand.

This post has been edited by Deihmos: May 4 2007, 02:30 PM