Protection is just a waste of time, always a step behind the crackers - which often come from the countries that suffer because of bad copyright management with games either being hugely overpriced compared to other regions or games not being available at all. - Go figure! Most often protection schemes actually even increases the risk of media failure etc. There are quite a few protected Sony Audio cd's out there with a bad rootkit (Windows only) or that are so mangled by protection bits that they cannot in fact be called audio-cd's again. Just silver disks with an audio cd-form factor that sort of play right on quite a few audio systems but will not in quite a few others.

I think that if content was readily available without many restrictions on it's use and at a reasonable price people are willing to pay - just look at the music industries latest developments. If people can produce proof of payment then having a large mp3 collection on your pc doesn't have to be something criminal. When you have a terabyte of mp3s on your computer without proof of payment or without owning a single original CD then you should be fined/prosecuted or whatever. Same goes for games.

Editor / Pixelator - Armchair Arcade, Inc.
www.markvergeer.nl

Of course it's related to copyright restrictions across territories. It's the same reason why since the days of the NES, most non-handhelds have had territorial lockouts. Particularly when you're dealing with licensed games, it's a potential landmine of territorial gotchas. Even something "worldwide" like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had to be Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles in the UK. It has just as much to do with US copyright laws as it does with individual country laws. The fact that GameTap had their service out at all in Europe is amazing from the standpoint of its wildly diverse catalog of IPs from countless publishers. It's interesting that the Xbox 360 and PS3 have games without region locks - the region lock bit can be optionally set by the publisher. This is for those publishers who are no beholden to any license or other type of restriction. If they are, they just set the bit to play only in the specific region or regions. Simple enough. Copyright DOES have to be respected - to this point it's the best system that has been agreed upon by the most interests. I think we are seeing a movement - no matter how small - to more INTELLIGENT use of copyright and more multi-faceted implementations of the law. Obviously protections do need to be in place, but when the right type of protection can be applied to the right situation, the more people can be made happy.

Wii: 1345 2773 2048 1586 | PS3: ArmchairArcade
Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.

I guess you are right Matt. I guess Gametap did their best to become an international entity - but was stopped dead in it's tracks because of US copyright holders. But this whole thing is just hard to digest from a European point of view - it sucks to be promised a service and have it withdrawn without any good explanation.

Without feedback from the company explaining the situation the current action will no doubt set a lot of bad blood. 'The big companies just don't care about us, we Europeans have to put up with a lot of crap from the Gaming Industry - bad ports, bad service, a lot of games never becoming available - and on and on'. Your possible explanation could change the perspective of a lot of Europeans and from a PR point of view communication explaining the situation to paying Europeans whom are suddenly left in the green-zone will heal the broken relationship and might leave more Europeans willing to resubscribe - whenever or if ever this will be possible.

Still it is hard to digest and commercially crazy to limit free trade because of some US-copyright-goons. Don't get me wrong - I think copyright and making sure content producers getting paid for the work they do is a necessity for the industry/any industry to survive. But if copyright-issues is limiting the market size then these copyright folk really have to scratch their heads just a tad and figure out how much money they are loosing by excluding a whole continent from their clientèle.

And to conclude on a more philosophical note existing limits to free trade/service created by the wealthy parts of the world - which is only stemming from fear - excluding a large portion of the world population creates a lot of injustice, wars, death, terrorism, hardship and in minor cases like this a whole lot of irritation. It is time Humanity comes to it's senses and make the world a more fair place to live.

Editor / Pixelator - Armchair Arcade, Inc.
www.markvergeer.nl

A warning or a customer service email warning the paying European customers that their accounts would be reverted to green would have been nice. Now we are silently being cut off. It just shows how little the individual customer actually means to a lot of companies.
I guess the Ted Turner business doesn't care about their European market - from a business stand pount of view this just doesn't make sense. In my eyes shrinking your market will loose you money. But hey perhaps mr Custard and I were the only paying European subscribers anyway ;-P

Editor / Pixelator - Armchair Arcade, Inc.
www.markvergeer.nl

The reply I got from Jame regarding my last question surely means that European Gametap users are screwed. I say the hell with subscription services, you spend time and money downloading a game and just out of nowhere you are not even allowed to finish it. Sam & Max are suddenly out of reach - regardless how funny they are even to Europeans. This whole episode points out a serious flaw in the whole subscription model of digital game distribution - users suddenly not being able to access the game contact they want to play due to some action on the 'business end' of the equation. Steam games are also not playable without the servers being accessible. Anyways, I am so pissed right now that I cannot even bear to log in with my 'green' account.

This is the quick and short reply from James I got:
Dear Mark Vergeer,

Email Administration, One CNN Center, Atlanta, GA 30303. TM & Copyright 2007 Turner
Broadcasting System, Inc.
A Time Warner Company. Patent Pending. All Rights Reserved.