XBL Marketplace - NEW RESTRICTIONS!

i subscribed to this forum just to post my opinion on the subject

If the delivery is a physical one then you have every right to do so. But if i visit your store and say i am greek you cannot tell me i wont sell to you.

An internet store does not have a physical delivery obstacle, so if i visit your store (online) and ask for downloading smthg you cannot say i only sell to UK citizens. Its like the first case , i come to your store and you refuse to sell to a EU citizen.
If you had to ship the product, that would be something totally different.

I hope i made my point clear.

 

It has nothing to do with citizenship. In this example, if the UK resident moved to Greece, he would not be able to purchase the content either. It has to do with the physical location of the device and nothing to do with the person trying to download it.

 

I know.. and that is even worse.

What does it mean? Greece is an unwanted territory?

 

Yes, and that's the basis of the iTunes legal issues. Although I don't know if there's specific legislation for internet download services factored into the open market policies. I think the iTunes case is the first and weill set precedent. Prior to that, I imagine no-one gave any thought to downlaod services and locking out cards by region when drafting up the new legislation, or regard for copyright law.

And that's the complexity of the issue here. Sure MS have to abide by EU laws, but they also have to abide by copyright law and US contract law! It may be that in creating contracts of distribution with the content companies, let's say Warner Brothers, they drafted a contract only to sell to some regions. MS are contractually bound to do that. If they don't, WB sue them through the US law courts. But in doing so, they may be violating EU law. In which case the EU customers, or EU Parliament, 'sues' MS to not lock out regions. Then MS have to provide the content, and when WB sues them over contract and copyright laws, somehow sort that out.

The easy fix is to lock out the EU completely. Treat is as one region (which technically it's supposed to be) and have the content providers either allow content for the whole of the EU, or none of it, without regard for specific countries.

 

I agree.

What ms does by "blocking" a console when the owner travels for example in Greece is even more over the edge.

Next thing is blocking access to their web site per country

The news today is that we actually have access to all marketplace eu content again.
Lets see for how long.