Not to be mean or anything man but you really have no idea what you're talking about on this one.
Thanks for the great response. Really.
While you're up there on your high horse, why not actually try to explain why licensing for certain titles is suddenly shared across the US/Asian border for no rhyme or reason? Licensing doesn't work in magical blocks that Sony draws out. Licensing is far more granular than three huge regions and I dare you to try to prove me wrong on that point.
Likewise, if you feel that customers being peeved about region coding enforcement, i.e. "force consumers to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars on new hardware and software if they move to a different country," is selfish, then I sincerely hope that you are never in charge of a major gaming company.
It'd be nice if you or spectere would provide some links verifying how this shit actually works, rather than just claiming the other doesn't know what they're talking about...
I don't think it's too hard to see that region coding isn't enforced due to licensing. If that were the case, US and Canada would be in two distinct codes.
Look at online streaming services, like Hulu or, well, pretty much anything US-based. Oftentimes they'll block Canadian viewers. Why? Licensing. If licensing was such a huge deal, DVDs and games would not work across the US/Canadian border because there is as much of a rift between our two countries than there is between us and Europe when it comes to that stuff.
That also fails to explain why games that are developed entirely in-house are region locked. If it were simply due to licensing there would be no reason for the games to be locked. Region locking is more about control over distribution than licensing. Why do you suppose Sony forced Lik-Sang out of business over a handheld that's largely open in terms of region coding (with UMD movies being a notable exception)?