Oh, fabulous. Region-coding extends its reach.

Via Copyfight, this story from the Washington Post, on the rise of region-coding of consumer devices. We've all known for a long time about the region-coding of DVDs, and Sony Playstation Games (you know, you buy a DVD in the US; it won't play in your Australian player unless you have it fitted with a device which may or may not be illegal depending on what the High Court ends up saying in the Stevens v Sony case, to be heard this year). The region-coding thing became a particularly notorious part of the discussion that followed the conclusion of the Australia-US free trade agreement.

Apparently, region-coding (of one technical kind or another) is being applied to a whole lot of other stuff too - including computers, and printer cartridges.

The printer cartridge thing is particularly ironic, isn't it. The "printer cartridge case" (otherwise known as the Lexmark case) is one of the notorious DMCA cases over in the United States. In that case, Lexmark was using technology to ensure people only used 'genuine' Lexmark cartridges in their printers. Lexmark sued a company which was providing chips that other printer cartridge manufacturers could use so that their cartridges would be accepted by Lexmark printers. Lexmark lost. The case is described in this Wired story.

So in this more recent news, it appears that we have the marriage of two DMCA horror stories. (although note, the region coding of a lot of the consumer devices would probably not be a DMCA issue - not under Australian current law (because our law requires some relationship with infringement of copyright) and not under US law as interpreted in Lexmark) - it would, however, be a consumer protection/possible competition legal issue).