Marketplace Border Controls: It’s all for legal reasons, like…

Guess 92.3% of doppelganger accounts have officially hit the roof after the announcement that cross-border Marketplace downloading would be a thing of the past. Like we said: the corporate line is that “protect quality of Xbox Live downloads” line used in the past, again used with elaborations by Michael Newey, Group Product Marketing Manager for Xbox Europe in a talk with AceyBongos.

The issue here is that when we add new gaming and entertainment content to Xbox LIVE we sign a contract with the content provider. In that contract it tells us which country or countries the content is licensed in. It then becomes a legal requirement for us to ensure that the content is only available for to people in the countries in which it is licensed. If we donÂ’t do this it makes it really difficult for us to get new content providers to put content on Xbox Live, which in turn means Xbox Live members donÂ’t get the content they want.

Sometimes it’s not even the content provider that’s throwing up the walls: Michael makes the pointed example of laws in Germany which has “restrictions which regulate the distribution of certain content” in the country (five GamerPoints for guessing what kind of content).

So like we asked (okay, suggested backhandedly) at the end of the last article, would Live know where your Xbox 360 lives? Michael gives a rather interesting answer that suggests it’s more than that:

We will know from the location of the Xbox. ItÂ’s important to note that it is the location of the console itself in conjunction with your Xbox Live account that will dictate which content you can download. Therefore if you have a US Xbox Live account and live in the US, but take your console on holiday to Europe, while you are in Europe you will not be able to download content from the US Xbox Live Marketplace. But, conversely, if you have a UK Xbox Live account and take your Xbox to the US, you will not be able to download content from the US Xbox Live.

Suddenly the Live-tahrnetz are clamoring for open skies cyberspace.

Guess 92.3% of doppelganger accounts have officially hit the roof after the announcement that cross-border Marketplace downloading would be a thing of the past. Like we said: the corporate line is that “protect quality of Xbox Live downloads” line used in the past, again used with elaborations by Michael Newey, Group Product Marketing Manager for Xbox Europe in a talk with AceyBongos.

The issue here is that when we add new gaming and entertainment content to Xbox LIVE we sign a contract with the content provider. In that contract it tells us which country or countries the content is licensed in. It then becomes a legal requirement for us to ensure that the content is only available for to people in the countries in which it is licensed. If we donÂ’t do this it makes it really difficult for us to get new content providers to put content on Xbox Live, which in turn means Xbox Live members donÂ’t get the content they want.

Sometimes it’s not even the content provider that’s throwing up the walls: Michael makes the pointed example of laws in Germany which has “restrictions which regulate the distribution of certain content” in the country (five GamerPoints for guessing what kind of content).

So like we asked (okay, suggested backhandedly) at the end of the last article, would Live know where your Xbox 360 lives? Michael gives a rather interesting answer that suggests it’s more than that:

We will know from the location of the Xbox. ItÂ’s important to note that it is the location of the console itself in conjunction with your Xbox Live account that will dictate which content you can download. Therefore if you have a US Xbox Live account and live in the US, but take your console on holiday to Europe, while you are in Europe you will not be able to download content from the US Xbox Live Marketplace. But, conversely, if you have a UK Xbox Live account and take your Xbox to the US, you will not be able to download content from the US Xbox Live.

Suddenly the Live-tahrnetz are clamoring for open skies cyberspace.