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Communications Hardware

Should Hardware Drivers be Region/Language Locked? 91

Posted by Cliff from the questionable-barriers-of-use dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "Recently, I have purchased Sony's new Hi-MD player. I popped in their driver CD, and instead of installer launching, I was greeted by the message, 'Cannot install for this Windows language.' It seems like it rejected installation, because my default language setting is Japanese, although I am using English version of Windows. I got the response from Sony stating that: 'If you are using a different language set up for your computer, you will not be able to use the software supplied with the product. Unfortunately, currently there is no workaround for this issue. The only option would be to change the language setting of your computer.' Now I'm asking for my money back. The hardware device is practically useless without the software installation, and it seems like they are going too far, especially since this may affect anyone who uses more than one languages on their computer. Isn't this discrimination to multi-lingual people living in the targeted market? And isn't it unfair to impose such restrictions on software that is required to use hardware?"
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Should Hardware Drivers be Region/Language Locked? More

Should Hardware Drivers be Region/Language Locked?

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  • Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rumpledstiltskin ( 528544 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:33PM (#9340844) Homepage Journal
    Don't buy Sony
    • Their software is crap anyway, and they have crappy support.

    • Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Funny)

      by ForestGrump ( 644805 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @08:01PM (#9341082) Homepage Journal
      how is that reply supposed to help? He bought it already,

      A better answer would be "I run an english localization of windows. Give me the MD player!"

      -Grump

      • Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Saturday June 05, 2004 @02:04AM (#9342850) Homepage Journal
        'for the future' advice, It's not bad.

        He should have listened it already, if you're intending to use a player to listen to stuff you encoded into mp3/whatever yourself, Sony sucks as a music player choice.

        I too, however, use their earplug style headphones which are pretty good in the price/performance ratio. But people who have bought their MD players to be used as Mp3 player replacements have been disappointed in all cases I know(They advertise them like they would work like charm, moving mp3's to them and playing them from it, yet it doesn't work like that. converting to atrac with drm that adds unneeded complexity, dependance on their crappy software, and re-encoding).

        They're excellent as MD players, but that's just about it..

        so what should he do? return it, try to get his money back and complain to Sony that their way sucks(going through EXTRA TROUBLE to HARASS THE CUSTOMER).

        • I'll admit. I don't know much about the MP3 MD player. I do, however, have a regular MD player.

          Bought it about 5 years ago. Back then, CDr just wasn't as ubiquitous, and I thought MD would be great because I could record and re-record without having to buy a cd burner.

          Today, I have a stack of MDs I take when I go hiking. Have dropped it a few times and it still works like a charm.

          -Grump
    • " Don't buy Sony"

      I don't like Sony either... but I shouldn't buy Sony because one dude had a problem with them?

      • Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Saturday June 05, 2004 @12:30PM (#9344581) Journal
        Well it's more than one dude.

        There aren't many good reasons to buy Sony stuff. Unless you like aibos that much...

        They're fond of having their own type of batteries, memory, etc.

        Their optical disc drives/players typically have poorer media compatibility than even the taiwanese brands (they're probably all made in China, which makes it even more puzzling why they're more sucky).

        You often pay a premium for Sony stuff (except for cdrom drives for some reason ;) ). Don't see what you get for the premium.

    • Re:Simple Solution (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jrockway ( 229604 ) *
      Here are my sony antecdotes:

      Multiscan200sf: still works fine... great moniotor (not as nice as the NEC sitting next it, though... both were free so I'm not going to complain)
      Clie NX70: screen fucked itself about 6 months after i bought it... i kept it in a nice metal case, so it wasn't because i dropped it or something)
      Clie NX60 (or something): no software updates ever
      Memory Stick Camera: the software included caused a hard reset on the PDA
      Memory Stick GPS (I didn't buy this, but a person at Bic Camera tol
      • I know this is a relatively old thread that probably no one is reading anymore, but I have to agree completely.

        I won a Sony Network Walkman (ie. digital music player) as a door prize. Pretty sweet, considering it's average price online, at the time, was several hundred dollars.

        If I had done reasearch into buying an MP3 player, this one would have been one of the first to be eliminated. First, it doesn't play mp3's, it plays atrac. For that luxery you get to pay twice as much as the next brand.

        The play
    • I'm not surprised to hear about language problems with Sony products.

      At work I have to use a few Sony programs, and they constantly ask questions like, "Are you sure to delete?" and others that make no sense at all like the error window that pops up "(-64) Mouse Problem" or my personal favorite is an error box that pops up with no text in it whatsoever. Apparently, something I do causes an error, but even the computer doesn't know what it is.

  • Discrimination (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Brandybuck ( 704397 )
    Isn't this discrimination to multi-lingual people living in the targeted market?

    Yes.

    Lesson learned: Don't buy Sony.

    Next...

  • not sure if this is lock out (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Siniset ( 615925 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:39PM (#9340895) Homepage Journal
    our just poor Q and A on the install process... my guess is just a bug in the install process that doesn't allow the install to happen if it runs into a non-english language. it really wouldn't make sense to try and lock out users just based on their language. just My two cents.

  • Not exactly a 'lock-out' (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cbiffle ( 211614 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:40PM (#9340913)
    This isn't a region or language lock-out. It's a language-aware installer that lacks a localization for your region.

    The problem here, really, is that the installer won't offer to install some default localization when it can't find an appropriate one. There isn't some massive evil company trying to keep you from using their software.

    Why not kick the computer to English for the duration of the install, and then switch it back?

    • Not true! In order to do what the poster has described, you have to specifically write code to detect the language in use, then disable install based on the detected language.

      In a single language install environment you'll never know about the language installed on the environment. In a multi-language install environment, you check the language in use and try to find an appropriate language.

      What has been described above is language lockout plain and simple, and there's no excuse for it (other than impor

    • Why not kick the computer to English for the duration of the install, and then switch it back?

      I had a problem with my ISP the installation software refused to work on a non english install of windows.

      I use and write in Polish. Windows has a habit of mangling Polish letters in read only windows unless the operating system has been installed with Polish as the default.

      changing to english isn't an acceptable option for me.
      Why NTL's installer insists on english for windows i do not know especially since its

  • Yes it should be locked (Score:4, Funny)

    by AKnightCowboy ( 608632 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:41PM (#9340918)
    All hardware and software should be language locked to English. People need to get with the picture and stop using those other languages because I don't understand them. :-)
    • A few years back, I bought a ThinkPad. It came with a special ThinkPad build of some DVD player software, don't remember the name of it. But, because my locale wasn't set to English, its default language for the software setup was either Mandarin or Cantonese,... which, unless you are Chinese and living in Western Europe, is pretty much useless. But, as soon as I set my locale settings to en_US, the installation greeted me in English.

    • Re:Yes it should be locked (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Damn right. Jesus spoke English, and that's good enough for me!

      (posted AC in case anyone thinks I'm actually that stupid..)
    • People need to get with the picture and stop using those other languages because I don't understand them

      My father-in-law seriously holds that view. He'll get agitated if someone dares to speak a foriegn language near him, even if it's a public place and they're not even talking to him. I'm glad you were joking.
  • The fact is, if they want to do this then they can, and you do not have to buy their product if their choice sucks. I have two sony drives, but of course I use Linux so I wouldn't know about their windows policy.
    I'm sure the reasoning behind the policy is to prevent people from buying foreign drives cheaper. Have you tried setting windows to english, installing the drivers, then setting it back to japanese? I'm sure if it were that simple though you wouldn't have had to ask slashdot.

  • discrimination? try grey market deterrence... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by perlchild ( 582235 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:42PM (#9340933)
    Discrimination it's not, technically(not giving a multi-lingual person an advantage is arguably, not discrimination, since it's not a disadvantage...). Well I'm sure it's being argued that way, someplace.

    But the real reason is probably that if it worked in Japanese, people might export your version to Japan, where it likely is much more expensive, and Sony would lose revenue(let's not get into the ethics of that shall we?). It's arguably why some Francophone markets(I'm from Quebec) have to wait longer than others to get their version of a DVD, even it's its already available. (Sometimes I really wish Quebec would go back to it's "release in both official languages at the same time, by law.) Because european-french releases usually are much more tardy than North American ones, we have to wait for software, until it's released over there, even if it's translated here(and ready by the same time the North-American English version is).

    Now I wasn't aware they charged extra for the fr_FR version, but I'm sure a grey market copy would inflate in value in France, if it was available before everyone else can get a copy.

    In your case, I'd strongly suspect that the english/multilingual copy to be cheaper than the Japanese version. Oddly enough, lots of software will install in english on a french computer, so I suspect it's not a technical "deny" but more of an administrative/marketing one in your case. (Yes I know, there are also issues about input methods, but I doubt it's the problem here, as you mention a driver...)
    • (Sometimes I really wish Quebec would go back to it's "release in both official languages at the same time, by law.)

      How does this help anyone? All this would accomplish is making the English speakers wait longer for their release.

      Also if the law matches your description, it would also prevent companies who lack the resources to create a French version from releasing anything at all. That seems to be a very anti-competitive/big business stance.
      • Considering the demographics, a company without the resources to produce a french version, should just go where there are more people who speak english(we are talking about an 85% francophone market). Also, the language laws, also mandate productions over a certain size to be displayed in both languages... How does this help anyone? As for smaller outfits... Most (local) smaller outfits are already french, so anything that involves not just throwing the US version(local productions tend to outproduce, and
    • One of my school teachers was Japanese, lives in Yokohama now...and over there, some things are cheaper than over there than in Australia, and the rest only exist in Japan.

      Except for land. 12 years salary for an apartment an hour out of Tokyo is a bit over the top...isn't it?

  • The only thing I could think of is.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mivok ( 621790 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:51PM (#9341001) Homepage
    if the software being installed does not have a japanese translation available (and there is a japanese version of course), but even so I'm surprised it's not overridable.
    Also, have you tried setting the default language to english, installing, and changing the language back? I'm not sure if this is possible under windows (I'm a macosx/linux/*bsd user myself), but it seems like a possible workaround.

  • it can be other things too (Score:5, Informative)

    by greywar ( 640908 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:52PM (#9341010) Journal
    For a while my company would ALSO lock you out of installing on a japanese machine.

    As it turns out japanese machines have a different base character set, and the installer [installshield] would crash ALL the time. Even if multiple language packs were installed. Eventually after much head scratching, and installshield saying "wow you are right it doesnt work here either, and we have no idea why" I finally figured out what it was.

    Turns out installshield at the time if you had a copyright symbol in a start emnu folder name would always crash.

    I've also seen installations that just simply did not support japanese or chinese. They do have different language formats, not every letter can be kept in a single byte of data.

    Or the CD-rom is hard coded to a region, and they make assumptions about people in a different regional language trying to install hardware not region specific. hard to say.

  • Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)

    by NotoriousQ ( 457789 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @08:01PM (#9341080) Homepage
    Yeah! I am upset as well. I have been trying to post to slashdot in many different languages, and it does not work.

    I will try again:
    Cyrillic:
    Hebrew:

    It does not look like it is working properly. All I see is that it is changed to unicode characters that slashdot seems to filter when they are displayed. What do they think I am going to do with them? Construct a giant unicode version of ascii art goatse?

    I am very annoyed! I petition for slashdot to be multilingual.
    • Actually, check this out [slashdot.org] (Note, the actual post is a pointless troll, but...) the sig is in Chinese(running it through rikai Chinese [rikai.com] it does appear to say something along the lines of sexual kitten(at least in my browser). Who knows?
      ???
      ???
      Though I can't seem to write them(thus the ???)
  • It's simply really, the idiot programmer didn't bother i18n'ing his driver, so he just blocks out everything that's not US English. He does this because he works for Sony, whose corporate mindset is "Fuck them as hard as we can get away with". Now you, the customer, go out and buy Sony because you like the flashy colours and are led to believe that it's a better toy than Brand-X because of its heavy price tag, thus you just made "their" system work.

    Return that piece of crap, I'll even drive you to the st
  • This is a ridiculous attempt at DRM. What do you do if you sell the drive on E-Bay overseas to a different region? Are they going to let you download the drivers for the new region?
    • Is there a DRM advocate under you bed at night when you are trying to go to sleep?

      Just wondering. . .
      • No- but sometimes in my dreams capitalists are trying to take away my ability to live.

        Oh wait- that's in reality as well as I face the possible (75% chance, only 1 in 4 that I'll get my next contract with state government) next 26 months without a job after only 6 months of being able to work again.
        • And you'll perish without hope unless you have a job working for the government?

          You should be angry that somehow you became that dependent on such an entity. Somebody set you up.

          • You should be angry that somehow you became that dependent on such an entity. Somebody set you up.

            Absolutely I'm angry. I know exactly who has set me up and sold me up the river (quite literally- Salem is up both the Tualatin and Willamette Rivers from the Silicon Forest). It was a combination of people- like most things. Paid lobbiests in the ITAA and pro-immigration groups, who keep claiming against all evidence to the contrary that there is a labor shortage in this country, especially in high tech a
            • You're being a crummy Marxist. You guys are supposed to be anti-Nationalist, i.e. Proletarian Nationalism and all that nonsense. And here you are ranting about national boundaries, and clinging to your rights as a resident of Oregon.

              You need to immediately read Josef Stalin's 'Marxism and the National Question' before your cadre status is revoked.
              • Stalin was no Marxist- he was a con artist attempting to use Marxism to enrich himself and his fellow politburo members.

                Plus, read the full name: Marxist Hacker. I view economic systems the same way I view operating systems. The political boundary at the edge of Oregon is no different than the system boundary at your NIC card. The way to protect such boundaries is with physical (hardware) and law based (software) firewalls. If something doesn't work, you need to go back and re-engineer until it DOES w
                • If you don't grasp the fact that internationalism was more than a vestige of Stalinism, you have no right to call yourself a Marxist. The idea of worker internationalism is at the root of Marxism. You're just some guy who picked out what you thought was a 'scary hard-core name' for your slashdot account.

                  You view economic systems the same as you view operating systems? As badges of honor for zealotry, it seems. You need to come back when you're grown up.

                  Psst: don't wave that red flag too widely. When

  • On a similar note... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @08:38PM (#9341313)
    Why does Slashdot *still* block pound signs?

    Look, here's one:

    Did you see it?

    No?

    Because it isn't friggin' there, is it?!

  • Sony always was the Other Evil Empire (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HalfFlat ( 121672 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @10:10PM (#9341835)

    This is standard operating procedure for Sony.

    Sony, much like every other company, want to maximise their profits. Sony, unlike most companies, is large enough to set standards and influence government policy on matters such as copyright so that they can engage in discriminatory pricing (discriminatory in the sense that are able to discriminate between markets and charge in each market according to demand and local pricings.)

    Proprietay hardware and software formats. Pointless (from the user's point of view) restrictions on using their hardware. Lobbying for legislation to declare re-importation of CDs as a copyright violation. Region ecoding on DVDs. These are all part of the same policy.

    The fact that they make sexy looking hardware is no reason to buy into this scheme unnecessarily.

    Given the asinine restrictions and unnecessary hoops I would have to jump through to use a Net-MD player or its ilk, there is no way I'd ever buy an MD player with the intent of connecting it to a computer. I'm sorry to hear that yet another aspect of their profit-maximisation policy has claimed a victim.

    PS: Sony warranty support is also one of the worst I've ever had to deal with in a professional capacity. Again, they're big enough that they don't need to care.

    PPS: It's a real shame that the fruits of Fujitsu's very cool MO technology look like they will be primarily found only in Sony's product. The 2.3GB MO 3.5" format was amazing, but just never caught on. There was a collaboration with Sony and this looks like the result.

    • No one should ever buy anything Sony except for a PS2 because of Magic Gate DRM and Memory Stick proprietary nonsense. There are equal or better products for almost every one of their divisions, including TV's and Walkmans. Their PDA's are full of features, I'll give them that.
  • ...Good for TV's, Monitors, Video Cameras and the like. Their consoles are pretty good too.

    But their MP3 players... evil. Their software sucks anyway, you're not missing out on much.
  • "Proprietary Product: Caveat Emptor!" (sorry for mixing the latin with the greek chorus reference).

  • Why are you surprised? (Score:3, Funny)

    by unitron ( 5733 ) on Saturday June 05, 2004 @01:02AM (#9342646) Homepage Journal
    Don't you feel silly expecting a company like Sony to be able to deal with the Japanese language?

    :-)

    (whadda ya bet somebody posts about Sony being a Japanese company anyway?)

  • Another poster suggested switching to English so you can install the software. Did you try that? Or does it refuse to work even after installation?

    Also, have you looked for "Japanese" drivers on the Sony web site? Never mind that their "technical support" (probably sitting in Bangalore) told you there was no work around.

    On the other hand, region software lock-outs are common in video game software, though I bought a GameBoy AdvancedSP in Japan and catridges sold here in the US work fine.
  • Why on earth would anyone still buy a music device that requires more work than just the usb/firewire mass storage driver?

    I can't see how anyone would want to spend the money on a device that's that bent on locking them into that kind of crap.

    I might look the other way when some itunes-lover buys an ipod, but I'm sure as hell never buying one, as long as they require that much overhead just to copy the music over.

    Does someone want to explain why anyone would choose an itunes or musicmatch or sony softwar

  • All too Common (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HeghmoH ( 13204 ) on Saturday June 05, 2004 @08:41AM (#9343599) Homepage Journal
    This kind of thoughtlessness regarding people who speak more than one language is all too common. Windows is a nightmare for multilingual users. You can't change OS languages without reinstalling, and using programs in two languages with different encodings inevitably results in one language being completely mangled. This is one area where the Mac really shines. And don't even get me started on idiot webmail programmers who think that everyone uses ASCII, search sites that think everyone uses Latin1, etc. etc. etc. Your experience is slightly worse than normal, but not surprising. The correct response is to demand your money back and send them a strong message that they need to be aware that not everybody in a given country exclusively speaks that country's national language.
    • The Windows NT kernels (i.e. NT/2K/XP/2k3) handle everything in Unicode internally (UTF-16 encoded) and thus are total bliss for multilanguage users. You can switch input language on the fly with a quick key combo.

      The text functions contain a layer called Uniscribe, which is a system for handling complex scripts automatically.

      The problem is legacy apps compiled in ANSI/8-bit mode, and which are still being churned out by clueless Windows programmers.

      Making a Unicode-compatible app on Windows is no longer
      • I don't care about the kernel. If language support is so great, why does running Chinese and French software simultaneously inevitably result in dialogs coming up that have French accents replaced with random Chinese characters? I'm not talking about no-name programs, either, I'm talking about MS Office, Explorer, and other system components.

        You can switch input languages on the fly, but can you switch output languages? On my Mac, if I want to switch the interface to Chinese, I move Chinese to the top of m
  • Why do you need special software? it seems to me that it should just work;

    3) High Compatibility with PC
    "Hi-MD" uses the FAT file system, making it possible to use "Hi-MD" formatted MDs and 1GB "Hi-MD" discs as versatile media for recording PC data files, such as images and text. Furthermore, as portable, rewritable PC media, "Hi-MD" complies with USB format's Mass Storage Class, ensuring that simply by connecting a "Hi-MD" product to a PC it is immediately recognized as an external storage device.

    even if

    • Re:But wait... (Score:3, Informative)

      by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) *
      Often these devices don't let you just play music stored as regular FAT files. Even the iPod forces you to only play files that are placed there by iTunes in a hidden sparse disk-image. You can copy your MP3s to your player in disk-mode, but then you can't play them on the player, or you can use the tools to put them into the player and no longer have them as files.

  • Laziness != Discrimination (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pedantic bore ( 740196 ) on Saturday June 05, 2004 @11:01AM (#9344184)
    It probably doesn't install simply because they haven't written an installer with the right language strings. They should give you your money back.

    I can kind of see their point; if people try to install using instructions in a language they don't know, the results can be random. I was once asked to help a friend install something on her PC. She booted up her PC, popped in the CD, and up came a dialog box. In Chinese. She asked "what should the answer to this question be?" and I asked her "well, what is the question?" It took a long time because the translation process was non-trivial. I can see why Sony might balk at the idea of having their help desk try to sort out the problems experienced by users trying to install on a system using an unfamiliar language.

  • The questions... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Vincman ( 584156 )
    "Isn't this discrimination to multi-lingual people living in the targeted market? And isn't it unfair to impose such restrictions on software that is required to use hardware?"
    Is this the best you came up with? This is is Ask Slashdot, i.e. a tech-crowd. A better question would be:"So did anyone manage, or is planning, to find a way around it, either through some kind of emulation, or possibly by hacking the device/software?"

    As for your questions, Sony is a company which is both global and fascist, in the

  • change the OS settings just for the install (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nyder ( 754090 ) on Saturday June 05, 2004 @10:43PM (#9348080) Journal
    You can just change your OS settings for the install. then change it back.

    I think it was CloneCD that had some functions that were illegal in the US and some countries, so if you installed the software in those countries, some features would be disabled. So I'd just change my settings to that have The Netherlands and installed the software (all features enable) changed the setting back and still had access to all the features.

    So go to the control panel and change the region settings, install the software, change them back and injoy.

    In case it doesn't work when you change it back, then don't. you don't have to have the region settings and language/fonts match. so you can have the computer think it's in japan but using Italian if you like...

  • I bought an Epson PM-940 printer in Japan. When I tried installing the printer driver in English Windows XP, it spat out an error that said something like 'Invalid Environment' and quit.
    Unfortunately, this model has no direct equivalent in the English speaking world, and I'm still trying to get it to work under Linux.
    Hopefully Mandrake 10 with a new version of gimp-print drivers (which say they support the PM-940) will solve the issue.

    Krishna
  • #1: If the driver package is a .MSI file, then you might be able to set a Property to a certain value and FORCE it to install regarless of language.
    (Heck, if you have it kicking around I'll take a look at it for you.)

    #2: Repackage on an English install of Windows, then use the new package to install on your Japanese install of Windows. This is doable but involves lots of Trial-n-error. Might still not work depending on what silly things they've done inside the real package (DRM, Machine fingerprinting,...)

  • Ironic (Score:2, Funny)

    by sunderland56 ( 621843 )
    Isn't it ironic that a Sony device won't work because your language is set to Japanese??

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