Just making sure.
Importing is 100% legal, right?
Just making sure.
Y helo thar.
Not buying or selling here...moving to Video Gaming.
Oops. Sorry about that.
Anyway, answer the question.
Y helo thar.
Since nobody else will answer your question, yes, importing is 100% legal (as long as you are buying the original games, of course).
"I am a cipher, wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce."
Originally Posted by Rikimaru
"Officer I swear! I was chasing Cookie Monster and Scooby Doo too! Can't you let me off on a warning?"
These cartridges are dirty as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!
"Officer I swear! I was chasing Cookie Monster and Scooby Doo too! Can't you let me off on a warning?"
Yes and no...
Its sorta illegal becasue your not supposed to have the game yet although no one really cares...
What do you mean its sorta illegal?
I feel kinda dumb asking this, but none of you have ever had any problem buying Japanese exclusives from, say, an online import store, right?
Y helo thar.
as long as its not cocaine, its legal.
"Do you find me sadistic?" - BILL
Collection and want list
http://65.61.168.22/Collection/gamec...erid=link21580
A lot of times, copyright laws can affect the legality of importing certain goods. Some games say things like "For sale in use in Japan only blah blah blah", and that's what it's referring to. However, I've been ordering imports - preordering even - for quite some time now, and there's never been any real problem. It seems to be mostly considered a "grey market" area.
Yeah, that's why Japan Amazon can't sell games to anyone outside of Japan, but nobody's gonna care if Joe Shmoe has a collection of imported games.
I'm no lawyer, but this is how I understand it:
It's 100% legal to own, buy, or sell Japanese import games in America, Europe, or pretty much anywhere else. There are many completely legit companies (like National Console Support) that make their money almost exclusively through the sale of import games. Even some of the big retailers (like EB) have experimented in selling import games in the past (more on this later).
BUT to play an import game, you most likely have to modify your console. Some modifications might fall into a legal "gray" area. In particular, mod chips (which usually also allow the playing the CD-Rs and bootlegs) are dicey.
The major publishers highly discourage importing, for multiple reasons (mostly because the publishing rights might lie with different companies depending on the region). The publishers will put pressure on major retailers who deal in imports (which is probably why Amazon Japan won't ship games to America).
In other words, don't worry about it. But if you're going to stick a mod chip in a PS2, don't send it off to Sony for repairs or anything, ya know?
Most of these big wigs want to make importing illegal.
Oh well, we're still gonna keep doing it. That is the penalty for their executive decisions on not releasing great games.
It is 100% legal to import games, at least in the US. They can write "For sale only in Japan" but it doesn't have any real legal meaning. Often, they write this because they have a licensing agreement for, say, the Japanese market, but not the US. For instance, Midway might publish a given game in the US and Capcom might publish the same game in Japan.
In fact, the whole "grey market" when applied to importation from another market is bullshit in almost all cases. It's tough to think of products where importation is flat-out banned. That's why the companies use non-legal methods to stop importing (and allow them to continue price discrimation by market) - for instance, PAL/NTSC TV standards, not putting English language on Japanese discs, region coding on DVDs, etc..
It's legal to me i'll be damn if some....game compeny.Tells me what i can and can not play,domestic wise.
Btw wich seems to be SCEA policey these days
Outside of drugs, certain chemical substances, animals/plants, and folk medicines...what IS banned (for reasons of copyright of course)? Arcade machines always throw that disclaimer at you, but it's mostly there to keep distributors in line and make sure games don't appear in the wrong markets (as if they really did enough localization in the "world" or "Asia" machines), I'd suppose.
I completly agree importing is legal, but modification can be a grey-area. I still don't get the point from the current region-protection. I liked the system Sega used for the Saturn, which you could build in a country-switch without being able to play cd-r's. But I have to be happy to be European, so I can at leat play an original domestic version of Metal Slug 3 on my PS2.
Personal I use quite a lot of import-games, just because they won't release it over here. But hey even some great USA-games were not released in Europe, still don't get why Capcom didn't bring use the Mega Man Collection which the USA got for PS2 and GC.
In germany there were some problems in the past. (Not sure if this is over yet).
But Nintendo and Sony have not allowed to Sale Import games here in germany in the past (as the N64 and PSX was sold). You can still own them, but not sell in Stores as Seller. In one Store that I know the police came and grab all the Import games that the store must closed.
They think, that they don't sell the PAL Games, when all have buy the NTSC games already. But most great games never released here.
And Sony forbid the Chip in the PSX and PS2, which can play Import Games, because they mean you can play illegal copies from the games too. So they don't like Import Games here. But not sure if they are still forbidden.
As far as my understanding goes about adding a chip to a game console to defeat region lock's and copy protection, its completely legal. You purchased their hardware, and now with fair use laws, you can do what you want with it. If you want to break it into 1000 pieces, throw it on a piece of cardboard, you can, you want to drop some little microcontroller in that reads off the region codes and changes them to one that works on your system, so be it.
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