Xbox Live Video Marketplace....FAIL

During the last week I've started getting an error message whenever I try and download a video through the Xbox Live Marketplace. When I click to agree to the purchase of a video, the error message

"This item is not available at your current location".

From what I've been able to ascertain, this error message is intended to restrict video content to certain geographic locations. This is understandable as some videos are only licensed to be distributed in the United States. The problem I have with it is that I am located in the United States and have been for the last eight years, which wholly encompasses my time as an Xbox Live subscriber.

So, in an effort to resolve the situation I called Xbox Support (1-800-4MY-XBOX) which resulted in 30 minutes explaining the situation to someone with a thick Indian accent, only to be transfered to someone who (supposedly) knew what they were doing. The next person (still, an Indian accent, but just not as thick) had no clue as well, but thought that crediting me 160 MS points would fix the problem. By that time I pretty much determined that phone support was useless.

My next attempt was via the Xbox.com forums. Sure, it was exposing the problem to millions of idiots, but there was the slight chance someone competent would read it. I made my post, but only received responses from one person who really didn't seem to know how to do anything but throw out random suggestions.

My latest attempt at trying to resolve the issue was in using Xbox's email support. The email support form isn't exactly shown up front on Xbox.com. They really want to push people to use the phone support first. Anyways, I sent my email off, detailing the whole problem, copying much of what I posted in the forums. Here is the response I received today:

I understand, you can’t download some contents from Video Marketplace and you get an error message “This item is not available from your current location.” I deeply apologize for the inconvenience that this might have caused you.

Beginning in May 2007, the Xbox LIVE service will restrict the download or purchase of content based on geographic location of their console.

Xbox LIVE will determine the user’s geographic location based on their console’s IP address upon login. If the content the user is trying to obtain is restricted in their geographic location, Xbox LIVE will block the purchase or download from occurring.

Upon blocking content, the user recieves the following error message:
This item is not available from your current location.

Licensing Compliance will primarily affect Video Marketplace content, as it is licensed only for U.S. distribution. Additionally, gaming content will be restricted based on government regulation. There are certain countries, such as Germany, where that content cannot be viewed per government regulation. Thank you for understanding.

It looks like they didn't really read my email other than to glean the subject of the matter and send out a generic response. The big clue they should look at is why this just started happening a week ago and why it's still happening when it's pretty obvious if they did a simple trace of my IP address that I'm located in Utah, USA. It would seem whatever algorithm they're using for determining geographic location is flawed. I responded to the email and am waiting to hear back from them now. Hopefully it gets forwarded on to someone who is actually able to read and understand the issue and then go and fix the problem. If Microsoft wants to become an online distributor of high definition content (movies & television shows) they had better get this fixed, otherwise I see people sticking with cable & satellite on-demand, DVD, & Blu-Ray.