This information is from here
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/forumdisplay.php?f=37Its got bad enough that people are now deliberately forking updates to an older firmware instead of using the latest, this has happened due to the new FCC regulations in the USA. Router suppliers cannot get FCC approval without locking down the region.
There is also some discussion on tbb about it.
The lockdown is done on the bootloader, and is no GUI ability to change the region on any firmware, but on older firmware it can be done in the cli.
The fork is here, this is the latest merlin fw version without the added locking available and the guy has applied security and other minor updates from newer versions on to it
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=18914