Ok, just ran into this piece on Gamekult.com, stating that the US version of Fable even runs on our PAL machines. Somehow, they forgot to encrypt the code which makes it unplayable on the different region machines... Funny 
http://www.gamekult.com/tout/actus/articles/A0000036647.html

http://www.gamekult.com/tout/actus/articles/A0000036647.html