Barcodes - the same everywhere?

I've noticed that a lot of the US CD Pressing companies offer you free barcodes if you order a certain number of CDs, they say saving you $700 if you were to get the barcode yourself. Does anyone know if barcodes are universal across the world (i.e. a US one would be registered by a UK store), cause if so it makes some of the US deals a lot more appealing then getting my stuff pressed in the UK would be.

Barcodes are universal but it costs way less than 700 to do it yourself. You can regester to roll your own for under 300 and can then create as many bar codes as you want including for different categories like t-shirts and bumper stickers. that being said - your label should handle that for you....