13 ms·

Madness of Geo-Blocking (Hidden Camera Prank)

46 points by nxzero 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
shmerl 11y ago
Exactly. Geoblocking is xenophobic. And the issue is not limited to EU. Better analogy would be a book store. Imagine, you want to buy a book that's not available in your country. You can travel to the country where it's available and buy the book there. In the digital space, the analogy of travel would be using a VPN to bypass geoblocking. That's why using the VPN for that purpose should be perfectly legal, and those who try to forbid it (Netflix and Co.) are xenophobes (it would be like refusing to sell a book to a foreigner which comes to a store in another country). The problem of course is that as usual, some try to translate realities of the physical space (with regional market segmentation) to the digital ones, where they don't make any sense. But they are eager to do it when is suites their interests (geoblocking). But when people use the same invalid translation, and virtually travel to bypass geoblocking (VPN), geoblocking proponents whine and want to declare it illegal. Hypocrites.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Netflix blocks stuff because the content owners have managed to negotiate different terms in different countries. They are blocking people because the place where they live requires it. Respecting local laws is not xenophobic. The messy implementation of distribution rights does not make sense, but companies trying implement new distribution models are not the ones to blame for it.
  - shmerl 11y ago
    > Respecting local laws is not xenophobic. If local laws forbid selling merchandise to foreigners - the laws are xenophobic themselves. > Netflix blocks stuff because the content owners have managed to negotiate different terms in different countries. They can't use an excuse of content owners' xenophobia for their own execution of xenophobic policy.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      The local laws forbid distributing unlicensed content to locals. It isn't US copyright that (hypothetically) prevents Netflix from distributing content in France.
      - shmerl 11y ago
        Then it's Netflix who are xenophobes, since using that law they refuse to serve foreigners. Anyway, this whole mess stems from completely inadequate attempt of translating physical realities into digital space, and hypocritical approach of forbidding others (i.e. customers) to do the same. No amount of demagogical justification will whitewash such xenophobic practice.
        maxerickson 11y ago
        Why should companies fight the stupid laws that foreign countries have put in place? Why is it up to the American company Netflix to fix the laws in France? I get that you've chosen your rhetoric here, but you've drawn the lines in the wrong places.
        shmerl 11y ago
        > Why is it up to the American company Netflix to fix the laws in France? What law in France requires Netflix to ban users who access it through VPN? There is no such law. Same as there is no law in France which says that you should forbid selling a book that's not available in another country, to a customer from that country who comes to a store in France to buy it. So don't shift the blame here. Netflix run ahead and performed xenophobic ban because they decided to, not because they are required by any laws.
- kyberias 11y ago
  You know words have specific meanings. Like xenophobia: "fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign" I'm pretty sure these companies don't hate the foreigners or fear them. Please find more suitable words to express your opinions.
  - shmerl 11y ago
    > I'm pretty sure these companies don't hate the foreigners or fear them. Forbidding selling merchandise to foreigners who come to your store based on the fact that they are foreigners is xenophobic. But if you have a better term for it, please describe it another way.
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      A phobia is an irrational fear of a particular thing. Xenophobia is fear of outsiders. Refusing to sell to them is not fear of them, it's fear of the consequences of not following the law. Which is a rational fear rather than an irrational one. So the charge of xenophobia is wrong on both aspects of the definition that matter. But by all means, reiterate your loaded terminology.
      - shmerl 11y ago
        > Refusing to sell to them is not fear of them, it's fear of the consequences of not following the law. Except there is no such law (unless we are talking about some xenophobic country, Third Reich style). Rather than any laws, they fear that their crazy partners will pull a plug on them. And they are being xenophobic to oblige their insane content overlords. Their exact intentions don't matter however for the end user who is being discriminated. What matters are their actions.
        vinceguidry 11y ago
        > Rather than any laws, they fear that their crazy partners will pull a plug on them. And they are being xenophobic to oblige their insane content overlords. Neither of which is an irrational fear of outsiders. I agree it's a shitty situation, but you're not going to get anywhere by demonizing merchants. We need to change the system they exist in.
jkot 11y ago
This is bad example. Shop refused to sell based on nationality, not based on location. You can still watch Netflix if you are Chinese living in US. But on second though that shop was geoblocking the entire world except tiny room. One has to buy at their place and there is no free world wide delivery service.
- shmerl 11y ago
  See below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514827 It's close enough. Netflix refuses to sell you anything when you access it through VPN.
jonahx 11y ago
I'm confused about the point being made. If you purchase something online across national boundaries, isn't the company you're buying from subject to different taxes and tariffs than when customers from their own country buy? And in the case of Netflix, don't they have to negotiate different contracts with content owners to sell in different countries? It's not like they're just doing it to be dicks. Or am I missing something?
- shmerl 11y ago
  > It's not like they're just doing it to be dicks. Whether they intended it or not, what they are doing is xenophobic.
  - intrasight 11y ago
    Would you say otherwise if "they" where actually separate companies? ie, Netflix US, Netflix CN, Netflix FR
    - shmerl 11y ago
      What difference would it make? I.e. imagine there is Netflix FR, and someone from US tries to access it through VPN, and they get a message "US citizens won't be served". Or the other way around. Same xenophobic garbage IMHO.
      - ryan-c 11y ago
        Netflix is contractually required to discriminate against customers based on where they are by the companies who they licence content from, for many reasons, a common one being the content already having been exclusively licensed for distribution in country X to some other company. Calling this xenophobia is absurd.
        shmerl 11y ago
        If Netflix is contractually obligated to be xenophobic, it's both their fault for accepting such contracts and fault of those who made such contracts with them (i.e. publishers / content owners). The fact that it's a contract doesn't make it any more moral and it's absurd to think it's an excuse. You can blame the system all you want, but if they participate - they are part of the system. I.e. they aren't forced to make such moral choice, they voluntarily make it.
Theodores 11y ago
This would have been better if it was a CD/vinyl+DVD selling shop, not a coffee shop. With real world online retail there are many reasons for not delivering goods to certain regions of the world, inability to work with a good courier for the final miles being one of them.
- shmerl 11y ago
  > This would have been better if it was a CD/vinyl+DVD selling shop, not a coffee shop. Yep, or a bookstore. Since the source of the underlying mess is related to copyright.
ryandrake 11y ago
I'm surprised at the amount of hair-splitting, pedantry, and rationalization posted in the comments so far. The overall point of the video, which people must be intentionally missing, is that it's ridiculous to bring up a customer's nationality (or place of residence) in order to complete a purchase. This is illustrated by presenting obviously ridiculous, but comparable, situations in an offline context. Whether this ridiculous behavior is the result of a law or a company's deliberate decision, it's still ridiculous.
- notliketherest 11y ago
  That's ridiculous.
- kleiba 11y ago
  But doesn't that have to do with different countries having different regulations and laws? I mean, I don't really know anything about the thought train behind geo blocking, but that would be my first guess?! This is probably only marginally related, but just the other day I had a conversation with a coworker from Morocco. We were talking about the fact that in his country, every purchase you make involves bargaining. That makes me think now that what we in the Western world have come to think of as the norm -- fixed prices on products, being the same for every customer -- is probably a fairly recent phenomenon if we consider the history of mankind. And if I think about products like airline tickets, that principle is not even true in our culture: you may have to pay vastly different prices for the same product, i.e., for a seat on the same flight. Now, my next sentence was going to be "... but at least the different in price is not because your nationality is being discriminated against", but now I'm actually not so sure any more that that is true?! I mean, I guess no-one who's in the air fare business made a business decision along the lines of "let's charge Germans 20% more" or so, but if factors like your locations (and hence with a high probability also your nationality) are factors in the data mining which is the basis for what determines the price of a ticket, isn't that de facto an implementation of discrimination in a sense? And how about the pharma industry? The same medication can sometimes cost orders of magnitude more depending on what country it is sold in (think Africa). So coming to think of it, I think at least in the globalized world, different selling conditions depending on the geographical location are actually not that rare, even for non-digital product. Minimally, wouldn't all produces that target large markets at least adjust for things like average income / purchasing power in the respective regions?
nxzero 11y ago
To be xenophobic means someone has a fear/hatred of strangers/foreigners. Racism is prejudice or hostility towards a person's race, colour, language, nationality, or national/ethnic origin. Access to the Internet is a basic human right - and to block access to the Internet based on nationality is xenophobic and racist. Blocking Internet access based on nationality is toxic - and should not be tolerated in any form.
willvarfar 11y ago
In the physical shop, the purchase happens in country the shop is in. The taxes paid should be those taxes paid by shops in that country. But what country does an online purchase happen in, and which country gets the tax money? The company can register in a tax haven, or host servers abroad etc. The customer can connect via a proxy etc.

46 points by nxzero 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Exactly. Geoblocking is xenophobic. And the issue is not limited to EU. Better analogy would be a book store. Imagine, you want to buy a book that's not available in your country. You can travel to the country where it's available and buy the book there. In the digital space, the analogy of travel would be using a VPN to bypass geoblocking. That's why using the VPN for that purpose should be perfectly legal, and those who try to forbid it (Netflix and Co.) are xenophobes (it would be like refusing to sell a book to a foreigner which comes to a store in another country). The problem of course is that as usual, some try to translate realities of the physical space (with regional market segmentation) to the digital ones, where they don't make any sense. But they are eager to do it when is suites their interests (geoblocking). But when people use the same invalid translation, and virtually travel to bypass geoblocking (VPN), geoblocking proponents whine and want to declare it illegal. Hypocrites.

maxerickson 11y ago
Netflix blocks stuff because the content owners have managed to negotiate different terms in different countries. They are blocking people because the place where they live requires it. Respecting local laws is not xenophobic. The messy implementation of distribution rights does not make sense, but companies trying implement new distribution models are not the ones to blame for it.
- shmerl 11y ago
  > Respecting local laws is not xenophobic. If local laws forbid selling merchandise to foreigners - the laws are xenophobic themselves. > Netflix blocks stuff because the content owners have managed to negotiate different terms in different countries. They can't use an excuse of content owners' xenophobia for their own execution of xenophobic policy.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    The local laws forbid distributing unlicensed content to locals. It isn't US copyright that (hypothetically) prevents Netflix from distributing content in France.
    - shmerl 11y ago
      Then it's Netflix who are xenophobes, since using that law they refuse to serve foreigners. Anyway, this whole mess stems from completely inadequate attempt of translating physical realities into digital space, and hypocritical approach of forbidding others (i.e. customers) to do the same. No amount of demagogical justification will whitewash such xenophobic practice.
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        Why should companies fight the stupid laws that foreign countries have put in place? Why is it up to the American company Netflix to fix the laws in France? I get that you've chosen your rhetoric here, but you've drawn the lines in the wrong places.
        shmerl 11y ago
        > Why is it up to the American company Netflix to fix the laws in France? What law in France requires Netflix to ban users who access it through VPN? There is no such law. Same as there is no law in France which says that you should forbid selling a book that's not available in another country, to a customer from that country who comes to a store in France to buy it. So don't shift the blame here. Netflix run ahead and performed xenophobic ban because they decided to, not because they are required by any laws.
kyberias 11y ago
You know words have specific meanings. Like xenophobia: "fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign" I'm pretty sure these companies don't hate the foreigners or fear them. Please find more suitable words to express your opinions.
- shmerl 11y ago
  > I'm pretty sure these companies don't hate the foreigners or fear them. Forbidding selling merchandise to foreigners who come to your store based on the fact that they are foreigners is xenophobic. But if you have a better term for it, please describe it another way.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    A phobia is an irrational fear of a particular thing. Xenophobia is fear of outsiders. Refusing to sell to them is not fear of them, it's fear of the consequences of not following the law. Which is a rational fear rather than an irrational one. So the charge of xenophobia is wrong on both aspects of the definition that matter. But by all means, reiterate your loaded terminology.
    - shmerl 11y ago
      > Refusing to sell to them is not fear of them, it's fear of the consequences of not following the law. Except there is no such law (unless we are talking about some xenophobic country, Third Reich style). Rather than any laws, they fear that their crazy partners will pull a plug on them. And they are being xenophobic to oblige their insane content overlords. Their exact intentions don't matter however for the end user who is being discriminated. What matters are their actions.
      - vinceguidry 11y ago
        > Rather than any laws, they fear that their crazy partners will pull a plug on them. And they are being xenophobic to oblige their insane content overlords. Neither of which is an irrational fear of outsiders. I agree it's a shitty situation, but you're not going to get anywhere by demonizing merchants. We need to change the system they exist in.

jkot 11y ago

This is bad example. Shop refused to sell based on nationality, not based on location. You can still watch Netflix if you are Chinese living in US. But on second though that shop was geoblocking the entire world except tiny room. One has to buy at their place and there is no free world wide delivery service.

shmerl 11y ago
See below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514827 It's close enough. Netflix refuses to sell you anything when you access it through VPN.

jonahx 11y ago

I'm confused about the point being made. If you purchase something online across national boundaries, isn't the company you're buying from subject to different taxes and tariffs than when customers from their own country buy? And in the case of Netflix, don't they have to negotiate different contracts with content owners to sell in different countries? It's not like they're just doing it to be dicks. Or am I missing something?

shmerl 11y ago
> It's not like they're just doing it to be dicks. Whether they intended it or not, what they are doing is xenophobic.
- intrasight 11y ago
  Would you say otherwise if "they" where actually separate companies? ie, Netflix US, Netflix CN, Netflix FR
  - shmerl 11y ago
    What difference would it make? I.e. imagine there is Netflix FR, and someone from US tries to access it through VPN, and they get a message "US citizens won't be served". Or the other way around. Same xenophobic garbage IMHO.
    - ryan-c 11y ago
      Netflix is contractually required to discriminate against customers based on where they are by the companies who they licence content from, for many reasons, a common one being the content already having been exclusively licensed for distribution in country X to some other company. Calling this xenophobia is absurd.
      - shmerl 11y ago
        If Netflix is contractually obligated to be xenophobic, it's both their fault for accepting such contracts and fault of those who made such contracts with them (i.e. publishers / content owners). The fact that it's a contract doesn't make it any more moral and it's absurd to think it's an excuse. You can blame the system all you want, but if they participate - they are part of the system. I.e. they aren't forced to make such moral choice, they voluntarily make it.

Theodores 11y ago

This would have been better if it was a CD/vinyl+DVD selling shop, not a coffee shop. With real world online retail there are many reasons for not delivering goods to certain regions of the world, inability to work with a good courier for the final miles being one of them.

shmerl 11y ago
> This would have been better if it was a CD/vinyl+DVD selling shop, not a coffee shop. Yep, or a bookstore. Since the source of the underlying mess is related to copyright.

ryandrake 11y ago

I'm surprised at the amount of hair-splitting, pedantry, and rationalization posted in the comments so far. The overall point of the video, which people must be intentionally missing, is that it's ridiculous to bring up a customer's nationality (or place of residence) in order to complete a purchase. This is illustrated by presenting obviously ridiculous, but comparable, situations in an offline context. Whether this ridiculous behavior is the result of a law or a company's deliberate decision, it's still ridiculous.

notliketherest 11y ago
That's ridiculous.
kleiba 11y ago
But doesn't that have to do with different countries having different regulations and laws? I mean, I don't really know anything about the thought train behind geo blocking, but that would be my first guess?! This is probably only marginally related, but just the other day I had a conversation with a coworker from Morocco. We were talking about the fact that in his country, every purchase you make involves bargaining. That makes me think now that what we in the Western world have come to think of as the norm -- fixed prices on products, being the same for every customer -- is probably a fairly recent phenomenon if we consider the history of mankind. And if I think about products like airline tickets, that principle is not even true in our culture: you may have to pay vastly different prices for the same product, i.e., for a seat on the same flight. Now, my next sentence was going to be "... but at least the different in price is not because your nationality is being discriminated against", but now I'm actually not so sure any more that that is true?! I mean, I guess no-one who's in the air fare business made a business decision along the lines of "let's charge Germans 20% more" or so, but if factors like your locations (and hence with a high probability also your nationality) are factors in the data mining which is the basis for what determines the price of a ticket, isn't that de facto an implementation of discrimination in a sense? And how about the pharma industry? The same medication can sometimes cost orders of magnitude more depending on what country it is sold in (think Africa). So coming to think of it, I think at least in the globalized world, different selling conditions depending on the geographical location are actually not that rare, even for non-digital product. Minimally, wouldn't all produces that target large markets at least adjust for things like average income / purchasing power in the respective regions?

nxzero 11y ago

To be xenophobic means someone has a fear/hatred of strangers/foreigners. Racism is prejudice or hostility towards a person's race, colour, language, nationality, or national/ethnic origin. Access to the Internet is a basic human right - and to block access to the Internet based on nationality is xenophobic and racist. Blocking Internet access based on nationality is toxic - and should not be tolerated in any form.

willvarfar 11y ago

In the physical shop, the purchase happens in country the shop is in. The taxes paid should be those taxes paid by shops in that country. But what country does an online purchase happen in, and which country gets the tax money? The company can register in a tax haven, or host servers abroad etc. The customer can connect via a proxy etc.