6 ms·

Regional rights agreements are really slowing down the move of TV to online. Publishers say "well, we already signed these agreements with these TV companies, s

by wjoe 10y ago

Regional rights agreements are really slowing down the move of TV to online. Publishers say "well, we already signed these agreements with these TV companies, so we can't let this shows be streamed online in those countries". TV companies say "well, we only got the rights to broadcast on TV, so we can't stream the show online in this country". Hopefully as the popularity of online streaming increases, new contracts will take online streaming into account more. There's no real reason to have regional restrictions online, but I'm sure they'll continue as long as the companies want to get more money

richmarr 10y ago
> There's no real reason to have regional restrictions online... While I broadly agree with you I don't buy this one point. By restricting availability by region, publishers can (a) spread out their promotion costs & reduce risk exposure, and (b) charge more. Wearing my techno-utopian hat, the first reason is bullshit that nees solving and the second reason is greed. Wearing my realist hat, both reasons are the way the world works and neither seems like it's going to change in short order as publishers hold a monopoly over content. Does anyone know if Netflix delay release of their own content by region?
- Gmo 10y ago
  They kind of do. At least in France, until about a month ago, you could not watch House of Cards on Netflix because the show was sold to a local network ! It's been "fixed" now though.
abricot 10y ago
> Hopefully as the popularity of online streaming increases, new contracts will take online streaming into account more. There's no real reason to have regional restrictions online, but I'm sure they'll continue as long as the companies want to get more money ...and hopefully Netflix will survive until that time.
- rtkwe 10y ago
  Just a note the spaces in front of your quote completely breaks it on mobile which sees: > Hopefully as the popularity of onli And can't scroll to see the rest.
  - 0xffff2 10y ago
    I consider having to scroll a single line of text on desktop just as broken.
tokenizerrr 10y ago
And even > "well, we only got the rights to broadcast on TV, so we can't stream the show online in this country". Is horrendous. Because then you wind up with 10 different streaming services, all charging you the same (or more) as netflix.

by wjoe 10y ago

richmarr 10y ago

> There's no real reason to have regional restrictions online... While I broadly agree with you I don't buy this one point. By restricting availability by region, publishers can (a) spread out their promotion costs & reduce risk exposure, and (b) charge more. Wearing my techno-utopian hat, the first reason is bullshit that nees solving and the second reason is greed. Wearing my realist hat, both reasons are the way the world works and neither seems like it's going to change in short order as publishers hold a monopoly over content. Does anyone know if Netflix delay release of their own content by region?

Gmo 10y ago
They kind of do. At least in France, until about a month ago, you could not watch House of Cards on Netflix because the show was sold to a local network ! It's been "fixed" now though.

abricot 10y ago

> Hopefully as the popularity of online streaming increases, new contracts will take online streaming into account more. There's no real reason to have regional restrictions online, but I'm sure they'll continue as long as the companies want to get more money ...and hopefully Netflix will survive until that time.

rtkwe 10y ago
Just a note the spaces in front of your quote completely breaks it on mobile which sees: > Hopefully as the popularity of onli And can't scroll to see the rest.
- 0xffff2 10y ago
  I consider having to scroll a single line of text on desktop just as broken.

tokenizerrr 10y ago

And even > "well, we only got the rights to broadcast on TV, so we can't stream the show online in this country". Is horrendous. Because then you wind up with 10 different streaming services, all charging you the same (or more) as netflix.