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> Why should a service, that is advert free and wholly paid for by the UK licence payers, be free to people elsewhere? Why should libraries, wholly paid for by
by __jal 10y ago
> Why should a service, that is advert free and wholly paid for by the UK licence payers, be free to people elsewhere?
Why should libraries, wholly paid for by local citizens, not demand citizen-units' papers to ensure they are local before allowing them to partake of all that juicy, non-rivalrous knowledge?
Because they are in the business of providing knowledge, not being gate keepers. (They have to gate-keep to some extent, of course, but that is more about keeping the collection healthy.)
Mike Masnik (Techdirt), I think, was the first to make the case that people's understanding of economics seems to break down when encountering zero-cost. It is a real problem.
The BBS example reflects a time when a island nation-state was looking for a way to fund public TV. The non-rivalrous nature of airwave reception led them to a (much mocked and hated, but functional) taxation system.
Now that "broadcast" generally means "internet", for that model to work, artificial scarcity must be employed, denying people benefits that could be provided at zero marginal cost to protect a funding mechanism that only makes sense in hindsight.
Fixing the mechanism to function in a changed world would seem to make more sense to me. But then I'm not British, a politician or dependent on an out of date system for my dinner, so what do I know.
- untog 10y agoThat example doesn't really work - the BBC enforces geo-restrictions because it sells its content internationally, to those who do not pay the license fee. There isn't really a library equivalent of that.
- eldondev 10y agoYou could call Inter Library Loans a version of this, but it's free. If my library doesn't have a piece of media, it is very possible that I could get that piece of media from another library across the country. I might pay postage, but depending on the library, it might still be free. Like the non-brit who has not paid the licensing fee, I paid no taxes to the other library, but in this case I can still take advantage of that resource. This sort-of already happens with BBC and US Public Broadcasting, but I don't think BBC probably licenses anything back from WABE here.
- kevincox 10y agoBut the library that you re borrowing from probably also borrows books from your library. So you have "paid" by sharing the books that your taxes have paid for with that library.
- brdd 10y agoWait-- not that I necessarily disagree with your entire point, but I have moved several times in my life and every single U.S. library system I have been part of (Houston, Boston, etc) has required some form of confirmation that I live in their taxation/service region. Some of them are nicer--we'll mail you a postcard to confirm you get mail!--but the verification is there. So I think there is some warrant to restricting access to those who have contributed.
- studentrob 10y agoI think it has to do with cost. Most websites are not geo-blocked. It's primarily video that gets blocked. In the future I imagine geo-blocking will be less common as (1) the cost of video-capable CDNs goes down, and (2) the use of geo-targeted ads go up. Ultimately it's up to the content provider to decide how to share their content. Those who want their messages to be seen will allow them to be viewed by everyone for whom the provider can do so in a cost-efficient manner.