6 ms·

This is a cool idea but it still falls very short by not serving users outside of the US. To the point where the welcome page doesn't even acknowledge that ther

by shaunol 10y ago

This is a cool idea but it still falls very short by not serving users outside of the US. To the point where the welcome page doesn't even acknowledge that there may be global interest: https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/ https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/ (enter your ZIP code, no country picker ... YouTube, you do realize you're on the internet, right?) Does YouTube care about getting content to the world? Or just getting as many of their fingers in the pie as possible and abusing the current geo-restricted licensing model while they can?

Groxx 10y ago
I imagine most people expected to use it don't get there by clicking a link on some other site immediately after it was announced - they'll probably be running ads inside YouTube, at which point they can target more accurately. And I can't imagine they voluntarily restricted things to just the US for zero reason. Licensing around this stuff is nightmarish, and there are benefits to launching even before you're 100% global (which nothing is yet).
kbhn 10y ago
> Does YouTube care about getting content to the world? Or just getting as many of their fingers in the pie as possible and abusing the current geo-restricted licensing model while they can? I'd prefer to give YouTube the benefit of the doubt as they introduce a brand new service. They're an American company, it makes perfect sense for them to start with US customers.
guyzero 10y ago
It's probably not even possible to offer US cable networks outside of the US. They only have licenses from the content creators to show inside the US. Besides, all their competitors are US only as well - Sling TV, DirecTV Now. Someday who knows, but for now live linear is very region-locked.
- frandroid 10y ago
  Parent's point is still valid. There's another 3+ billion of internet users outside the U.S., it would be nice not to be an afterthought's afterthought. They just need to say "Sorry, this product will not be available outside the U.S. at launch." Is it so hard?
  - bfred_it 10y ago
    Yes it is. From what I understand, a network will license a show to another network in another country, probably in an exclusive way. So they can't just "oh yeah you're paying us millions to distribute in your country? Let me just walk over you by streaming directly to your customers." It doesn't work like that. These contracts are worth more than the few users that are willing to pay to stream across borders. Sad but that's TV life.
    - khedoros1 10y ago
      >> They just need to say "Sorry, this product will not be available outside the U.S. at launch." Is it so hard? > Yes it is. No, notifying that the offering won't be available outside of the U.S. wouldn't be difficult. Actually offering it outside would (and I think that's the question you were actually answering, which wasn't the question that was asked).
    - mikepurvis 10y ago
      This kind of thing is part of why Netflix & friends are so keen to create a bunch of original content— it's theirs, exclusively, and they don't need to deal with navigating all these preexisting commitments.
  - thewhitetulip 10y ago
    It was a running Joke about Netflix, "Available from anywhere across any OS [in the following regions North America, Europe etc]"
- Nullabillity 10y ago
  They aren't competing against traditional cable providers, they're competing against TPB, and they're behind by a huge margin. * Works with any player or device, vs you have to use their application * Free vs $35/mo * Has been available for 13+ years, vs available nowhere so far * Available worldwide, vs some unknown region-locking but certainly US-only for the foreseeable future * Has pretty much everything, vs "6 accounts" whatever that means
  - nemothekid 10y ago
    Live TV isn't competing against TBP. You can't watch sports or other live events on TBP. Why would you sign up for a live TV service, if you prefer to watch things on demand on TPB? For any live TV offering they are competing against traditional cable providers. Netflix is already on their way on figuring out the "on-demand" content space. If you look at the blog post, 3/4s of the channels offered are either sports or live news. This simply isn't a service for on demand content.
    - martinald 10y ago
      You'd actually be surprised how good bittorrent live video streaming has got. I checked it out and it was pixel perfect 720p HD - absolutely fine for sports. But yes, it's still niche, but wow it has moved on a lot. The program I used was called acestream.
      - matsmith123 10y ago
        > 720p HD - absolutely fine for sports. Kek. Maybe for people who grew up with that. My country has had 1080p on all channels that broadcast sports for years.
      - kaishiro 10y ago
        This is still only true if you have the pipe. Attempting this from Melbourne and the streams still fall on their face.
        10y ago
wyck 10y ago
The geo-restricted licensing model is applied because Google has no choice in the matter. They have to abide by laws just like everyone else.
- shmerl 10y ago
  No law forbids creators to release everywhere (i.e. no geo-restrictions). So it's not a question about why Google don't do it, but why creators don't.
  - bestnameever 10y ago
    I'm guessing most buyers, at least historically, prefer only dealing within specific regions. Are most cable channels offered in the usa operate internationally?
    - shmerl 10y ago
      The way I understand it, historically geo restrictions originate from physical goods, and are usually driven by distributors, who want to reduce competition and control certain regions. I.e. in order to monopolize the market, they require those who produce some goods to restrict distribution through them only for that region, and in return they offer better pricing and assistance in that distribution. I.e. this basically makes it impossible to make global distribution rights. This logic falls flat however in the digital world, where distributor isn't limited by region. I.e. you can open a digital store, and sell worldwide (like for example computer games stores like GOG, Steam and etc.). So in the pure digital world, geo restrictions sound like nonsense, since they reduce reach and profits, both for creators, and distributors. My guess is, this creeps into the digital sphere, because of the influence of physical distributors, who see digital ones as a threat to their local monopolies. I suppose strong grip of some regional cable TV companies, forces creators to limit their distribution through any digital stores as well. The problem is, this approach is pretty nasty when applied in the digital space. It basically becomes xenophobic. Translating it back to physical goods, it can look like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbiacSD13qk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbiacSD13qk Hopefully, the weaker regional monopolists will become, the more likely we'll have global distribution for video too.
mikekchar 10y ago
As someone who has lived in many different countries, I find this stuff so frustrating. When I was living in England, my wife and I wanted to watch Japanese anime (in Japanese). Luckily Crunchyroll exists and it has quite a large amount of content for a very low price (I think we were paying 4 pounds per month). But now that I'm back in Japan, we want to watch shows from BBC... basically not possible legally. I really enjoyed watching cycling on Eurosport. Good luck. I really wonder who is going to pay $35 a month for US shows, while you are already in the US. There are just so many other ways to get that content. I hope one day before I die the media companies will realise that their old idea of breaking up the world into pieces and sublicensing is a stupid one.
- unityByFreedom 10y ago
  > I hope one day before I die the media companies will realise that their old idea of breaking up the world into pieces and sublicensing is a stupid one. If not, at least you can die laughing
- myrandomcomment 10y ago
  You can watch iPlayer via a VPN or DNS service like unblock.us (do not know if they have service in Japan). Note to the BBC - I would be to pay 3x the license fee to be able to watch on the internet with a subscription from outside the U.K. I bet if you opened it up world wide you would make more money then you do on the all the U.K license fees.
  - mikekchar 10y ago
    Even the BBC isn't powerful enough to do this. I can't remember who it was but one of the heads of the BBC said for a long time that content on BBC should be available for free everywhere. He reasoned that it was already paid for. It's one of the reason that they do so much free software development. One of the shows that I want to watch is Match of the Day. Not sure what the situation is like now, but when I was in the UK the BBC was having a huge problem trying to negotiate the rights to put it on the iPlayer (strangely MOTD2 was OK ???). It would be impossible if they needed international distribution :-(
shmerl 10y ago
The usual copyright lunacy stands in the way. Some just need to catch up with the times, and realize Internet is a global phenomenon.
sdm 10y ago
This has always been Google's problem; it really only cares about the US. Which is not surprising given how it has historically acted as an arm of the US government. We saw this before in the iPhone vs. Android battle, it took years for Google to allow developers outside of the US (and a handful of others) in to be able to make paid apps even though Android phones where available in those markets. But when the iPhone in any country, developers from that country were immediately able to sell app in the Apple app store. This is one of the big thing that keeps us off of Google's Cloud offerings. With Google, if you're not in the US you're at best a second class citizen. With AWS you don't get that feeling at all. Even Google's founders are avowed American-supremacists, so it shouldn't come as any surprise.
- golergka 10y ago
  > it has historically acted as an arm of the US government > Google's founders are avowed American-supremacists Pretty strong claims. Got any arguments to back them?
  - sdm 10y ago
    This has been pretty well documented. Just watch any interview with Larry and Sergey when they talk about the role of the US in the world -- they are very open about where they stand and that they are American-supremacists (though wouldn't use that term obviously). Look at the role Google has played pushing the US government interests in Egypt and elsewhere during the "Arab Spring". Then there is Eric Schmidt's long history of operating as a go between on behalf of the US state department. Which was well documented by wiki leaks: https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
bbcbasic 10y ago
Yeah the entertainment industry wants content to spread at the speed of a steam ship, rather than the speed of light. Fortunately: Ǝ VPN.
- romanovcode 10y ago
  Yeah, and then they wonder why there is so much piracy.

by shaunol 10y ago

Groxx 10y ago

I imagine most people expected to use it don't get there by clicking a link on some other site immediately after it was announced - they'll probably be running ads inside YouTube, at which point they can target more accurately. And I can't imagine they voluntarily restricted things to just the US for zero reason. Licensing around this stuff is nightmarish, and there are benefits to launching even before you're 100% global (which nothing is yet).

kbhn 10y ago

> Does YouTube care about getting content to the world? Or just getting as many of their fingers in the pie as possible and abusing the current geo-restricted licensing model while they can? I'd prefer to give YouTube the benefit of the doubt as they introduce a brand new service. They're an American company, it makes perfect sense for them to start with US customers.

guyzero 10y ago

It's probably not even possible to offer US cable networks outside of the US. They only have licenses from the content creators to show inside the US. Besides, all their competitors are US only as well - Sling TV, DirecTV Now. Someday who knows, but for now live linear is very region-locked.

frandroid 10y ago
Parent's point is still valid. There's another 3+ billion of internet users outside the U.S., it would be nice not to be an afterthought's afterthought. They just need to say "Sorry, this product will not be available outside the U.S. at launch." Is it so hard?
- bfred_it 10y ago
  Yes it is. From what I understand, a network will license a show to another network in another country, probably in an exclusive way. So they can't just "oh yeah you're paying us millions to distribute in your country? Let me just walk over you by streaming directly to your customers." It doesn't work like that. These contracts are worth more than the few users that are willing to pay to stream across borders. Sad but that's TV life.
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    >> They just need to say "Sorry, this product will not be available outside the U.S. at launch." Is it so hard? > Yes it is. No, notifying that the offering won't be available outside of the U.S. wouldn't be difficult. Actually offering it outside would (and I think that's the question you were actually answering, which wasn't the question that was asked).
  - mikepurvis 10y ago
    This kind of thing is part of why Netflix & friends are so keen to create a bunch of original content— it's theirs, exclusively, and they don't need to deal with navigating all these preexisting commitments.
- thewhitetulip 10y ago
  It was a running Joke about Netflix, "Available from anywhere across any OS [in the following regions North America, Europe etc]"
Nullabillity 10y ago
They aren't competing against traditional cable providers, they're competing against TPB, and they're behind by a huge margin. * Works with any player or device, vs you have to use their application * Free vs $35/mo * Has been available for 13+ years, vs available nowhere so far * Available worldwide, vs some unknown region-locking but certainly US-only for the foreseeable future * Has pretty much everything, vs "6 accounts" whatever that means
- nemothekid 10y ago
  Live TV isn't competing against TBP. You can't watch sports or other live events on TBP. Why would you sign up for a live TV service, if you prefer to watch things on demand on TPB? For any live TV offering they are competing against traditional cable providers. Netflix is already on their way on figuring out the "on-demand" content space. If you look at the blog post, 3/4s of the channels offered are either sports or live news. This simply isn't a service for on demand content.
  - martinald 10y ago
    You'd actually be surprised how good bittorrent live video streaming has got. I checked it out and it was pixel perfect 720p HD - absolutely fine for sports. But yes, it's still niche, but wow it has moved on a lot. The program I used was called acestream.
    - matsmith123 10y ago
      > 720p HD - absolutely fine for sports. Kek. Maybe for people who grew up with that. My country has had 1080p on all channels that broadcast sports for years.
    - kaishiro 10y ago
      This is still only true if you have the pipe. Attempting this from Melbourne and the streams still fall on their face.
      - 10y ago

wyck 10y ago

The geo-restricted licensing model is applied because Google has no choice in the matter. They have to abide by laws just like everyone else.

shmerl 10y ago
No law forbids creators to release everywhere (i.e. no geo-restrictions). So it's not a question about why Google don't do it, but why creators don't.
- bestnameever 10y ago
  I'm guessing most buyers, at least historically, prefer only dealing within specific regions. Are most cable channels offered in the usa operate internationally?
  - shmerl 10y ago
    The way I understand it, historically geo restrictions originate from physical goods, and are usually driven by distributors, who want to reduce competition and control certain regions. I.e. in order to monopolize the market, they require those who produce some goods to restrict distribution through them only for that region, and in return they offer better pricing and assistance in that distribution. I.e. this basically makes it impossible to make global distribution rights. This logic falls flat however in the digital world, where distributor isn't limited by region. I.e. you can open a digital store, and sell worldwide (like for example computer games stores like GOG, Steam and etc.). So in the pure digital world, geo restrictions sound like nonsense, since they reduce reach and profits, both for creators, and distributors. My guess is, this creeps into the digital sphere, because of the influence of physical distributors, who see digital ones as a threat to their local monopolies. I suppose strong grip of some regional cable TV companies, forces creators to limit their distribution through any digital stores as well. The problem is, this approach is pretty nasty when applied in the digital space. It basically becomes xenophobic. Translating it back to physical goods, it can look like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbiacSD13qk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbiacSD13qk Hopefully, the weaker regional monopolists will become, the more likely we'll have global distribution for video too.

mikekchar 10y ago

As someone who has lived in many different countries, I find this stuff so frustrating. When I was living in England, my wife and I wanted to watch Japanese anime (in Japanese). Luckily Crunchyroll exists and it has quite a large amount of content for a very low price (I think we were paying 4 pounds per month). But now that I'm back in Japan, we want to watch shows from BBC... basically not possible legally. I really enjoyed watching cycling on Eurosport. Good luck. I really wonder who is going to pay $35 a month for US shows, while you are already in the US. There are just so many other ways to get that content. I hope one day before I die the media companies will realise that their old idea of breaking up the world into pieces and sublicensing is a stupid one.

unityByFreedom 10y ago
> I hope one day before I die the media companies will realise that their old idea of breaking up the world into pieces and sublicensing is a stupid one. If not, at least you can die laughing
myrandomcomment 10y ago
You can watch iPlayer via a VPN or DNS service like unblock.us (do not know if they have service in Japan). Note to the BBC - I would be to pay 3x the license fee to be able to watch on the internet with a subscription from outside the U.K. I bet if you opened it up world wide you would make more money then you do on the all the U.K license fees.
- mikekchar 10y ago
  Even the BBC isn't powerful enough to do this. I can't remember who it was but one of the heads of the BBC said for a long time that content on BBC should be available for free everywhere. He reasoned that it was already paid for. It's one of the reason that they do so much free software development. One of the shows that I want to watch is Match of the Day. Not sure what the situation is like now, but when I was in the UK the BBC was having a huge problem trying to negotiate the rights to put it on the iPlayer (strangely MOTD2 was OK ???). It would be impossible if they needed international distribution :-(

shmerl 10y ago

The usual copyright lunacy stands in the way. Some just need to catch up with the times, and realize Internet is a global phenomenon.

sdm 10y ago

This has always been Google's problem; it really only cares about the US. Which is not surprising given how it has historically acted as an arm of the US government. We saw this before in the iPhone vs. Android battle, it took years for Google to allow developers outside of the US (and a handful of others) in to be able to make paid apps even though Android phones where available in those markets. But when the iPhone in any country, developers from that country were immediately able to sell app in the Apple app store. This is one of the big thing that keeps us off of Google's Cloud offerings. With Google, if you're not in the US you're at best a second class citizen. With AWS you don't get that feeling at all. Even Google's founders are avowed American-supremacists, so it shouldn't come as any surprise.

golergka 10y ago
> it has historically acted as an arm of the US government > Google's founders are avowed American-supremacists Pretty strong claims. Got any arguments to back them?
- sdm 10y ago
  This has been pretty well documented. Just watch any interview with Larry and Sergey when they talk about the role of the US in the world -- they are very open about where they stand and that they are American-supremacists (though wouldn't use that term obviously). Look at the role Google has played pushing the US government interests in Egypt and elsewhere during the "Arab Spring". Then there is Eric Schmidt's long history of operating as a go between on behalf of the US state department. Which was well documented by wiki leaks: https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

bbcbasic 10y ago

Yeah the entertainment industry wants content to spread at the speed of a steam ship, rather than the speed of light. Fortunately: Ǝ VPN.

romanovcode 10y ago
Yeah, and then they wonder why there is so much piracy.