3 ms·

Yes, those are the worst. Sometimes I can't buy books or movies or games in the language I prefer (English), I have to wait for (usually poor) localization. Th

Yes, those are the worst. Sometimes I can't buy books or movies or games in the language I prefer (English), I have to wait for (usually poor) localization. The number of times I have saw the dreaded "this product is available only for the residents of US and Canada", I can't even understand, why my money is not good enough for that.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
> why my money is not good enough for that. It's likely not that they don't want your money, but rather that they don't have the legal right to sell you a piece of content in exchange for your money.
- atemerev 8y ago
  If I am visiting another country, I can buy a physical game or movie in a brick and mortar store. There isn’t any reason it shouldn’t work for online purchases.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    If you use your laptop in another country, you'll also be able to purchase geo-locked content with your foreign IP address. (Unless they reject foreign credit cards, but that's more to prevent VPN's, and you're just a false positive.) The way copyright gets licensed per-country is pretty dumb in the age of the internet, but it's not correct to blame individual retailers for this. They would love to have a larger customer base.
- ken 8y ago
  Yet I can go to <country>.amazon.com and buy it and have it shipped here. Is Amazon breaking the law?
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    Actually, there's a lot of stuff they won't ship to you. I had to use a forwarding service to buy video games from amazon.co.jp for many years, although more recently they've started to allow foreign purchases on most video games. No idea what precipitated the change. I imagine this is mostly a legal gray area that no one cares enough to litigate. The number of people going to foreign sites to paying international shipping prices and wait weeks for their products to arrive is too small to worry about.
hyperman1 8y ago
I have now several DVDs where the first menu asks me to select one of 6-8 languages. Then it shows me the unskippable copyright ads (you wouldn't steal a car blah blah blah) localized. Then we get to the main menu which is English only, regardless of the language you selected. The movie itself is in English, subtitled in at most 3 languages, reachable only from the remote control button (ignoring your first language selection), and sometimes these 3 are different from the 6-8 copyright ad languages. It's fun to see the copyright ad in Russian or Italian.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago

> why my money is not good enough for that. It's likely not that they don't want your money, but rather that they don't have the legal right to sell you a piece of content in exchange for your money.

atemerev 8y ago
If I am visiting another country, I can buy a physical game or movie in a brick and mortar store. There isn’t any reason it shouldn’t work for online purchases.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  If you use your laptop in another country, you'll also be able to purchase geo-locked content with your foreign IP address. (Unless they reject foreign credit cards, but that's more to prevent VPN's, and you're just a false positive.) The way copyright gets licensed per-country is pretty dumb in the age of the internet, but it's not correct to blame individual retailers for this. They would love to have a larger customer base.
ken 8y ago
Yet I can go to <country>.amazon.com and buy it and have it shipped here. Is Amazon breaking the law?
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  Actually, there's a lot of stuff they won't ship to you. I had to use a forwarding service to buy video games from amazon.co.jp for many years, although more recently they've started to allow foreign purchases on most video games. No idea what precipitated the change. I imagine this is mostly a legal gray area that no one cares enough to litigate. The number of people going to foreign sites to paying international shipping prices and wait weeks for their products to arrive is too small to worry about.

hyperman1 8y ago

I have now several DVDs where the first menu asks me to select one of 6-8 languages. Then it shows me the unskippable copyright ads (you wouldn't steal a car blah blah blah) localized. Then we get to the main menu which is English only, regardless of the language you selected. The movie itself is in English, subtitled in at most 3 languages, reachable only from the remote control button (ignoring your first language selection), and sometimes these 3 are different from the 6-8 copyright ad languages. It's fun to see the copyright ad in Russian or Italian.