10 ms·

Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent

268 points by luminarious 15y ago

rakkhi 15y ago
I bought the Apple TV2 in the UK, was so excited to fire it up and switch on Netflix and Hulu and Justin.tv. #researchfail
billpg 15y ago
As someone with money who enjoys a lot of American TV, I'm not really interested in excuses why these services are not available worldwide. Quit making excuses and make it happen. The torrenters don't seem to have any trouble building a global distribution network, and they are hiding from the law while simultaneously kicking your butt. If you don't want to make it happen, quit whining about losing money. I have money and you have TV shows, so let's make a deal.
- RealGeek 15y ago
  The delay in geographical releases is because studios license the copyrights to a regional studio or a distribution company. Unfortunately, this arrangements prohibits them to use any alternate distribution channels to release the content on their own. Also, the regional company is unlikely to have any arrangements with services like Netflix and Hulu. In the end its all about the money and bureaucracy.
  - ashconnor 15y ago
    Surely they realise they are losing money?
    - RealGeek 15y ago
      I am sure they do. But they have to rely on such distribution deals to make most revenue. They won't be able to distribute via main stream mediums like movie theaters and TV channels on their own because of extensive offshore logistics.
    - stuartjmoore 15y ago
      They get money from ads, and what ad company will pay for users outside of their market? Ad-free is wasted bandwidth.
    - krschultz 15y ago
      Are they losing money? If you canabalize your existing revenue stream by destroying distributor relationships in exchange for a new revenue stream that is tiny, you will lose money. Contrary to popular belief, most of the people making lots of money as executives are not stupid. They just have more data than the arm-chair quarterbacks have. What seems 'obvious' to us hackers is not always as clear cut when you have the numbers in front of you.
  - cstuder 15y ago
    Am I right to presume that this system with regional licences was set up by the studios themselves? What stops a studio from skipping their regional partners and just release their content worldwide? The internet doesn't really know regions, so local distribution partners are no longer a concern (Except maybo for localizing content).
    - mikecane 15y ago
      This same thing is a problem with eBooks. They haven't come to grips with it yet.
    - RealGeek 15y ago
      Problem is Internet distribution is still a small percentage of their business and most distribution partners demand exclusive rights. Distribution of content globally via Internet would still require regional monetization effort like regional advertisers and payment processing.
- suprgeek 15y ago
  Thank you for putting forth this sentiment in a succinct and direct way. If it can be done while being borderline illegal why in the world would the stakeholders not want to profit from this revenue stream?
- smackfu 15y ago
  What a silly argument. "Just make it happen!" What do you do in the case where a show is shown on ABC in the US and Channel 4 in the UK, and they both have online streaming? How do you just make that happen? Who is going to give up their rights to broadcast online? Are you just going to wish the contracts away? Yes, the torrenters have no problem avoiding the legal limits because they are illegal, that's not an answer.
  - billpg 15y ago
    Excuses, excuses... (Okay, I'll answer.) Make a new territory called "Internet" which charges viewers directly. If a UK broadcaster wants the UK rights, that would still be available separately. People who would pay a premium aren't really in the same market as people who watch free-with-ads channels. I know channel 4 etc won't like having a competitor with the same shows on their turf, but they do already - torrenters. At least this way, the competitor will just be one that charges a premium that will only be used by big fans of a show. The casual viewer will remain with the free-with-ads channel.
  - rmc 15y ago
    There are several cases where this happens already. Many TV shows/films are licensed to Irish and British TV stations, however many people in Ireland get BBC et al, so these people can see it twice. Everyone is happy with this system.
- Perceval 15y ago
  The cost of hiding from the law must be less than the cost of abiding by the law.
wyclif 15y ago
Some of these (I'm looking at you, BBC iPlayer) aren't even available in the USA.
- biot 15y ago
  You should bring up that injustice with your Member of Parliament.
- corin_ 15y ago
  And likewise none of the streaming options for American shows are available in the UK. Now, with American shows, I think there could easily be a good business model - we've seen English TV channels pick up American shows (sometimes running almost in sync with America, more often than not running a year or two behind) with success. Examples include The West Wing, Friends, Glee, Will and Grace, Family Guy, CSI and so on. So I think there could be enough of an audience over here to be worth doing it. But iPlayer for non-UK viewers, it just isn't feasible. Firstly, BBC have the content licensed for UK viewing only, and they can't pay extra for international viewers because they are funded by the public (TV license over here). For the BBC website, international viewers see adverts, but that model can't be extended to iPlayer for a few reasons. Firstly, and least importantly, BBC never puts advertising into its shows, and they don't want to go against that, even for an international audience. That could be got around quite easily. Secondly, selling video adverts is a lot more complex (from a sales point of view, not technical) than shoving them into a website, it would take more work from them. And finally, if they were to sell adverts and open up iPlayer to an international audience, I doubt they would make enough revenue from the adverts to justify internationally licensing the content, i.e. there just wouldn't be enough people watching it.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - jodrellblank 15y ago
    Why couldn't the BBC charge international viewers directly? $(License_fee/12) per month, say.
Nate75Sanders 15y ago
I try to explain this type of thing to people who are ardently anti-piracy: You can never, ever, expect people to miss out on the culture that's happening during their lives. If money, or geography, or whatever is preventing it, they'll still do the best they can to make sure they don't miss anything.
- paganel 15y ago
  > If money, or geography, or whatever is preventing it, they'll still do the best they can to make sure they don't miss anything. I live in Romania, and unfortunately for those a little older than me the '80s were pretty hard times, with us being on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and living under a dictatorship. Nevertheless, people couldn't care less, they were still listening to Radio Free Europe for the latest "decadent" music charts, even though that could have meant their parents losing their State-controlled jobs or even going to prison. So, yeah, trying to impose stupid barriers (be them real or virtual) has never worked and they'll never do.
- Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
  This is true - it doesn't make it right (necessarily) but it is true. The other thing I'd say though is that most people will still operate within their own moral code. In the UK technically platform shifting (transferring music from CD to MP3 for instance) is illegal but that doesn't stop anyone as people see it as a historic oddity and not something which is even remotely morally wrong. It's not uncommon that the same people who will pirate movies from multi-billion pound businesses will also voluntarily pay when for donationware (or when Radiohead release an album) they could get for nothing. There are two things we need to look at: * Availability / technology and restrictions on the ability to obtain media - for instance I torrent because I can't get it legally. * Why people's moral code does or doesn't allow them to take certain actions? We're moving increasingly into a trust economy where from a technical point of view people can have what they want and it's almost impossible to stop them. In that situation your ability to extract payment from them depends on your making a case for why it's reasonable (and indeed beneficial) for them to stump up in a world where the link between what something costs to produce and what it's reasonable to charge for it is a little less obvious than in the days of purely physical product.
mahrain 15y ago
Same goes for Holland, this, and TV is very unreliable and a year behind the USA. Plus movies are usually released a few months after the USA.
- mhd 15y ago
  Germany is usually even more behind, and TV broadcasts and movies are horribly dubbed versions. I'd gladly pay three to five times as much for Netflix as it costs in the US if it were available...
  - simias 15y ago
    Ditto for France. I assume it's mostly true for all european countries, with maybe the exception of the UK? At least they probably don't have the dubbing issue... Also, we do have the playstation store (well... used to) but all the movies there are dubbed and we can't get the original version (with or without subtitles). I'll stick with bittorent for now...
  - kahawe 15y ago
    And a lot of videos on youtube are blocked as well and you get that "Sorry, not available in your country" link. I always cringe hard and scream inside when I see that since I am trying to view a link online on a website so it should not make ANY difference which country I am coming from. Please keep your pre-historic distribution and business model out of the web!!! Doing something like that should just be banned by law.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      That was really annoying to me even as an American as well (though I currently live in Denmark). When I embed Youtube videos in things like blog posts, I want to know that all my readers can view them, not just me, but Youtube won't tell me which videos are region-restricted. I ended up having to use a proxy in another country to test for myself, so I could avoid unknowingly embedding US-only videos.
      - 15y ago
martey 15y ago
I don't think that the services mentioned want to exclude non-Americans. All of them deal with music or video, both of which require country-specific licensing.
- gcb 15y ago
  slicing up markets artificially is the first sign of collusion, cartels.
  - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
    In this case the boundaries aren't artificial, they're historic. The world will move to laws which are unified (or at least close enough) and allow day and date releases and true international markets but it's unrealistic to expect it to happen overnight. But a resistance to change (some of which will have it's feet in positive intentions, some in negative) is different to collusion.
    - maw 15y ago
      In this case the boundaries aren't artificial, they're historic. They can be both, actually. The world will move to laws which are unified (or at least close enough) and allow day and date releases and true international markets but it's unrealistic to expect it to happen overnight. I hope you're right about this.
      - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
        Sorry, should have been clearer - they may be artificial but these are historic boundaries which while they may support (in some ways) certain business interests, are not there because of them and in almost all cases pre-date those interests by a considerable period.
    - gcb 15y ago
      i can fire up my browser and download music from .com, .com.br, .co.jp! sometimes i'm even wiling to pay :) if you try to limit that based on historic boundaries set for other things, it's pretty artificial
StudyAnimal 15y ago
As an English speaker in Germany I was particularly interested in using things like iTunes (which is available here) to access TV. What do you know, it is exclusively German language content. And it is also only released when it airs in Germany rather than when it first airs in the US or the UK. Where is the logic there? If I wanted to get German language TV when it airs on TV, I would just watch TV. The whole system doesn't make sense.
- rrrazdan 15y ago
  The whole system makes eminent sense. Content that has been permitted by the owner is released in your country, when the owner permits. If you are resort to piracy because of this, you are still stealing.
  - rickmb 15y ago
    It always amazes me that people who consider it an ethical issue by equating copyright infringement with "stealing", have no ethical problem with the fact that copyright law is being blatantly abused to achieve exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do, i.e. maximizing the distribution of original work. Copyright laws exist to serve society, not just a handful of corporations.
    - wccrawford 15y ago
      [Citation needed.] Was it really meant to maximize distribution, or was it meant to encourage production? Because it -does- encourage production.
      - hxa7241 15y ago
        It is meant to optimise the trade-off of both. (Encouraging production alone does not suffice to justify it.) See paragraph 2 of http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html Given that, the original point stands.
  - 15y ago
ThomPete 15y ago
There is no need to rationalize why you use Bittorrent, there is no argument to win and nothing to defend. It's not stealing, it's not not stealing it's just a fact that people will continue to use bittorrents as long as there is too much friction to get it legally. Bittorrent will be around as long as the content owners insist on localizing copyright and not offering their content to a globally oriented customer base.
- jgroome 15y ago
  I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. You can use bittorrent to download and watch a film that's been released on DVD. This deprives the content created of a sale/hire/watch on demand, so in theory they lose out on revenue. You can also use bittorrent to download and watch a TV show that was broadcast in another country the night before and that will never be shown on your country's TV network. Think about NBC or Comedy Central - 30 Rock and Colbert aren't going to be broadcast in the UK any time soon, and their content owners refuse to let international users watch online. Torrenting this content is therefore a victimless crime.
  - robryan 15y ago
    Wouldn't surprise me either if the ones torrenting end up spending more money on the show that those who catch is casually when it finally does get aired. I've been to concerts where the artist is touring Australia for the first time and hasn't ever done any Australia specific marketing and they manage to fill out venues. Doubt that would have happened before file sharing.
    - jgroome 15y ago
      Without a doubt - look at a band like Tool. I don't mind saying that I torrented every one of their albums. Grew to love them, bought the CDs, went to a dozen of their concerts, spent at least £50 on merchandise over the years.
  - ThomPete 15y ago
    Legally yes you are right. Philosophically or morally I believe that copyright is based on a premise that is no longer the case. I recently saw the Product Manager from Spotify give a presentation. In it he said that spotify users are much more likely to listen to of the charts music when they use spotify. I think he said something like 60 or 80% of the music listened too wasn't chart music. I seem to remember similar findings with netflix. In other words when people have to pay for a CD or a DVD they will make the safe choice. But the second there are other options their patterns are different. In my world at least. There is absolutely nothing philosophically or morally that dictates that it's a right to get paid for something that you can produce once and then mass distribute more or less freely. It's an opportunity. The movie industry has no problem replacing jobs previously held by people with machines. They have no problem arguing that people who used to do models with physical materials are just not effective enough. The movie and music industry have no problem distributing their content digitally, laying off thousands of people, closing thousands of stores. All in the name of the progress of technology. And to be clear I have no problem with that either. But I just so happen to believe that the same should apply for the record labels and the movie industry. Just hanging on to old definitions of ownership while ridding themselves of others who aren't following the progress of technology is simply not grounded in anything but lobbyism. So as long as those industries are not ready to re-considers rights issues while insisting that they should reap the benefits I simply refuse to accept that piracy is in fact piracy in the way it's claimed. I refuse to accept the philosophical premise that is used to define theft, illegal & copyright. When the underlying reality changes so must the law and regulation. It's there to reflect reality, not the other way round.
yason 15y ago
And that's why the European counterparts of MAFIAA shouldn't be able to appeal to lost sales in many of these countries because don't have any fucking sales to lose. I've long advocated a fair-use rule that where a copyrighted work in some format isn't readily for sale in some geographical area, then people in that area should have the legal right to produce a copy of it in that format for themselves. The format is relevant because if people want CDs or uncompressed FLAC albums but they can only buy a lousy DRM-ridden 128Kbit/s MP3 instead, it shouldn't count. Same goes with old music or films: if nobody's selling, people have the legal right to copy. If the copyright holder decides to start selling again, the legal right to copy goes away. Then the longevity of a copyright would matter much less.
- danieldk 15y ago
  Indeed. I'd add to that that paying 15 Euro for a BluRay may be perfectly acceptable in the Western world, but a huge budget hit in the rest of the world. The buy 'physical media via the Internet' argument doesn't fly there either.
  - roel_v 15y ago
    Right, and a 250k Lamborghini is also a huge budget hit for me in the West. Which is why I drive a shitty Citroen. I'm sick and tired of the entitled whining. Nobody owes you the right to listen to the latest album of whoever is at the top of the charts; in fact, nobody owes you anything but what they agreed on. The proposition is very clear: there are people who create something. They give it to you, on the condition that you pay for it. They may not want to offer it to you because it's too hard to do business in your country. If you don't agree to their terms, or their decision not to offer you their stuff, that still doesn't give you the right to just take whatever it is they're offering from another source. Feel free to find other people who make things you want and offer it at terms you accept; or petition people to offer things at a cheaper price; or whatever. But taking things from creators against their wishes is not only criminal but also immoral. (Maybe you still do it, even if it's criminal and immoral. That's a personal decision. But then just acknowledge it for what it is and don't try to weasel yourself out of the moral responsibility).
ajkessler 15y ago
I'm going to guess that a lot of the reason these services aren't available in a lot of other countries is not that they don't want your money, but rather that your governments either have ridiculous regulations to navigate, or there are concerns about their ability to protect intellectual property rights.
- archangel_one 15y ago
  I highly doubt it is the former. I hear the US have pretty ridiculous regulations if you want to do crazy things like broadcast videos over the internet: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html. Somehow these services manage to exist in the US regardless of the ridiculous regulations there, but allofmp3.com got stamped on despite complying with Russian law because they fell afoul of licensing interests in the US. As for the latter, what exactly is the point in "protecting intellectual property rights" in Estonia if you don't sell anything there in the first place, and as a result everyone there who would like to buy your stuff is getting it off thepiratebay.org? Sounds like the worst of both worlds to me.
  - ajkessler 15y ago
    The fact that the U.S. might have ridiculous regulations has nothing to do with it. If you're a business, you might be willing to wade through all that red tape once, especially for the biggest consumer market in the world. Are you willing to do it 30 times? 195 times? If the Estonian market represents a paltry amount of money, why bother?
markokocic 15y ago
Well, this is just rationalizing. Stealing something (or obtaining it illegally) just because someone doesn't want to sell it to you (or give it to you for free) is still stealing (or obtaining it illegally), regardless of the fact that you want it so bad. As long as you own something, you have the right to choose if you want to sell it to some country, give it for free or do whatever else.
- bonzoesc 15y ago
  It really is a symptom of the decadence and entitlement of your typical Internet user. If somebody doesn't want you to have a thing they made, why not do without instead of acting against their wishes, taking it illegally, and rationalizing it?
  - Splines 15y ago
    Because it's easy, and the costs are low? I sometimes torrent TV shows that I forgot to DVR and don't really feel bad about it. It really is a symptom of the decadence and entitlement of your typical Internet user. If the entire internet disappeared tomorrow, am I allowed to complain about it? Where do you draw the line? ("Be thankful for your brocolli, there are starving children in Africa")
    - bonzoesc 15y ago
      Breaking car windows with spark plug ceramic is easy and just like piracy, you don't directly bear the costs. Cheap and easy isn't a justification for immoral behavior.
- thomasgerbe 15y ago
  Are peoples lives that much worse if don't have access to certain TV Show/Albums/Movies? People can be so entitled sometimes.
oemera 15y ago
Wait. This is YCombinator right? Why on earth does no-one create a startup to make buying digital copies easier wherever you live? Why is that so hard?
- _delirium 15y ago
  It's actually part of #1 on YCombinator's list of ideas they'd like to fund: http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html But it's a tricky problem, because of the heavy involvement of intellectual-property laws and tangled webs of existing licensing arrangements (defended by large incumbent players with large legal teams).
- hboon 15y ago
  Business development and licensing efforts.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Because it is an artificial problem (created by rent seekers) not a technical problem. Artificial problems are murderously difficult to crack and often disappears when the underlying technology shifts.
- smackfu 15y ago
  Step 1: Get worldwide rights to desirable content. No one has ever gotten past step one.
AlexC04 15y ago
Why not start just one of those ? Seems like an opportunity.
felxh 15y ago
And even if some of these services are available in your country you might get screwed. For instance I once bought a music album on iTunes. A few weeks later a friend of mine sends me a link on grooveshark to a song from the same artist. I've never heard the song before but to my surprise it is supposed to be on the same album I own. I do a little research and find out that the album sold in US iTunes store contains two extra bonus tracks! I check to see if there is another version of the same album in my 'local' iTunes store, but no, it appears these two bonus tracks are only available in the US
vitolds 15y ago
I would also add to this list audible.com which restricts certain books to US only. I am a platinum subscriber to audible, however, I couldn't get my hands on Stephen King's Under The Dome. So I got it from the thepiratebay pretty much on the next day. I did buy other King's books on audible though.
luminarious 15y ago
Note that a large number of these are apps stores. I can imagine the licencing fees or whatnot being the showstoppers for audio/video, but what on earth is so difficult about selling applications?
rb2k_ 15y ago
I recently found an interesting DNS based service that will allow you to access some of them: http://blog.marc-seeger.de/2011/04/07/hulu-and-iplayer-outside-the-us-without-a-vpn http://blog.marc-seeger.de/2011/04/07/hulu-and-iplayer-outsi... The advantage over a VPN-based solution is that there is no need to route all of your traffic over the VPN. Most of the time they only redirect the geo-location stuff and once you receive the videostream URL, that transfer will go over your 'regular' connection. It also allows you to just put their DNS servers into your router and your Apple TV / Wii / iPad ... will automatically use the service. Security wise, they might be able to redirect any domain resolution to their servers, but they still won't be able to fake the SSL certificates. As long as you're using IMAPS/HTTPS/*S you should be fine I guess.
- xutopia 15y ago
  For many of the services listed you need a credit card with an American address.
  - rb2k_ 15y ago
    They link to a virtual debit card: http://www.unblock-us.com/how-to-set-up/netflix/ http://www.unblock-us.com/how-to-set-up/netflix/
jlgosse 15y ago
Last I checked, Estonia can use Android Market. Although maybe that's one of the "new" additions?
- Strom 15y ago
  Only free apps work.
  - Aissen 15y ago
    They announced yesterday that they added 99 new countries for paid apps. See: https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=143779&hl=fr https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=1437... (previous list, not translated yet as of now) https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=143779&hl=en https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=1437... (new list)
warseph 15y ago
Same thing happens in Argentina, I tried some times to buy certain games online, but for some weird reason for digital content, the purchased is limited to the US and Mexico. Why does this limitation even exist for digital content?
- mauriciob 15y ago
  I've only seen one Steam game that couldn't be bought in Brazil (I still don't know why). I'm guessing it depends at which store you are buying it. Many of the US stores don't sell to foreigners, though. Could they be afraid of fraud?
  - warseph 15y ago
    I saw it in several games in Direct2Drive, (this games had the same restrictions in other online stores). I don't think is fraud though, as the same site sells other games to Argentina. This is what direct2drive says on the matter: Why are some games "country restricted" ? This is a limitation set by either the game developer or the internet distribution laws your country. We have to abide by both of their wishes.

268 points by luminarious 15y ago

I bought the Apple TV2 in the UK, was so excited to fire it up and switch on Netflix and Hulu and Justin.tv. #researchfail

billpg 15y ago

As someone with money who enjoys a lot of American TV, I'm not really interested in excuses why these services are not available worldwide. Quit making excuses and make it happen. The torrenters don't seem to have any trouble building a global distribution network, and they are hiding from the law while simultaneously kicking your butt. If you don't want to make it happen, quit whining about losing money. I have money and you have TV shows, so let's make a deal.

RealGeek 15y ago
The delay in geographical releases is because studios license the copyrights to a regional studio or a distribution company. Unfortunately, this arrangements prohibits them to use any alternate distribution channels to release the content on their own. Also, the regional company is unlikely to have any arrangements with services like Netflix and Hulu. In the end its all about the money and bureaucracy.
- ashconnor 15y ago
  Surely they realise they are losing money?
  - RealGeek 15y ago
    I am sure they do. But they have to rely on such distribution deals to make most revenue. They won't be able to distribute via main stream mediums like movie theaters and TV channels on their own because of extensive offshore logistics.
  - stuartjmoore 15y ago
    They get money from ads, and what ad company will pay for users outside of their market? Ad-free is wasted bandwidth.
  - krschultz 15y ago
    Are they losing money? If you canabalize your existing revenue stream by destroying distributor relationships in exchange for a new revenue stream that is tiny, you will lose money. Contrary to popular belief, most of the people making lots of money as executives are not stupid. They just have more data than the arm-chair quarterbacks have. What seems 'obvious' to us hackers is not always as clear cut when you have the numbers in front of you.
- cstuder 15y ago
  Am I right to presume that this system with regional licences was set up by the studios themselves? What stops a studio from skipping their regional partners and just release their content worldwide? The internet doesn't really know regions, so local distribution partners are no longer a concern (Except maybo for localizing content).
  - mikecane 15y ago
    This same thing is a problem with eBooks. They haven't come to grips with it yet.
  - RealGeek 15y ago
    Problem is Internet distribution is still a small percentage of their business and most distribution partners demand exclusive rights. Distribution of content globally via Internet would still require regional monetization effort like regional advertisers and payment processing.
suprgeek 15y ago
Thank you for putting forth this sentiment in a succinct and direct way. If it can be done while being borderline illegal why in the world would the stakeholders not want to profit from this revenue stream?
smackfu 15y ago
What a silly argument. "Just make it happen!" What do you do in the case where a show is shown on ABC in the US and Channel 4 in the UK, and they both have online streaming? How do you just make that happen? Who is going to give up their rights to broadcast online? Are you just going to wish the contracts away? Yes, the torrenters have no problem avoiding the legal limits because they are illegal, that's not an answer.
- billpg 15y ago
  Excuses, excuses... (Okay, I'll answer.) Make a new territory called "Internet" which charges viewers directly. If a UK broadcaster wants the UK rights, that would still be available separately. People who would pay a premium aren't really in the same market as people who watch free-with-ads channels. I know channel 4 etc won't like having a competitor with the same shows on their turf, but they do already - torrenters. At least this way, the competitor will just be one that charges a premium that will only be used by big fans of a show. The casual viewer will remain with the free-with-ads channel.
- rmc 15y ago
  There are several cases where this happens already. Many TV shows/films are licensed to Irish and British TV stations, however many people in Ireland get BBC et al, so these people can see it twice. Everyone is happy with this system.
Perceval 15y ago
The cost of hiding from the law must be less than the cost of abiding by the law.

wyclif 15y ago

Some of these (I'm looking at you, BBC iPlayer) aren't even available in the USA.

biot 15y ago
You should bring up that injustice with your Member of Parliament.
corin_ 15y ago
And likewise none of the streaming options for American shows are available in the UK. Now, with American shows, I think there could easily be a good business model - we've seen English TV channels pick up American shows (sometimes running almost in sync with America, more often than not running a year or two behind) with success. Examples include The West Wing, Friends, Glee, Will and Grace, Family Guy, CSI and so on. So I think there could be enough of an audience over here to be worth doing it. But iPlayer for non-UK viewers, it just isn't feasible. Firstly, BBC have the content licensed for UK viewing only, and they can't pay extra for international viewers because they are funded by the public (TV license over here). For the BBC website, international viewers see adverts, but that model can't be extended to iPlayer for a few reasons. Firstly, and least importantly, BBC never puts advertising into its shows, and they don't want to go against that, even for an international audience. That could be got around quite easily. Secondly, selling video adverts is a lot more complex (from a sales point of view, not technical) than shoving them into a website, it would take more work from them. And finally, if they were to sell adverts and open up iPlayer to an international audience, I doubt they would make enough revenue from the adverts to justify internationally licensing the content, i.e. there just wouldn't be enough people watching it.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- jodrellblank 15y ago
  Why couldn't the BBC charge international viewers directly? $(License_fee/12) per month, say.

Nate75Sanders 15y ago

I try to explain this type of thing to people who are ardently anti-piracy: You can never, ever, expect people to miss out on the culture that's happening during their lives. If money, or geography, or whatever is preventing it, they'll still do the best they can to make sure they don't miss anything.

paganel 15y ago
> If money, or geography, or whatever is preventing it, they'll still do the best they can to make sure they don't miss anything. I live in Romania, and unfortunately for those a little older than me the '80s were pretty hard times, with us being on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and living under a dictatorship. Nevertheless, people couldn't care less, they were still listening to Radio Free Europe for the latest "decadent" music charts, even though that could have meant their parents losing their State-controlled jobs or even going to prison. So, yeah, trying to impose stupid barriers (be them real or virtual) has never worked and they'll never do.
Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
This is true - it doesn't make it right (necessarily) but it is true. The other thing I'd say though is that most people will still operate within their own moral code. In the UK technically platform shifting (transferring music from CD to MP3 for instance) is illegal but that doesn't stop anyone as people see it as a historic oddity and not something which is even remotely morally wrong. It's not uncommon that the same people who will pirate movies from multi-billion pound businesses will also voluntarily pay when for donationware (or when Radiohead release an album) they could get for nothing. There are two things we need to look at: * Availability / technology and restrictions on the ability to obtain media - for instance I torrent because I can't get it legally. * Why people's moral code does or doesn't allow them to take certain actions? We're moving increasingly into a trust economy where from a technical point of view people can have what they want and it's almost impossible to stop them. In that situation your ability to extract payment from them depends on your making a case for why it's reasonable (and indeed beneficial) for them to stump up in a world where the link between what something costs to produce and what it's reasonable to charge for it is a little less obvious than in the days of purely physical product.

mahrain 15y ago

Same goes for Holland, this, and TV is very unreliable and a year behind the USA. Plus movies are usually released a few months after the USA.

mhd 15y ago
Germany is usually even more behind, and TV broadcasts and movies are horribly dubbed versions. I'd gladly pay three to five times as much for Netflix as it costs in the US if it were available...
- simias 15y ago
  Ditto for France. I assume it's mostly true for all european countries, with maybe the exception of the UK? At least they probably don't have the dubbing issue... Also, we do have the playstation store (well... used to) but all the movies there are dubbed and we can't get the original version (with or without subtitles). I'll stick with bittorent for now...
- kahawe 15y ago
  And a lot of videos on youtube are blocked as well and you get that "Sorry, not available in your country" link. I always cringe hard and scream inside when I see that since I am trying to view a link online on a website so it should not make ANY difference which country I am coming from. Please keep your pre-historic distribution and business model out of the web!!! Doing something like that should just be banned by law.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    That was really annoying to me even as an American as well (though I currently live in Denmark). When I embed Youtube videos in things like blog posts, I want to know that all my readers can view them, not just me, but Youtube won't tell me which videos are region-restricted. I ended up having to use a proxy in another country to test for myself, so I could avoid unknowingly embedding US-only videos.
    - 15y ago

martey 15y ago

I don't think that the services mentioned want to exclude non-Americans. All of them deal with music or video, both of which require country-specific licensing.

gcb 15y ago
slicing up markets artificially is the first sign of collusion, cartels.
- Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
  In this case the boundaries aren't artificial, they're historic. The world will move to laws which are unified (or at least close enough) and allow day and date releases and true international markets but it's unrealistic to expect it to happen overnight. But a resistance to change (some of which will have it's feet in positive intentions, some in negative) is different to collusion.
  - maw 15y ago
    In this case the boundaries aren't artificial, they're historic. They can be both, actually. The world will move to laws which are unified (or at least close enough) and allow day and date releases and true international markets but it's unrealistic to expect it to happen overnight. I hope you're right about this.
    - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
      Sorry, should have been clearer - they may be artificial but these are historic boundaries which while they may support (in some ways) certain business interests, are not there because of them and in almost all cases pre-date those interests by a considerable period.
  - gcb 15y ago
    i can fire up my browser and download music from .com, .com.br, .co.jp! sometimes i'm even wiling to pay :) if you try to limit that based on historic boundaries set for other things, it's pretty artificial

StudyAnimal 15y ago

As an English speaker in Germany I was particularly interested in using things like iTunes (which is available here) to access TV. What do you know, it is exclusively German language content. And it is also only released when it airs in Germany rather than when it first airs in the US or the UK. Where is the logic there? If I wanted to get German language TV when it airs on TV, I would just watch TV. The whole system doesn't make sense.

rrrazdan 15y ago
The whole system makes eminent sense. Content that has been permitted by the owner is released in your country, when the owner permits. If you are resort to piracy because of this, you are still stealing.
- rickmb 15y ago
  It always amazes me that people who consider it an ethical issue by equating copyright infringement with "stealing", have no ethical problem with the fact that copyright law is being blatantly abused to achieve exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do, i.e. maximizing the distribution of original work. Copyright laws exist to serve society, not just a handful of corporations.
  - wccrawford 15y ago
    [Citation needed.] Was it really meant to maximize distribution, or was it meant to encourage production? Because it -does- encourage production.
    - hxa7241 15y ago
      It is meant to optimise the trade-off of both. (Encouraging production alone does not suffice to justify it.) See paragraph 2 of http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html Given that, the original point stands.
- 15y ago

ThomPete 15y ago

There is no need to rationalize why you use Bittorrent, there is no argument to win and nothing to defend. It's not stealing, it's not not stealing it's just a fact that people will continue to use bittorrents as long as there is too much friction to get it legally. Bittorrent will be around as long as the content owners insist on localizing copyright and not offering their content to a globally oriented customer base.

jgroome 15y ago
I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. You can use bittorrent to download and watch a film that's been released on DVD. This deprives the content created of a sale/hire/watch on demand, so in theory they lose out on revenue. You can also use bittorrent to download and watch a TV show that was broadcast in another country the night before and that will never be shown on your country's TV network. Think about NBC or Comedy Central - 30 Rock and Colbert aren't going to be broadcast in the UK any time soon, and their content owners refuse to let international users watch online. Torrenting this content is therefore a victimless crime.
- robryan 15y ago
  Wouldn't surprise me either if the ones torrenting end up spending more money on the show that those who catch is casually when it finally does get aired. I've been to concerts where the artist is touring Australia for the first time and hasn't ever done any Australia specific marketing and they manage to fill out venues. Doubt that would have happened before file sharing.
  - jgroome 15y ago
    Without a doubt - look at a band like Tool. I don't mind saying that I torrented every one of their albums. Grew to love them, bought the CDs, went to a dozen of their concerts, spent at least £50 on merchandise over the years.
- ThomPete 15y ago
  Legally yes you are right. Philosophically or morally I believe that copyright is based on a premise that is no longer the case. I recently saw the Product Manager from Spotify give a presentation. In it he said that spotify users are much more likely to listen to of the charts music when they use spotify. I think he said something like 60 or 80% of the music listened too wasn't chart music. I seem to remember similar findings with netflix. In other words when people have to pay for a CD or a DVD they will make the safe choice. But the second there are other options their patterns are different. In my world at least. There is absolutely nothing philosophically or morally that dictates that it's a right to get paid for something that you can produce once and then mass distribute more or less freely. It's an opportunity. The movie industry has no problem replacing jobs previously held by people with machines. They have no problem arguing that people who used to do models with physical materials are just not effective enough. The movie and music industry have no problem distributing their content digitally, laying off thousands of people, closing thousands of stores. All in the name of the progress of technology. And to be clear I have no problem with that either. But I just so happen to believe that the same should apply for the record labels and the movie industry. Just hanging on to old definitions of ownership while ridding themselves of others who aren't following the progress of technology is simply not grounded in anything but lobbyism. So as long as those industries are not ready to re-considers rights issues while insisting that they should reap the benefits I simply refuse to accept that piracy is in fact piracy in the way it's claimed. I refuse to accept the philosophical premise that is used to define theft, illegal & copyright. When the underlying reality changes so must the law and regulation. It's there to reflect reality, not the other way round.

yason 15y ago

And that's why the European counterparts of MAFIAA shouldn't be able to appeal to lost sales in many of these countries because don't have any fucking sales to lose. I've long advocated a fair-use rule that where a copyrighted work in some format isn't readily for sale in some geographical area, then people in that area should have the legal right to produce a copy of it in that format for themselves. The format is relevant because if people want CDs or uncompressed FLAC albums but they can only buy a lousy DRM-ridden 128Kbit/s MP3 instead, it shouldn't count. Same goes with old music or films: if nobody's selling, people have the legal right to copy. If the copyright holder decides to start selling again, the legal right to copy goes away. Then the longevity of a copyright would matter much less.

danieldk 15y ago
Indeed. I'd add to that that paying 15 Euro for a BluRay may be perfectly acceptable in the Western world, but a huge budget hit in the rest of the world. The buy 'physical media via the Internet' argument doesn't fly there either.
- roel_v 15y ago
  Right, and a 250k Lamborghini is also a huge budget hit for me in the West. Which is why I drive a shitty Citroen. I'm sick and tired of the entitled whining. Nobody owes you the right to listen to the latest album of whoever is at the top of the charts; in fact, nobody owes you anything but what they agreed on. The proposition is very clear: there are people who create something. They give it to you, on the condition that you pay for it. They may not want to offer it to you because it's too hard to do business in your country. If you don't agree to their terms, or their decision not to offer you their stuff, that still doesn't give you the right to just take whatever it is they're offering from another source. Feel free to find other people who make things you want and offer it at terms you accept; or petition people to offer things at a cheaper price; or whatever. But taking things from creators against their wishes is not only criminal but also immoral. (Maybe you still do it, even if it's criminal and immoral. That's a personal decision. But then just acknowledge it for what it is and don't try to weasel yourself out of the moral responsibility).

ajkessler 15y ago

I'm going to guess that a lot of the reason these services aren't available in a lot of other countries is not that they don't want your money, but rather that your governments either have ridiculous regulations to navigate, or there are concerns about their ability to protect intellectual property rights.

archangel_one 15y ago
I highly doubt it is the former. I hear the US have pretty ridiculous regulations if you want to do crazy things like broadcast videos over the internet: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html. Somehow these services manage to exist in the US regardless of the ridiculous regulations there, but allofmp3.com got stamped on despite complying with Russian law because they fell afoul of licensing interests in the US. As for the latter, what exactly is the point in "protecting intellectual property rights" in Estonia if you don't sell anything there in the first place, and as a result everyone there who would like to buy your stuff is getting it off thepiratebay.org? Sounds like the worst of both worlds to me.
- ajkessler 15y ago
  The fact that the U.S. might have ridiculous regulations has nothing to do with it. If you're a business, you might be willing to wade through all that red tape once, especially for the biggest consumer market in the world. Are you willing to do it 30 times? 195 times? If the Estonian market represents a paltry amount of money, why bother?

markokocic 15y ago

Well, this is just rationalizing. Stealing something (or obtaining it illegally) just because someone doesn't want to sell it to you (or give it to you for free) is still stealing (or obtaining it illegally), regardless of the fact that you want it so bad. As long as you own something, you have the right to choose if you want to sell it to some country, give it for free or do whatever else.

bonzoesc 15y ago
It really is a symptom of the decadence and entitlement of your typical Internet user. If somebody doesn't want you to have a thing they made, why not do without instead of acting against their wishes, taking it illegally, and rationalizing it?
- Splines 15y ago
  Because it's easy, and the costs are low? I sometimes torrent TV shows that I forgot to DVR and don't really feel bad about it. It really is a symptom of the decadence and entitlement of your typical Internet user. If the entire internet disappeared tomorrow, am I allowed to complain about it? Where do you draw the line? ("Be thankful for your brocolli, there are starving children in Africa")
  - bonzoesc 15y ago
    Breaking car windows with spark plug ceramic is easy and just like piracy, you don't directly bear the costs. Cheap and easy isn't a justification for immoral behavior.
thomasgerbe 15y ago
Are peoples lives that much worse if don't have access to certain TV Show/Albums/Movies? People can be so entitled sometimes.

oemera 15y ago

Wait. This is YCombinator right? Why on earth does no-one create a startup to make buying digital copies easier wherever you live? Why is that so hard?

_delirium 15y ago
It's actually part of #1 on YCombinator's list of ideas they'd like to fund: http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html But it's a tricky problem, because of the heavy involvement of intellectual-property laws and tangled webs of existing licensing arrangements (defended by large incumbent players with large legal teams).
hboon 15y ago
Business development and licensing efforts.
tomjen3 15y ago
Because it is an artificial problem (created by rent seekers) not a technical problem. Artificial problems are murderously difficult to crack and often disappears when the underlying technology shifts.
smackfu 15y ago
Step 1: Get worldwide rights to desirable content. No one has ever gotten past step one.

AlexC04 15y ago

Why not start just one of those ? Seems like an opportunity.

felxh 15y ago

And even if some of these services are available in your country you might get screwed. For instance I once bought a music album on iTunes. A few weeks later a friend of mine sends me a link on grooveshark to a song from the same artist. I've never heard the song before but to my surprise it is supposed to be on the same album I own. I do a little research and find out that the album sold in US iTunes store contains two extra bonus tracks! I check to see if there is another version of the same album in my 'local' iTunes store, but no, it appears these two bonus tracks are only available in the US

vitolds 15y ago

I would also add to this list audible.com which restricts certain books to US only. I am a platinum subscriber to audible, however, I couldn't get my hands on Stephen King's Under The Dome. So I got it from the thepiratebay pretty much on the next day. I did buy other King's books on audible though.

luminarious 15y ago

Note that a large number of these are apps stores. I can imagine the licencing fees or whatnot being the showstoppers for audio/video, but what on earth is so difficult about selling applications?

rb2k_ 15y ago

I recently found an interesting DNS based service that will allow you to access some of them: http://blog.marc-seeger.de/2011/04/07/hulu-and-iplayer-outside-the-us-without-a-vpn http://blog.marc-seeger.de/2011/04/07/hulu-and-iplayer-outsi... The advantage over a VPN-based solution is that there is no need to route all of your traffic over the VPN. Most of the time they only redirect the geo-location stuff and once you receive the videostream URL, that transfer will go over your 'regular' connection. It also allows you to just put their DNS servers into your router and your Apple TV / Wii / iPad ... will automatically use the service. Security wise, they might be able to redirect any domain resolution to their servers, but they still won't be able to fake the SSL certificates. As long as you're using IMAPS/HTTPS/*S you should be fine I guess.

xutopia 15y ago
For many of the services listed you need a credit card with an American address.
- rb2k_ 15y ago
  They link to a virtual debit card: http://www.unblock-us.com/how-to-set-up/netflix/ http://www.unblock-us.com/how-to-set-up/netflix/

jlgosse 15y ago

Last I checked, Estonia can use Android Market. Although maybe that's one of the "new" additions?

Strom 15y ago
Only free apps work.
- Aissen 15y ago
  They announced yesterday that they added 99 new countries for paid apps. See: https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=143779&hl=fr https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=1437... (previous list, not translated yet as of now) https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=143779&hl=en https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=1437... (new list)

warseph 15y ago

Same thing happens in Argentina, I tried some times to buy certain games online, but for some weird reason for digital content, the purchased is limited to the US and Mexico. Why does this limitation even exist for digital content?

mauriciob 15y ago
I've only seen one Steam game that couldn't be bought in Brazil (I still don't know why). I'm guessing it depends at which store you are buying it. Many of the US stores don't sell to foreigners, though. Could they be afraid of fraud?
- warseph 15y ago
  I saw it in several games in Direct2Drive, (this games had the same restrictions in other online stores). I don't think is fraud though, as the same site sells other games to Argentina. This is what direct2drive says on the matter: Why are some games "country restricted" ? This is a limitation set by either the game developer or the internet distribution laws your country. We have to abide by both of their wishes.