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Australian Consumer Group Wants Geo-IP Blocking Banned
daria42 writes "Live outside the US? Then you're probably used to being blocked from watching Hulu, frustrated by not being able to buy the eBooks you want from Amazon and most of all, annoyed about paying significantly higher prices than Americans for exactly the same software, games and content online, all based on your IP address. This week Australian consumer group Choice called for an Australian ban on geo-IP-blocking, saying it created significant barriers to the free flow of goods and services. Maybe other countries' consumer groups should follow suit, in the quest for a fair go?"
We have it soooo good here !!
There is a free world-market for multinationals but still a higly localized and bordered market for consumers buying the products from the multinationals. It's about time this gets fixed.
If trousers are less expensive in the US, why is it illegal for me to import them to the EU and sell them in masses?
Because if God wanted you to have rights, he would have made you a financial instrument, not a puny flesh pod.
The content that's on Hulu is also on TPB. The only thing that I'm blocked from is paying for it.
Well, I endorse the intent of this, but the main reason the free flow of digital goods is blocked by region is because of the balkanized licensing of media. Geo-IP blocking is a consequence of this, not a cause of it.
If you want global viewing of content or global distribution of software, then the balkanization is the problem. For media such as movies and music, the solution would involve getting rid of local licensing and extortion by local media groups - good luck with that. For software, there are language and legal issues which differ from country to country, and a software maker may prefer to have these handled by a "distributor/importer" who gouges the consumer. In some cases, the "importer/distributor" is actually a local subsidiary of the overseas supplier, but still adds extra cost.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
This is one of those areas where you can see what the so-called "free marketeers" really think. If you *really* believe in the free market, IP blocking, region codes, etc. should be right out because when it comes down to brass tacks they are simply artificial price controls on a marketplace that no longer have natural time and space restrictions in place. As usual it isn't about core beliefs, it's about what gets the most money in their fat hands.
If they want the world to be "free market" they need to stop being hypocritical and take the good with the bad. You can't go running to big brother every time it doesn't go your way and the outcome of your philosophy doesn't match up with what your perfect world looks like.
Yeah, I know it is way too much to ask.
Companies love to talk about free markets, but they hate to operate on them. Free to them means not the free flow of goods and services, it means the freedom to do whatever they like.
Steam for instance, topical, even has two tiers for europe; western and eastern, with different prices and catalogues. Imagine if they had two tiers for the US! If I go to Steam this very minute, in their "Flash Sale" there are four games listed. Well, normally. Currently one of the boxes say "We're sorry. This game is not available in your region".
They're allowed to produce products whereever in the world it's the cheapest for them -- which is fine -- HOWEVER they are then ALLOWED to segment markets so that consumers can't enjoy the same freedoms. Politicians bend over to give corps the legal tools to enforce these arbitrary restrictions on trade. Is it any wonder that we revile them?
Sorry for the ranting, but I don't have time to rewrite.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
this is true for airline tickets also . My wife is from Austria, so we used to fly to Europe often enough. A round trip from Vienna to the states is much MUCH cheaper than a round trip from the states to Vienna. We would try to go to the Austrian version of the carriers sites, but would get redirected back to the US prices when it was time to buy. We almost started planning for yearly trips the "wrong" way, 50 weeks apart , so we could technically originate in Europe, but the efforts were going to outweigh the costs, and if we ever slipped up with the schedule then we stood to lose a lot, so we just never went through with it. It is a pain though, as it is the same plane, same seat, same route, same everything, but if you buy it in english it costs twice as much than if you can buy it in german.
Go out and purchase a VPS hosted in the data center of your choice in the country of your choice.
I do this currently, granted it is not to get around GEO IP Blocking, rather for a centrally hosted box I can connect my roaming devices to via VPN and route all my traffic through it.
I like the BBC, and yes I could go TPB route if I wanted, I can also pay $10 a month for a VPS hosted in a data center in the UK, which would allow me to watch BBC streamed programs without having to wait for them to show up on BBC America. That, and well, who needs ATT/Verizon/whomever snooping on your traffic and profiting from it..
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
It won't help, when the exact thing they are complaining about is what businesses *in other countries* are doing.
I was wondering about that too. It turns out the summary overemphasizes a few minor points of the article which the poster found interesting while ignoring the main point of the proposal. The meat of the proposal is to prohibit the common practice of charging Australian purchasers of digital goods delivered over the Internet about 50% more for no appearent reason.
If this were about foreign companies refusing to serve Australian customers, then I agree, there would be little they could do about it. But since these companies are already selling in the Australian market and would like to continue to do so, the Australian goverment has much more leverage.
eMule? Seriously dude?
There Can Be Only One...
They're cheaper near where they are grown. Sometimes, they're not even available due to lack of demand.
It's simple economics. There's little/no reason why globally universal prices should be in place - it's an asinine idea.
Sure, this makes sense for the price of Avacadoes, but not for a ebook or a movie you can buy online.
So where is the problem?
So the real problem is stupid laws. I would like to point fingers at some other country, but the US and US states are probably the world's worst offenders. Right now there's some guy serving a four year prison term in Florida for violating Florida's "obscenity" laws, but he never set food in Florida until an extradition order had him arrested in his home state of California and transported to Florida in a prison van to be tried by a jury of his non-peers. Why was this allowed? Because he had a p0rn site, his web hosting company used servers in Florida, and he mailed DVD's all across the country - including Florida. Now the material this guy produced WAS obscene, but if California did not see a reason to prosecute him then that should have been the end of the case unless he relocated to Florida to run his business.
"States Rights" sounds like some sort of great idea until you consider that the focus is on the right of the state over the rights of individuals. For instance, there is a myth that the Civil War was fought over slavery, but this is not true - it was fought over States Rights, such as the right to enslave their own people. Given that we live in an age of light-speed telecommunications, overnight shipping, a national highway system, and frequent flyer miles, the notion that every American needs to be intimately familiar with all of the laws, legal precedent, and nuance for how these laws are enforced in all 50 states while they go about their daily affairs is just no longer practical.
Maybe the US needs to overhaul the Constitution and reorganize. Somewhere between six and ten administrative regions might be more appropriate. After fixing our internal problems then we should tackle some of the nonsense with our international relations.
Without national IP blocking, many companies would be found guilty of violating copyright by exceeding the terms of their licenses.
Author A produces a work.
Author A licenses it to Publisher B for production/sale in the US.
Author A licenses it to Publisher C for production/sale in Asia.
Author A licenses it to Publisher D for production/sale in Australia.
etc.
If the Publishers B, C & D don't do national IP filtering, and someone from the wrong region buys the copy they are licensed to sell in a *different* region, then they're guilty of copyright violation.
Forcing Author A to license the work to a single publisher for production/sale world-wide means that only large publishers with divisions and knowledge of laws world-wide could publish works.
Now, the issue of Australia having higher prices? That comes down to a number of factors, most of which are unknown to anyone but the companies involved. Some of them, though, include high import taxes, special legal requirements which apply *only* within Australia (such as mandatory game ratings which can actually *prevent* a work from being sold, not simply limit the number of outlets willing to stock it), etc.
I've seen people do the math on some items and discover that when import taxes are taken into account, the 50% price differential is actually as low as 20% or as high as 45%, depending on the particular object being imported. Some of that is, undoubtedly, a bit of 'padding' to account for currency fluctuations, and exchange fees, and some of it is probably an acknowledgement that they've already been pushed into the next 'price bracket', so they may as well round it up to the 'top' of that bracket. (A $19.99 item gets imported, and the additional costs raise the effective price to $21.54AU, they're probably going to decide to price it at $24.99AU.)
Making national IP blocking illegal won't fix the problem because because of the licensing issues mentioned above. The import issues are going to remain as long as the laws which cause them remain. Price point bracketing can account for a lot of the difference. But sometimes it's quite a bit more, and *that* needs to be looked at.
Although I appreciate the frustration that comes from shopping for flights, I have to point out that this describes one of the basic fallacies of worth. Value is not inherent goods or services; it is inherent in the perception of those goods and services. Most people are going to agree, after a few moments of consideration, that an equal volume of water isn’t going to be worth the same thing to just any person, in any situation, at any time. The same is true for your airline ticket. We must expect that the airline will charge as much as they can and still sell tickets. The reasons for the disparity are probably a lot more complicated than most of us (including myself) expect.
The second thing that should be mentioned in conversations about the ‘global economy’ is that we’re all using currencies that are rarely pegged to any concretely traded commodity. Each currency is owned and regulated by a government, and the value of that currency floats on a certain amount of trust – basically the trust that the currency’s future value will continue to be what it basically is worth right now. Governments must, therefore, protect that value. They do it with tariffs, and trade agreements, and interest rates, and adding/removing actual currency, and all kinds of machinations that are dizzying to us, the mere mortals without advanced economics degrees. Allowing citizen’s ‘worth’ to flow without restraint to the best available price worldwide creates a problem because the currency is participating in supply and demand in a larger scope than the regulatory bodies controlling the currency. Let’s look at Greece to have a good example of where this kind of thing can cause problems (NOT saying that this is all bad, just pointing out that it’s not simple).
The Geo-IP blocking is a way to handle serious economic concerns with exposing end consumers to international markets. Basically, it forces the same geographic limitations that were always there. There may be better ways to do it, but just tearing down all the barriers is probably too reckless.
Do you have a different price for black people?
Have gnu, will travel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Hardcore
I've seen a Sigur Rós video get blocked to viewers in Iceland. I mean, WTH?
"/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit is a gimp plugin and must be run by the gimp in order to be used."
the first rule of emule is, there is no emule anymore.
Fixed that for you
A short video about a Dutch athlete on the BBC site, blocked for Dutch viewers.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
You're right, it's another example of why copyright is unsustainable in the world-wide digital age. I suppose you can prevent easy distribution of physical goods in the world but digital copyrighted items are impossible to contain within borders. Essentially, the promise made by copyright laws to the rights holders is a lie.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
What makes them think things should always be the same price, everywhere?
Sure, we're talking about essentially the same thing, but there's a reason why things cost different amounts in various places. Avacadoes are cheaper during avacado season, and cherries/apples/pears/etc. during their respective seasons. They're cheaper near where they are grown. Sometimes, they're not even available due to lack of demand.
It's simple economics. There's little/no reason why globally universal prices should be in place - it's an asinine idea.
Because you're an idiot. Avocado's are real goods requiring real transportation from the fields to the markets.
Digital media has no such constraints. The goods served out of the same server in Europe have the same cost regardless of if they are served to France, Spain or Germany. Why does the price differ for these three countries?
Same as serving them from Japan, NA or Europe into any country in the world. It's an extremely asinine idea to think that digital goods have the same inherent transport costs as perishable goods or even physical goods given the fact they don't need to be shipped any-fucking-where. Local taxes might have given you a crutch to stand your lame point on but I'd just point out that Australia's GST is 10% whilst UK's VAT is 20% yet the UK price is cheaper than the Australian price (and US prices don't include sales tax).
Distributors could use this point when there was a real cost in distributing physical media but since the DVDs are all pressed in the same third world location this has no longer been an excuse (shipment to China to Australia costs no more than shipment from China to the US, especially with the Chinese-Australian free trade agreement) but not when the content is digital (having no physical form).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I shouldnt be blocked from buying avocadoes from closer to the source where they are cheaper and having them sent to me.
The solution to that is for Author A to licence it to distribution company E for online access worldwide,
Don't get your hopes up, given that the Aussie government has been active in helping the Assange* persecution.
Though as a USian, I have to point out I don't think they've yet joined in our extra-judicial citizen-killing.
* - Yes, he's kind of a dick; doesn't justify meddling in the rights and justice systems of three sovereign countries.
A short video about a Dutch athlete on the BBC site, blocked for Dutch viewers.
Want to download from the BBC? Expatshield is your friend.
http://www.expatshield.com/
The web page below has a list of other free proxy services
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What pisses me off is different prices for the same piece of downloadable software from the same company, depending on where you live. I can't remember the product, but it cost $30 from an Australian IP address and around $20 in the US. Australian Tax would add $2 to the US price, but where'd that other eight bucks come from?
The 2012 version of Kaspersky was available in the US weeks ahead of Australia, but you were redirected to the Australian site whether you wanted to be or not.
Hotspot Shield give me a US IP address on the rare occasions I need one.
If this is the case referenced, the original reference was a blatant lie.
A California citizen wasn't extradited to Florida, to be tried on charges in Florida.
A California citizen was charged, tried, and convicted in federal court. There was no state extradition and misapplication of jurisdiction of state laws.
But hey, people can say anything they want, and still get modded up without factual backing. Gotta love Slashdot.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Vodo uses BitTorrent to distribute. That rules it out for those of us in the "ass-reaming bandwidth costs" part of the world. I pay $2 per GB after the first 50GB in a month thanks very much.
(Next time you complain about 250GB or 1TB bandwidth caps, just give it up in advance - you'll get no sympathy from us).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
And yet a product on Steam is twice the price in AU as it is in US, and it doesn't have any of the above factors to justify it.
Skyrim on AU Steam: $89.99. Skyrim on US Steam: $59.99. A $30 difference, to sell to a country which requires no localisation, in the same currency. There is no sales tax applied, or is there any retail margin. It's just Bethesda and Valve gouging because they think they can. The Bethesda Collection on Steam isn't even available in AU.
Ditto for The Witcher 2: $49.99 AU vs $39.99 US.
There are of course rare exceptions to the rule. Witness:
LA Noire on AU Steam: $14.99. LA Noire on US Steam: $19.99 (wait what?)
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".