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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?"
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
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.
The content that's on Hulu is also on TPB. The only thing that I'm blocked from is paying for it.
Music distributors, are you listening? I want to buy music from an artist I like, but your distribution agreements with iTunes won't let me (legitimately) PURCHASE the music you supposedly want to sell (it's only available in Canada, I live in the USA).
You are driving your WILLING customers to piracy with your idiotic market segmentation!
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
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.