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In New Zealand, a Legal Battle Looms Over Streaming TV
SpacemanukBEJY.53u writes After a threat from a law firm, two New Zealand ISPs have withdrawn services that let their customers navigate to content sites outside the country that world normally be geo-blocked. Using VPNs or other services to access content restricted by region isn't specifically outlawed in either New Zealand or in neighboring Australia, but it appears the entertainment industry is prepared to go to court to try and argue that such services can violate copyright law. Intellectual property experts said the situation in New Zealand, if it goes to court, could result in the first test case over the legality of skirting regional restrictions.
Because, the entertainment industry has decided that it is 100% in control of who are their customers, when they are their customers, and how much they will have to pay for the privilege of being customers.
In this case, I suspect because they've decided the people in New Zealand will get it six months later, for twice the price.
The same as they don't want you to be able to buy a DVD elsewhere in the world and bring it into your own country and watch it.
Of course the media industry is malignant, but they keep bribing or bullying lawmakers to stack the deck in their favor ... so much so that the copyright of multinational corporations is more firmly entrenched in the law than the rights of citizens on some topics.
We live in a world in which the media companies have co-opted the legal system, with the help of governments who help push the agenda against the interests of their own citizens.
If the media companies had any say in the matter, buying a CD to rip the songs to MP3 to play on your portable device would be illegal.
Because they're assholes who somehow feel their business model is more important than property rights.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The concept of geoblocking digital data is silly. New Zealand could solve this problem by simply making it illegal.
Geographical restrictions on digital content is an anachronistic holdover from from physical markets as applied to digital markets - from back in the days you couldn't just grab any sort of media from anywhere at any time off the internet. It's amazing how ridiculously non-adaptable the media companies have proven themselves to be. If you try to restrict a region, they'll just pirate the stuff anyhow, or (naturally) use a VPN to bypass country restrictions.
These companies need to realize that there's really only ONE digital market. If they just made it convenient and affordable for customers to get their product instead of trying to control and coerce the markets, and they'd have a lot more success in the long run. They should be using the internet's strengths to reach more customers more easily, not fighting against it. Idiots.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Good question.
It's because the entertainment industry is in a panic. Everything's digital now, and that presents a major problem.
Look at the population of tech-savvy people in that industry as compared to tech-savvy people not in that population.
Computer literacy has grown exponentially, just as the Internet has, and the skill level to circumvent copyright laws and protections is minimal, especially when those of greater skills can inform the unwashed.
The entertainment industry has long charged too much for its goods. That kind of obvious when you look at net income of these folks.
They are going to have to bite the bullet and open the markets to legitimate commerce or give their stuff away by not dealing with reality.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
It doesn't matter whether it is illegal or not. John Key (the prime minister) changed the country's employment laws under urgency when Warner Brothers threatened to move the hobbit offshore due to a union problem. I doubt a loop hole that allowed the NZ public to circumvent the will of the studios is going to survive long. But he has a great smile so we keep voting him in.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/oct/31/warner-bros-new-zealand-hobbit-film