New Zealand ISP's Anti-Geoblocking Service Makes Waves 153
angry tapir writes New Zealanders and Australians are often blocked from using cheap streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu and instead at the mercy of local content monopolies for popular shows such as Game of Thrones. However, a New Zealand ISP, Slingshot, has caused a stir by making a previously opt-in service called 'Global Mode' a default for its customers. The new service means that people in NZ don't need to bother with VPNs or setting up proxies if they want to sign up to Netflix — they can just visit the site. The service has also caused a stir in Australia where the high price for digital goods, such as movies from the iTunes store, is a constant source of irritation for consumers.
Tits and swords (Score:4, Informative)
You're not missing anything if you don't see GoT. It's just tits and swords.
Needed to stop anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Geo-blocking is a practice that needs to stop anyway, because it makes no sense. Take Steam as an example.
Up until two or three years ago, there were a good number of people who used proxies to buy content not from their region on Steam - this was particularly important for Germans (who are served the "low violence" version of games by default) and Australians/New Zealanders (who were far overcharged compared to the US/UK and could use a proxy to buy stuff from the US Steam store cheaper than they could in Aus/NZ). There was one problem with this system, though. Most publishers sold games on Steam's Russian store for far cheaper than they did on the US or UK stores - a friend of mine bought a 4-pack of copies of Dead Island (back when that was a new-ish game and the 4-pack was going for upwards of $60 on the US store) from Russia for like $20.
Then, Valve started cracking down on cross-region purchases, making it so that you could still add games from other regions but could not actually play them until your IP was detected as being in one of those regions. The problem was that it was applied so that more expensive regions had fewer restrictions - US-bought games can be played anywhere, as can AUS/NZ ones, but games purchased from Russia or a few other regions can't be played outside of those specific regions. This means that if you're from the US and go on vacation in Russia, you can play Counter-Strike GO while in Russia, but if you're Russian and go on vacation to the US you can't play CS:GO while in the US.
It's a ridiculous double-standard, and a counter to geo-blocking would remove a lot of it.
Re:Will local rights holders sue? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Needed to stop anyway (Score:5, Informative)
A couple of points.
First, those restrictions have recently been kicked up a notch in ridiculousness. Some publishers now disallow gift copies in those "cheaper" regions - presumably, to stop such cross-region trading, but you can't even gift the game to someone within the region.
Second, it's important to remember that region restrictions are entirely up to the publisher. As far as I can tell, Steam more or less mandates cheaper prices for Russian region, but adding restrictions is entirely publisher's decision. For instance, no digital copy of a Valve game was ever subject to those restrictions (retail is another matter though). Most indies don't opt for regional versions.
Oh, I'd say it\s much more than that. (Score:4, Informative)
You're not missing anything if you don't see GoT. It's just tits and swords.
and the best writing, performance, and production values of any television series currently on air. List of awards and nominations received by Game of Thrones [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not Australian, but I support this! (Score:4, Informative)
Aussies have voted themselves high taxes on all goods. If they are tired of paying the high taxes on them, well golly do something about it.
Care to name those specific taxes, Mr Expert?
This. There are no additional taxes on digital media beyond sales tax.
As an Australian, I import all my games and movies on disc from places like Hong Kong and the UK (I also buy my books from there too). I pay the UK/HK prices plus shipping and its still cheaper. Even if I had to pay tax (an order under A$900 is tax free) I'd just have to add 10% and I'd still be making a huge saving compared to buying it locally.... and this is 100% legal, it's even legal for an Australian company to drop ship media products and pay local taxes on the transaction.
So I'd also like Mr Expert to point out where these high taxes are?
Australia is amongst one of the lowest taxed nations in the western world (we pay more federal income tax, but no state income taxes like the US and Canada). High costs are a legacy of a time when the AUD was not strong (around US$0.5-0.6) and when we were so isolate we had no choice but to pay stupendously inflated prices. Isolation is not an issue anymore and the AUD has been strong for almost a decade.
The price differential is due to supply and demand, specifically the lack of supply/competition. The local stores have a monopoly on distribution through import agreements with manufacturers which lets them charge what the fuck they want, the retail prices contain a 100-200% mark-up over the actual wholesale cost, including tax, and it is pure profit.
With media, it isn't the stores charging the high prices, it's the distributors. Margins on media are razor thin and when it comes to Apple, Google and other online distributors, they are not local stores but still are beholden to the whims of the "rights holders".