Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello Ladies, Gentlemen and Everyone In Between. Today, we, and when I say "we", I mean "I",
am going to talk about digital distribution.
I have bought an audio book. 8 physical CDs in a *** cardboard package. Every single
one of them damaged by the packaging. The content was retrieved thanks to the great
error correction of my drive, but still - I’m done with physical media… well, at least
CDs and DVDs as it’s hard to damage a Blu-ray disc.
You see, the problem with physical media is that even though you just pay for the license
to use the content on it, if the disc is damaged - you’re screwed. If the hard-drive with
all my Steam games would fail, I would of course be upset about losing the drive, but
then I would get a new one and download all my games again. Now, if my entire PlayStation
game collection would get damaged - that’s it. All gone, I would have to pay for it again
which I wouldn’t. Of course I care for the physical media and none of it is even slightly
damaged, but there’s still the risk that if you buy it online, something may go wrong
during shipping.
So why did I even buy a physical audiobook, I hear you ask. And this is where the rant
begins. Of course I wanted to buy it in digital form, but I can’t. Why? Because it’s not
for sale in some countries. Yes, I can order and ship ANY physical object anytime anywhere,
but when it comes to digital distribution, the world seems to be divided more than ever.
This is ridiculous. It’s the internet… and it’s chopped to pieces by country.
How is it possible? Because of politics. There is no physical limitation why an store selling
digital content could not let someone from a different country download it. The only
reason is the law. In some countries, there are stupid legislations, or no legislations
at all, which would in any way prepare the country for making online business with digital
media. Then there are the copyright holders who, because of these legislations, would
have to go through some legal issues when trying to license their digital products for
sale in these countries. And if the country is either not big or there is no big market
for these products, they won’t do it. It’s not worth the hassle.
So people end up in a situation where they go to iTunes on the web, see a product there,
log in to buy it, but because they are residents of a different country, they have no access
to this product.
Here’s what happened to me about a year ago. I have bought the Jurassic Park Trilogy
on Blu-ray. It came on 6 discs - 3 Blu-ray disks one with each movie and 3 DVDs, each
containing one digital copy of the movie. As it said on the box and in the advertisement,
this copy can be transferred to mobile devices. I have an iPod so I thought - let’s do it.
I put the disc into my PC, open iTunes and what do I see? A page asking me to enter a
code. OK, no problem, I got the code, it came with the movies. I enter it and guess what
happened? The transfer started, right? And a few minutes later it was on my computer,
right? Well… WRONG!
An error message popped up saying: “This code is only valid for customers of the United
Kingdom or Ireland Store.” WHAT?! What the ***?! Why? Yes, I did buy the movies from
a UK store, so what? I have the discs. I have the physical discs containing the digital
copy which I now want to transfer to my PC and my iPod and it’s telling me that I can’t
do this because I’m not a resident of the United Kingdom and therefore I have no right
to the content on the disc I’m holding in my hands? This is ***!
Of course, I have tried to change the country of my Apple ID to UK, but then it didn’t
work either because I would need a credit card issued in the UK. For what? I don’t
want to buy anything! I already did, I have the disc, I want to transfer this ***!
So yes, this is the dark side of the digital distribution. And it’s not all. The next
problem is localization. There are certain games on the PlayStation Store that are only
available for me in my local language… and not in English… at all. Why? What if I prefer
the original English version? I like English, I speak English perfectly without any accent…
as you can hear. This is sick. The world is connected through the internet, but buying
stuff from the internet divides it like never before. I’m glad this doesn’t affect Steam
because His Holiness Lord GabeN figured out a way to bypass these stupid regional laws
by selling subscriptions to a license to play a game and not the game itself which technically
makes it a subscription service and not a digital store and they can sell everything
everywhere.
Anyway, this concludes my little rant. What do you think? Will there ever be a universal
set of laws making digital distribution easily accessible in every country? Did you experience
some problems with digital distribution just because you live in a country that is not
the United Surveillance of America? Let me know in the comments below. Good night.
OK, now I will watch something on Netflix. No, wait… I don’t have Netflix. ***!