what the fuck internet?
- Thread starter Vault101
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I ran into a similar problem when I tried to buy a friend of mine who'd moved to Canada some points on xbox live. Turns out the points cards are only good in the country you buy them in which was a real "wtf?" moment for the both of us. I think I ended up just gifting him a game on Steam, though I found out later through the grapevine that gifting games to people in other countries can get you banned.Vault101 said:
Yeah, it's strange how people who want to buy something online doesn't want to go to a store to buy something and then move on to buying it online. It's not like that defeats the purpose or anything...imahobbit4062 said:
OT: It's all about licensing and distribution rights. In order to sell a product in a region you need clearance to sell something in any country. Amazon.co.uk only got clearance for UK while Amazon.com got it for USA and I guess amazon.de only got clearance for Germany. It is in fact more strict for digital distribution than for physical products. Ordering something and have it mailed to you means that it will cross the border openly and customs will take care to make sure it is handled by the country's policies. With digital distribution all this has to be done in advance. Part of the reason is because of the taxes on products and the differences in different countries. In short there's a whole lot of bureaucratic crap that is overly complicated.
Short story - They can't.
I dont think so. I seem to recall (this was a while ago) several ps one classic games on the store that were not on the UK version. Maybe they just came available later...bahumat42 said:
It's very simple. Just buy MP3s from the amazon in your own region.Vault101 said:
iTunes has region-locking too, most people just don't notice because they always link you to the iTunes store for your own country and don't let you access any of the others.
And yes I know there is no Amazon for Australia. There must be alternative MP3 websites though.
Obviously the guys who own the songs are just doing their best to support people resorting to piracy so they can complain about it later.
Because of rights issues. Amazon makes deals with the US distributors. In order to deal with Australians they would also have to make a deal for the Australian distro rights.Vault101 said:
This is why Canadian Netflix, for example, sucks.
The US gets a lot of this stuff because it's horrible to its artists and therefore can keep the prices low.
The reason for regional pricing is almost always 'because one particular region is very susceptible to being ripped off, and we don't want them to import things cheaper'.
Compare Australian prices to russian prices, consider that at one time Russians pirated everything and bought nothing, and you'll see what I mean. Similarly, anime always has a massive lag in release for no other reason than to stop Japanese folks from importing it at a fifth of the cost.
Compare Australian prices to russian prices, consider that at one time Russians pirated everything and bought nothing, and you'll see what I mean. Similarly, anime always has a massive lag in release for no other reason than to stop Japanese folks from importing it at a fifth of the cost.
Remember when price fixing was illegal?rhizhim said:
Oh, Steam, one day you will take over and cease your benevolence facade.
I get the feeling that in transnational Corporate Globalist Capitalism, distribution of media and who is allowed to enjoy what is far more political than it ought to be.
And the "politics" between companies. That is, the complicated entwining of rights between companies between places, laws, and "fair enough" competition and licensing. Like "oh, you get to deal with the French version of this and we get x profit for using this work but you get x because x and x is your right."
In the end, though, we should all have freedom to stuff, which is controversial. And rights of companies shouldn't be divided upon national lines like they are. Leading to this overly complicated licensing mess. In an ideal world, there would mostly just be artists and fans.
I don't normally feel like the "Free-Market Capitalist" type. But this whole matter is stupid. It's junk. And as a big importer of movies and video games, it is disgusting how Corporations tend to divide markets the way they do. Almost as if to imply different cultures do not exist and should not be available in a globalist economy and world.
And the "politics" between companies. That is, the complicated entwining of rights between companies between places, laws, and "fair enough" competition and licensing. Like "oh, you get to deal with the French version of this and we get x profit for using this work but you get x because x and x is your right."
In the end, though, we should all have freedom to stuff, which is controversial. And rights of companies shouldn't be divided upon national lines like they are. Leading to this overly complicated licensing mess. In an ideal world, there would mostly just be artists and fans.
I don't normally feel like the "Free-Market Capitalist" type. But this whole matter is stupid. It's junk. And as a big importer of movies and video games, it is disgusting how Corporations tend to divide markets the way they do. Almost as if to imply different cultures do not exist and should not be available in a globalist economy and world.
Well, law wise? There's probably some licensing issue.
Common sense and decency wise? No. There's no goddamn reason for this kinda stuff. That the media industry has the balls to go around asking to infringe everyone's rights to go after pirates and then do practises like this that encourage and even partially justify the cause of piracy to the pirates themselves baffles me. It's like when an old show with episodes on youtube is removed due to copyright issues, but the company that owns the rights has not made the DVD/download releases readily available, and is doing NOTHING with the license, no new series, nothing, just sitting on it.
Honestly, they should be forced by law to make a choice; Make your products easily and readily available, or lose any right to complain about youtube uploads or piracy.
Common sense and decency wise? No. There's no goddamn reason for this kinda stuff. That the media industry has the balls to go around asking to infringe everyone's rights to go after pirates and then do practises like this that encourage and even partially justify the cause of piracy to the pirates themselves baffles me. It's like when an old show with episodes on youtube is removed due to copyright issues, but the company that owns the rights has not made the DVD/download releases readily available, and is doing NOTHING with the license, no new series, nothing, just sitting on it.
Honestly, they should be forced by law to make a choice; Make your products easily and readily available, or lose any right to complain about youtube uploads or piracy.
The reason is because of legality issues. They can't do anything about it and so whatever. And yeah, they try to take advantage of the situation, like any of you guys would do yourself if you had the opportunity. Because you're all greedy and juvenile.
This is just a personal rant for something no one can do anything about and which doesn't have anything to actually do with piracy.
This is just a personal rant for something no one can do anything about and which doesn't have anything to actually do with piracy.
This reminds me of one time with an old Paypal account I created. I'd set up my account with my location as Ireland, but that was a mistake because the card I was using was for a Northern Irish bank. So I tried to change my location and the only option it gave me was America. Because naturally anyone who moves to a different country is obviously moving to America. xD
I dunno of there was a reason it did that, but I was terribly miffed about it. It was a while ago though, so hopefully it's changed by now.
I dunno of there was a reason it did that, but I was terribly miffed about it. It was a while ago though, so hopefully it's changed by now.