
Why I get my entertainment via BitTorrent - luminarious
http://luminarious.tumblr.com/post/5416346842/20-web-services-not-available-in-estonia
======
billpg
As someone with money who enjoys a lot of American TV, I'm not really
interested in excuses why these services are not available worldwide.

Quit making excuses and make it happen. The torrenters don't seem to have any
trouble building a global distribution network, and they are hiding from the
law while simultaneously kicking your butt.

If you don't want to make it happen, quit whining about losing money. I have
money and you have TV shows, so let's make a deal.

~~~
RealGeek
The delay in geographical releases is because studios license the copyrights
to a regional studio or a distribution company.

Unfortunately, this arrangements prohibits them to use any alternate
distribution channels to release the content on their own. Also, the regional
company is unlikely to have any arrangements with services like Netflix and
Hulu.

In the end its all about the money and bureaucracy.

~~~
ashconnor
Surely they realise they are losing money?

~~~
krschultz
Are they losing money? If you canabalize your existing revenue stream by
destroying distributor relationships in exchange for a new revenue stream that
is tiny, you will lose money. Contrary to popular belief, most of the people
making lots of money as executives are not stupid. They just have more data
than the arm-chair quarterbacks have. What seems 'obvious' to us hackers is
not always as clear cut when you have the numbers in front of you.

------
Nate75Sanders
I try to explain this type of thing to people who are ardently anti-piracy:

You can never, ever, expect people to miss out on the culture that's happening
during their lives.

If money, or geography, or whatever is preventing it, they'll still do the
best they can to make sure they don't miss anything.

~~~
vdm
This is so true, and I reckon people in the US have no idea how crippled
online access to entertainment is abroad. Moreover, culture is going global,
which should be an opportunity, but in reality exacerbates the problem.

Recently, while in Germany, I found Youtube content to be highly restricted. I
could not view music videos that I can view in Ireland, and I find this
arbitrary restriction oppressive. I would imagine that others do too, and will
just avail of whatever other means are available to them. Torrents and such
are just filling a vacuum.

In Ireland none of the mainstream music streaming services (Spotify, Rhapsody)
are available. Grooveshark is.

~~~
piaskal
This is very annoying, especially in situations when it's not a music video,
but the video has some background music not available in my county.

------
StudyAnimal
As an English speaker in Germany I was particularly interested in using things
like iTunes (which is available here) to access TV.

What do you know, it is exclusively German language content. And it is also
only released when it airs in Germany rather than when it first airs in the US
or the UK.

Where is the logic there? If I wanted to get German language TV when it airs
on TV, I would just watch TV.

The whole system doesn't make sense.

~~~
rrrazdan
The whole system makes eminent sense. Content that has been permitted by the
owner is released in your country, when the owner permits. If you are resort
to piracy because of this, you are still stealing.

~~~
DarkShikari
_Content that has been permitted by the owner is released in your country,
when the owner permits._

There is no legal means for someone to restrict where and when I can and
cannot choose to view or use content I own, as much as they would love to
think so. And they indeed love to think so: I've actually seen companies claim
that it is illegal to _use the software they sell outside of the country they
sell it in_.

If a movie by company X is released in country A but not country B, company X
cannot prevent me from watching their movie in country B. I may have to go out
of my way to import a copy, but there is nothing illegal about doing so (at
least not under the laws of typical Western countries).

If this wasn't true, it would basically be illegal to take any sort of media-
carrying device (laptop, iPod, etc) outside of the country where you bought
the relevant media.

~~~
wccrawford
And so you can import it, assuming your country's laws permit.

But if you want the content owner to sell it to you directly, you'll have to
wait for them want to do so. The reasons for them not wanting to do so could
include laws, expenses, or other craziness that you aren't aware of.

Believe it or not, we experience the same crap here in the US in regards to
foreign stuff. BBC shows are really popular here, but are usually delayed at
best. Trying to find foreign-language stuff is almost impossible.

So while I share your pain, I also know that there's more to it than it might
appear at first glance.

~~~
cabalamat
> But if you want the content owner to sell it to you directly, you'll have to
> wait for them want to do so.

.. or use BitTorrent!

If the content owner refuses to sell the content to someone, then that person
isn't depriving them of any income by pirating it. If an activity harms no-
one, then it can't be immoral to do it. If the law says otherwise, it's a bad
law.

~~~
wccrawford
If someone refuses to sell you the Mona Lisa for the price you want, it's okay
to copy it?

Because let's be honest, they aren't just refusing to sell the TV episode to
you... They're refusing to sell it at market rates. If you offered them a
million dollars for the latest episode of XYZ show, they'd make it happen on
your schedule.

What you're saying is that if you can't have it your way, it's perfectly
ethical to just take it. And I can't agree with that.

~~~
rms
>If someone refuses to sell you the Mona Lisa for the price you want, it's
okay to copy it?

Yes! The Mona Lisa is in the public domain, copying it is perfectly
acceptable.

------
yason
And that's why the European counterparts of MAFIAA shouldn't be able to appeal
to lost sales in many of these countries because _don't have any fucking sales
to lose_.

I've long advocated a fair-use rule that where a copyrighted work in some
format isn't readily for sale in some geographical area, then people in that
area should have the legal right to produce a copy of it in that format for
themselves. The format is relevant because if people want CDs or uncompressed
FLAC albums but they can only buy a lousy DRM-ridden 128Kbit/s MP3 instead, it
shouldn't count.

Same goes with old music or films: if nobody's selling, people have the legal
right to copy. If the copyright holder decides to start selling again, the
legal right to copy goes away. Then the longevity of a copyright would matter
much less.

~~~
danieldk
Indeed. I'd add to that that paying 15 Euro for a BluRay may be perfectly
acceptable in the Western world, but a huge budget hit in the rest of the
world.

The buy 'physical media via the Internet' argument doesn't fly there either.

~~~
roel_v
Right, and a 250k Lamborghini is also a huge budget hit for me in the West.
Which is why I drive a shitty Citroen.

I'm sick and tired of the entitled whining. Nobody owes you the right to
listen to the latest album of whoever is at the top of the charts; in fact,
nobody owes you anything but what they agreed on. The proposition is very
clear: there are people who create something. They give it to you, on the
condition that you pay for it. They may not want to offer it to you because
it's too hard to do business in your country. If you don't agree to their
terms, or their decision not to offer you their stuff, that still doesn't give
you the right to just take whatever it is they're offering from another
source.

Feel free to find other people who make things you want and offer it at terms
you accept; or petition people to offer things at a cheaper price; or
whatever. But taking things from creators against their wishes is not only
criminal but also immoral.

(Maybe you still do it, even if it's criminal and immoral. That's a personal
decision. But then just acknowledge it for what it is and don't try to weasel
yourself out of the moral responsibility).

~~~
ericd
I gather from your comments that your moral code depends heavily on the rule
of law. Many people don't base their moral code very heavily on the laws
currently on the books, except as far as those laws reflect the original
intent of law - to make the world a better place to live overall. It's
generally agreed upon that stealing physical goods, murdering, etc. make the
world a more unruly, unpleasant, inefficient, discouraging place for meek,
cooperative people. Filesharing doesn't fall into the same league in those
terms, so many don't really believe it's immoral, especially if one wasn't
going to buy those files if there was no alternative. In that case, it's like
happiness created from nothing. This other moral code makes the morality
question a good bit murkier.

That's my understanding, anyway.

~~~
krschultz
If filesharing undermines the creators to the point where they stop creating,
will the world be a better place? In case you haven't noticed, we've had
YouTube for years but the home-made movies are not on the same level as the
ones produced by the major studies. Most indy bands are good, but can't reach
their full potential without financial support. Filesharing undermines that
whole system, especially because it would be near technically impossible to
prevent something from being shared in all countries except those where the
work is not being sold.

~~~
ericd
Good question, but the more important one is whether filesharing is doing
that. This is where the question of whether someone would have bought
something otherwise or not comes in.

Anecdotally, most of the people I know who fileshare just consume more now
than they did, in a wider variety. Some of them have stopped buying stuff, but
most of them haven't, and many went to Hulu, iTunes, Grooveshark, Pandora,
etc. as soon as those became a good enough alternative.

You don't need to prevent it completely, that's putting your eyes on the wrong
goal (though this seems to be the tack that they're taking). You just need to
make the alternative as easy or easier and inexpensive enough to not think too
much about if you're moderately well off. It's a stupid company that tries to
force their market to act in the way they want it to, rather than finding a
way to cater to them.

------
ThomPete
There is no need to rationalize why you use Bittorrent, there is no argument
to win and nothing to defend.

It's not stealing, it's not not stealing it's just a fact that people will
continue to use bittorrents as long as there is too much friction to get it
legally.

Bittorrent will be around as long as the content owners insist on localizing
copyright and not offering their content to a globally oriented customer base.

~~~
jgroome
I think that's a bit of an oversimplification.

You can use bittorrent to download and watch a film that's been released on
DVD. This deprives the content created of a sale/hire/watch on demand, so in
theory they lose out on revenue.

You can also use bittorrent to download and watch a TV show that was broadcast
in another country the night before and that will never be shown on your
country's TV network. Think about NBC or Comedy Central - 30 Rock and Colbert
aren't going to be broadcast in the UK any time soon, and their content owners
refuse to let international users watch online. Torrenting this content is
therefore a victimless crime.

~~~
robryan
Wouldn't surprise me either if the ones torrenting end up spending more money
on the show that those who catch is casually when it finally does get aired.

I've been to concerts where the artist is touring Australia for the first time
and hasn't ever done any Australia specific marketing and they manage to fill
out venues. Doubt that would have happened before file sharing.

~~~
jgroome
Without a doubt - look at a band like Tool. I don't mind saying that I
torrented every one of their albums. Grew to love them, bought the CDs, went
to a dozen of their concerts, spent at least £50 on merchandise over the
years.

------
mahrain
Same goes for Holland, this, and TV is very unreliable and a year behind the
USA. Plus movies are usually released a few months after the USA.

~~~
mhd
Germany is usually even more behind, _and_ TV broadcasts and movies are
horribly dubbed versions. I'd gladly pay three to five times as much for
Netflix as it costs in the US if it were available...

~~~
Nate75Sanders
If you're willing to pay that much, sounds like you just need to grab a
$20/month server in the US and use it as a VPN endpoint, then use whatever
services in the US that you like.

~~~
asymmetric
For Netflix, he'd also need a US credit card.

~~~
Nate75Sanders
Ah, didn't realize that. Maybe gifting or something would work.

~~~
danieldk
The better alternative is iTunes. You don't need a VPN, since Apple is not
blocking based on IP address.

You'll only need a US address (I am at Starbucks pretty much all day) and a US
iTunes gift card (easy to get by), and you are settled.

It's a grey area, but MAFIAA should prefer it over piracy ;).

~~~
mauriciob
It is illegal in pretty much every country (US included) to give fake
information. If you don't own/rent a place in the US, you shouldn't inform it.

------
markokocic
Well, this is just rationalizing.

Stealing something (or obtaining it illegally) just because someone doesn't
want to sell it to you (or give it to you for free) is still stealing (or
obtaining it illegally), regardless of the fact that you want it so bad.

As long as you own something, you have the right to choose if you want to sell
it to some country, give it for free or do whatever else.

~~~
bonzoesc
It really is a symptom of the decadence and entitlement of your typical
Internet user. If somebody doesn't want you to have a thing they made, why not
do without instead of acting against their wishes, taking it illegally, and
rationalizing it?

~~~
Splines
Because it's easy, and the costs are low?

I sometimes torrent TV shows that I forgot to DVR and don't really feel bad
about it.

 _It really is a symptom of the decadence and entitlement of your typical
Internet user._

If the entire internet disappeared tomorrow, am I allowed to complain about
it? Where do you draw the line? ("Be thankful for your brocolli, there are
starving children in Africa")

~~~
bonzoesc
Breaking car windows with spark plug ceramic is easy and just like piracy, you
don't directly bear the costs. Cheap and easy isn't a justification for
immoral behavior.

------
rb2k_
I recently found an interesting DNS based service that will allow you to
access some of them:

[http://blog.marc-seeger.de/2011/04/07/hulu-and-iplayer-
outsi...](http://blog.marc-seeger.de/2011/04/07/hulu-and-iplayer-outside-the-
us-without-a-vpn)

The advantage over a VPN-based solution is that there is no need to route all
of your traffic over the VPN. Most of the time they only redirect the geo-
location stuff and once you receive the videostream URL, that transfer will go
over your 'regular' connection. It also allows you to just put their DNS
servers into your router and your Apple TV / Wii / iPad ... will automatically
use the service.

Security wise, they might be able to redirect any domain resolution to their
servers, but they still won't be able to fake the SSL certificates. As long as
you're using IMAPS/HTTPS/*S you should be fine I guess.

~~~
xutopia
For many of the services listed you need a credit card with an American
address.

~~~
rb2k_
They link to a virtual debit card:

<http://www.unblock-us.com/how-to-set-up/netflix/>

------
felxh
And even if some of these services are available in your country you might get
screwed. For instance I once bought a music album on iTunes. A few weeks later
a friend of mine sends me a link on grooveshark to a song from the same
artist. I've never heard the song before but to my surprise it is supposed to
be on the same album I own. I do a little research and find out that the album
sold in US iTunes store contains two extra bonus tracks! I check to see if
there is another version of the same album in my 'local' iTunes store, but no,
it appears these two bonus tracks are only available in the US

------
martey
I don't think that the services mentioned _want_ to exclude non-Americans. All
of them deal with music or video, both of which require country-specific
licensing.

~~~
gcb
slicing up markets artificially is the first sign of collusion, cartels.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
In this case the boundaries aren't artificial, they're historic.

The world will move to laws which are unified (or at least close enough) and
allow day and date releases and true international markets but it's
unrealistic to expect it to happen overnight.

But a resistance to change (some of which will have it's feet in positive
intentions, some in negative) is different to collusion.

~~~
maw
_In this case the boundaries aren't artificial, they're historic._

They can be both, actually.

 _The world will move to laws which are unified (or at least close enough) and
allow day and date releases and true international markets but it's
unrealistic to expect it to happen overnight._

I hope you're right about this.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Sorry, should have been clearer - they may be artificial but these are
historic boundaries which while they may support (in some ways) certain
business interests, are not there because of them and in almost all cases pre-
date those interests by a considerable period.

------
warseph
Same thing happens in Argentina, I tried some times to buy certain games
online, but for some weird reason for digital content, the purchased is
limited to the US and Mexico. Why does this limitation even exist for digital
content?

~~~
mauriciob
I've only seen one Steam game that couldn't be bought in Brazil (I still don't
know why).

I'm guessing it depends at which store you are buying it. Many of the US
stores don't sell to foreigners, though. Could they be afraid of fraud?

~~~
warseph
I saw it in several games in Direct2Drive, (this games had the same
restrictions in other online stores). I don't think is fraud though, as the
same site sells other games to Argentina. This is what direct2drive says on
the matter: Why are some games "country restricted" ? This is a limitation set
by either the game developer or the internet distribution laws your country.
We have to abide by both of their wishes.

------
wyclif
Some of these (I'm looking at you, BBC iPlayer) aren't even available in the
USA.

~~~
corin_
And likewise none of the streaming options for American shows are available in
the UK.

Now, with American shows, I think there could easily be a good business model
- we've seen English TV channels pick up American shows (sometimes running
almost in sync with America, more often than not running a year or two behind)
with success. Examples include The West Wing, Friends, Glee, Will and Grace,
Family Guy, CSI and so on. So I think there could be enough of an audience
over here to be worth doing it.

But iPlayer for non-UK viewers, it just isn't feasible. Firstly, BBC have the
content licensed for UK viewing only, and they can't pay extra for
international viewers because they are funded by the public (TV license over
here). For the BBC website, international viewers see adverts, but that model
can't be extended to iPlayer for a few reasons. Firstly, and least
importantly, BBC never puts advertising into its shows, and they don't want to
go against that, even for an international audience. That could be got around
quite easily. Secondly, selling video adverts is a lot more complex (from a
sales point of view, not technical) than shoving them into a website, it would
take more work from them. And finally, if they were to sell adverts and open
up iPlayer to an international audience, I doubt they would make enough
revenue from the adverts to justify internationally licensing the content,
i.e. there just wouldn't be enough people watching it.

~~~
jodrellblank
Why couldn't the BBC charge international viewers directly? $(License_fee/12)
per month, say.

~~~
corin_
Technically they could, but it would mean creating and managing a new license
fee system.

Right now there's no enforcement of the license fee, just the knowledge that,
to watch live broadcasts (either on TV or online) you must have a license, and
if a TV license inspector catches you, you'll be in trouble.

~~~
lookingsideways
With the iPlayer service, if you watch any of the live-streaming channels and
you don't have a TV License you will eventually get a letter informing you
that you need to pay the license fee. Fail to obtain the TV License after that
point and you are subject to the normal fines.

I think the BBC must have some form of tie-in with the ISPs as I know a number
of people that have had this happen to them.

~~~
corin_
I'm regularly tunnelling all my traffic through a UK VPS (not for geolocation
regions, I'm in the UK myself anyway), and never had any issues watching
iPlayer.

And if I watched to avoid it, I could always use something like
www.tvcatchup.com to watch the live content, and just go onto the iPlayer for
VOD content (for which you don't need a license).

I wonder - traditionally a TV license is per household, not per person,
meaning that if I want to watch on a TV in a friend's house, they need to have
a license, not me. With internet access, how does that work. For example, say
they were able to prove I had been watching iPlayer live streams in my house,
what if it was a friend watching on their laptop, and they own a license? What
if you're watching from a public WiFi or a 3G connection on a train? The
"license for the house" doesn't quite translate.

------
ajkessler
I'm going to guess that a lot of the reason these services aren't available in
a lot of other countries is not that they don't want your money, but rather
that your governments either have ridiculous regulations to navigate, or there
are concerns about their ability to protect intellectual property rights.

~~~
archangel_one
I highly doubt it is the former. I hear the US have pretty ridiculous
regulations if you want to do crazy things like broadcast videos over the
internet: <http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html>. Somehow these
services manage to exist in the US regardless of the ridiculous regulations
there, but allofmp3.com got stamped on despite complying with Russian law
because they fell afoul of licensing interests in the US.

As for the latter, what exactly is the point in "protecting intellectual
property rights" in Estonia if you don't sell anything there in the first
place, and as a result everyone there who would like to buy your stuff is
getting it off thepiratebay.org? Sounds like the worst of both worlds to me.

~~~
ajkessler
The fact that the U.S. might have ridiculous regulations has nothing to do
with it. If you're a business, you might be willing to wade through all that
red tape once, especially for the biggest consumer market in the world. Are
you willing to do it 30 times? 195 times? If the Estonian market represents a
paltry amount of money, why bother?

------
vitolds
I would also add to this list audible.com which restricts certain books to US
only. I am a platinum subscriber to audible, however, I couldn't get my hands
on Stephen King's Under The Dome. So I got it from the thepiratebay pretty
much on the next day. I did buy other King's books on audible though.

------
luminarious
Note that a large number of these are apps stores. I can imagine the licencing
fees or whatnot being the showstoppers for audio/video, but what on earth is
so difficult about selling applications?

------
rakkhi
I bought the Apple TV2 in the UK, was so excited to fire it up and switch on
Netflix and Hulu and Justin.tv. #researchfail

------
jlgosse
Last I checked, Estonia can use Android Market. Although maybe that's one of
the "new" additions?

~~~
Strom
Only free apps work.

~~~
Aissen
They announced yesterday that they added 99 new countries for paid apps. See:
[https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=1437...](https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=143779&hl=fr)
(previous list, not translated yet as of now)

[https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=1437...](https://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=143779&hl=en)
(new list)

------
AlexC04
Why not start just one of those ? Seems like an opportunity.

------
oemera
Wait. This is YCombinator right? Why on earth does no-one create a startup to
make buying digital copies easier wherever you live? Why is that so hard?

~~~
_delirium
It's actually part of #1 on YCombinator's list of ideas they'd like to fund:
<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

But it's a tricky problem, because of the heavy involvement of intellectual-
property laws and tangled webs of existing licensing arrangements (defended by
large incumbent players with large legal teams).

