Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 24 February 2008 09:00
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
The two-tiered system we have now just creates a digital content divide, and needlessly pushes some into content piracy. But it’s also a case for the license holders and publishers, who have failed to quickly adapt to the new global connected reality.
The problem is the existing worldwide distribution arrangements. If everyone could just get their content online, what does this mean for local television stations, local movie distributors, DVD rental stores and record stores?
Yet this is a problem that has been building for a decade, and while piracy has hurt, it still hasn’t put TV networks, cinemas and record stores out of business.
Sure, some will have been affected, some may have even closed down. But the majority remain, and still make profits every year.
There is an argument to make these existing companies part of the online distribution chain, but that would get rather messy and see percentages being added on to the final cost in a world where online makes the middle man less necessary than ever.
In the end, some of these companies will disappear, but consolidation is natural in any industry, especially after years of growth.
Apple, of course, isn’t the only company to be inflicting users with this kind of content restriction pain. Microsoft offer the Xbox 360 Live download service, offering TV shows and movies in standard and high definition. But only in the US, and not here in Australia or other countries.
The big TV networks in the US actively check your IP address and will refuse to stream content to anyone who is not physically located in US territory, even if you are a US citizen who happens to be visiting another country.
It happens with hardware too, not just digital content in zeros and ones. Apple themselves restrict the iPhone from being officially available in other than authorised countries, something that only used to happen if you lived in one of the ‘axis of evil’ countries not on the United States’ friends list on Facebook.
Free trade? Globalisation? Content restrictions? Please read onto page 3.
