Region restrictions (rage-post)

[Sanshin77]

Ok, Im getting angry. Sometimes(quite often) I wish I was born in america. Im sure some of you don't even know abouth this, but it is f***** . The entertainment industry, specifically the guys who provide everyone with movies, TV-Shows and games are treating some(read: many) of their customers like crap. They have the products, we want to buy them, but they fail to deliever them. This post is dedicated to everyone who's seen a message similar to this: "The service is not availble in your country/region...". Some examples follow, please reply and discuss eventually add more cases.


Example 1: iTunes
I'm a great fan of the NBC show "Heroes", but here in Norway there is no legal way to watch the latest episodes, I'm not talking about a 1-2 week delay, season 4 starts in the US soon and we don't even know when season 3 will be aired here. So I find the show in the iTunes store, all seasons in both SD and HD, at a reasonable price but of course - I AM NOT ALLOWED TO BUY THEIR FRIGGIN PRODUCT, seriously they don't want my money. If I insist on paying for the episodes I will have to use a US proxy and a fake address in order to get a US iTunes account. How stupid is this. And they keep scratching their heads on how to reduce piracy...

Example 2: XBox Live Community Games
So as everyone should know by now, trufun released Bop 'N Pop for the 360 some weeks ago, and I wanted to check it out... -> "This offer isn't availble in your region...". So essentially Microsoft says "No way!", "You can't have that game, and trufun is better off without your money". Grrrrr.....

Example 3: BlazBlue - Calamity Trigger
Some days ago I watched this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUxh8sDIJg0 . I thought it looked really cool and decided to pick it up since it was already realeased. I was in the store today and didn't find the game. When I came home I found out that the game never was released in Europe, and there aren't any plans for it either. As if that wasn't enough, the US copies of the game are region coded just in case, so that no X360 gamers in Europe will be able to play it.


I know some of you will start talking about copyrights, deals, agreements, marketing/publishing cost and more complications, but cmon there isn't really a good reason for this. They should be able to get the deals and agreements, set up the servers and give the whole world a chance to choose not to go piracy methods. Dunno if anyone minds reading this but I was angry, and it kinda helped. Now I'm going away on vacation for a week.

[Netwatcher]

Right there with you buddy, wanna kill http://www.hulu.com/, while I was in the U.S. i used this service flawlessly, but now I can only reach it through proxies that mess my connection.
All in all, it sucks.

[MarauderIIC]

Dunno what to say besides, "I can see where that would get really frigging annoying."

[Sanshin77]

Right there with you buddy, wanna kill http://www.hulu.com/, while I was in the U.S. i used this service flawlessly, but now I can only reach it through proxies that mess my connection.
All in all, it sucks.

Yeah, and I forgot Hulu :P

[eatcomics]

Darn these conspiracies!

[dandymcgee]

That does suck man, I never notice these things as I'm in the U.S., but I understand how frustrated you must get sometimes at not even having the option to do things legally.

[Bludklok]

Your not allowed to get Hulu?! Wow I never even had the idea that foreigners didn't have access to a lot of these things. I wonder what else foreigners are restricted from.

[wearymemory]

Your not allowed to get Hulu?! Wow I never even had the idea that foreigners didn't have access to a lot of these things. I wonder what else foreigners are restricted from.

Obesity.

[Bludklok]

Your not allowed to get Hulu?! Wow I never even had the idea that foreigners didn't have access to a lot of these things. I wonder what else foreigners are restricted from.

Obesity.

True...

[programmerinprogress]

I agree like any Irate brit would, I would love to use a service like Hulu, but I get that blasted region-restricted crap!

Also, one to add to the list, AOL music, wee used to listen to it in our IT class back in '06, but then AOL decided to be assholes and restrict it to the US

itunes is available in the UK, but there have been many stories about how expensive our music is in comparision to other countries.

So yeah, totally agree, these companies/copyrights need to get global

Oh and I forgot to mention the biggest culprit in my eyes, YouTube! it's cool that they have a film and TV service now, if I could F****** watch it! (all I get is world cinema, and pretty awful world cinema at the )

EDIT: they also need to get their act together about region-restricted music aswell, why the hell do they think people upload music videos that are already on the site again and again? because international viewers want to see them!

[Netwatcher]

Same with Pandora, the internet radio.

http://www.pandora.com/restricted

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints...

BS...

[wearymemory]

Same with Pandora, the internet radio.

http://www.pandora.com/restricted

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints...

BS...

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/9594/67428829.png
Not all businesses can provide their services to everyone because the laws may be different in each country. In the US, you steal and you get put in jail, in Iraq, you steal and you get your hand cut off. We're so goddamn awesome!