"Content cannot be shown outside the United States." ERRGH!

The BBQ Pit
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Part rant and part question.

I am an American living in Asia. Because I live outside the United States, many media services are closed to me.

For example, if I wanted to access HULU, I will be denied access to the free videos, with a statement stating that it cannot be shown outside the United States:mad:. Why the f**k do they do this crap?

I tried HULU the other day and found out that it was working. I was thrilled. I knew my time on it would be short, so I watched a lot in a short period of time. There were things on there I haven’t seen since I was a kid thirty years ago. My favorite show was SOAP.

Today, no HULU, just the “Cannot stream outside USA,” shit. HULU has commercials. Fair enough. But the products they sell can be bought almost anywhere worldwide. The explanation is about “licensing” of the TV shows to be seen. Why all the restrictive licencing? I want to watch a 1977 episode of “Rhoda” for fk sake.

The networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX) have these restrictions also. My question is, why don’t these networks just stream their content worldwide, or allow people to watch their local TV channels through the channels website?

I like the Canadian show “Trailer Park Boys”. Although I can find that show all over the internet now, their producer SHOWCASE would not allow the show to be streamed over their website outside of Canada. This seems to be stupid and counterproductive, and keeps the show from getting a wider audience from the country next door which has 10 times as many people.

Good news is that I can watch new TV shows from domestic websites that basically steals a broadcast and shows it several days later. (For example, Modern Family comes on Wednesday. By Friday, the episode will be on the website.)

There are probably a few people here from other countries. This restriction really, really, really pisses me off.

Lawyers, go take a long walk off a short pier into a shark tank.

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because the show producers, or the networks themselves if it’s an in-house production, sell the rights to broadcast these shows in other countries.

letting you watch them for free from their websites diminishes the value of the product that 3rd party distributors in foreign lands have paid for.

lamest. pit. evah?

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They’re hiding all of the Beatles videos from you!

ETA: You’re allowed to watch all the Oasis ones you want, though.

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Frankly, it pisses me off too. But then I remember that I don’t actually have a *right *to free stuff on the internet. So I get over it.

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Is it ok for me to pit the fact that there is a significant amount of stuff that I cannot even buy because I am not in the US. Amazon won’t let me buy and download music or buy any non book items.

I am greatful to emusic - but I cannot buy certain audiobooks because I am not in the US or Canada.

Maybe they just don’t like our plastic money.

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I’m more angry about being unable to buy stuff online from the US or the UK (electronics). As explained above, it is a shame I can’t watch Hulu, but there are very reasonable reasons for it.

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Do you live in the US?

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Suck it up and spend a few dollars a month on a VPN connection to the US.

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Just go to proxy.org and find a proxy in the US. Connect through that. You’ll have to keep trying a few, as many don’t allow video through, and many are recognised by these sorts of online services. But there’s so many of them, you’re bound to find one that works.

The very worst offender for this sort of think is the UK’s Channel 4. You cannot view their videos on Youtube if you reside inside the UK. The rationale for this is a mystery, as they allow you to view full versions of their shows through their 4OD service, but apparently viewing short clips of shows is not allowed?

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context clues should have made that obvious

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Yeah, but I figured I’d check anyway.

For people outside of the US, these kinds of restrictions are more than just a petty annoyance. Especially since people within the US are generally completely oblivious.

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:dubious:

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I’ll get behind this rant - it is indeed annoying when everyone is discussing some video, and I can’t see it. Darn you, ancestors, for choosing this country! Darn you to heck! {shakes fist impotently}

Yeah, I need to look into one of those proxy thingys.

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Not being able to watch free reruns of SOAP isn’t just a petty annoyance?

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There’s an OUTSIDE the US now??! :eek:

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Apparently.

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Can you not use a free proxy to get around this? I don’t know much about how this all works, but I know when I was trying to access some region-limited content from a Japanese server, all I had to do was use a Japanese proxy and all worked out okay.

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This is possibly the best part of that link (and the whole story is pretty right-on-the-money, in my opinion) -

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In theory, but finding a proxy that works can be a pain in the arse. There’s the Tor project as well, but that often has very poor response times.

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IANAL and I know this isn’t GQ but I just happened to do a bit of reading and I think I have an accurate, if not very specific, idea of how TV networks and production companies work and why the international issue exists.

Production companies actually make TV shows. There are production companies that are owned by the networks. They start by coming up with a show idea, then filling in the details and finally producing a pilot episode and try to sell it to TV Networks like NBC, CBS, Fox (probably last cause they cancel everything), etc until they find a network that will run it. There are of course some shows that never get bought; e.g. “Twenty Six Miles.”

Once a network buys a show they need to make sure their agreement with the production company precludes that company from doing things they don’t like; e.g. simultaneously showing a TV show on more than one network. This arrangement is where the details are decided about when a production company can get their show for viewing on other networks. Production companies can sometimes sell reruns a season behind in foreign markets, on other US networks, or in syndication: selling rights to individual broadcasting stations like WKRP. In deals where production companies do not have the “season behind” option they will almost certainly be able to do these things when the show has been canceled and stopped production.

It should be no surprise at this point that it is the Networks who get to grant streaming rights for current episodes to their own promotional websites and to Hulu and maybe Netflix. When the Networks start streaming internationally it means less people will be watching the year old broadcasts that were a stream of revenue for the production companies. So The production companies will want more money from the Networks and the Networks will have more money so to settle this they both have to figure out exactly how much more money the Networks should be paying the production companies.

In short the international issues seems solvable so you can probably believe the rumors that Hulu is working on being able to stream internationally. I should also say that if you are in Asia because you are in the military then Hulu is going to start working much much faster. They are trying to find a list of all the military IPs and should have that compiled fairly quickly:

http://www.hulu.com/discussions/9/67669/280285