{"id":1775,"date":"2010-06-08T12:15:39","date_gmt":"2010-06-08T17:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/?p=1775"},"modified":"2010-06-08T12:15:39","modified_gmt":"2010-06-08T17:15:39","slug":"what-do-american-digital-content-sellers-have-against-the-rest-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2010\/06\/08\/what-do-american-digital-content-sellers-have-against-the-rest-of-the-world","title":{"rendered":"What do American digital content sellers have against the rest of the world?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I live in the “rest of the world”. I do not reside in the USA. Why is it I cannot get content that I’m willing to pay for?<\/p>\n

As a preamble to this, you might want to read an article in The Economist: Cupertino’s cold warriors: What has Apple got against eastern Europe?<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The iTunes store is a major pain point. I can buy Apple hardware in Malaysia, be it iPhone’s, iPod’s, Macs, and more. But when I visit the iTunes store, I can only purchase apps for the iPhone (the iPad store opened recently). Why can’t I purchase music\/movies, legally?<\/b> So you’ll say why not visit Amazon’s MP3 store. Bam, I can’t make a purchase there either.<\/p>\n

The iPad’s come with iBooks. Its a fabulous book reading application. I cannot purchase books from the iBook store, but I can purchase ePub formatted books, say, from O’Reilly’s Safari bookstore<\/a>. What about the Kindle – its available in quite many locations, but only where AT&T is present – so some rather “odd” countries show up in the availability lists. Why can’t I purchase books, legally?<\/b><\/p>\n

I’ve been a long-time subscriber to audible<\/a>. Audiobooks mean I don’t have to take a trip out to the bookstore. Chances are, I might get audiobooks cheaper than the dead-tree versions available in Malaysia. Today I got an email from Audible, telling me there’s a book I might be interested in. True enough, I was interested in The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World<\/a>\"\". Who couldn’t be, after listening to the most amazing The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal<\/a>\"\"?<\/p>\n

Of course, I get greeted with the magical message:
\n


\n\"Download<\/a>
\n<\/center><\/p>\n

That basically reads:<\/p>\n

\nWe’re sorry. Due to publishing rights restrictions, we are not authorized to sell this item in the country where you live.<\/font>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sorry David Kirkpatrick, I tried to give you some money, but apparently, you’ve decided to shaft the rest of the world<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Sadly, this situation is not much different in a first world country like Australia. Sure you get the iTunes Music Store (you are paying a premium, in comparison to exchange rates), and eventually the iPad becomes available for sale, but its always behind the US. So its not an isolated third-world 1Malaysia problem. Of course not – Singaporeans still suffer from the lack of the iTunes Music Store, and they’ve been a first world, industrialised nation, since 1996.<\/p>\n

When will American content sellers realise that the Internet lacks boundaries?<\/p>\n

When will they realise that limiting based on geolocation (Android marketplace) or credit cards (iTunes store) is so 20th century? Incidentally, there’s a petition out there for Google: Enable paid apps for all countries on the Android Market!<\/a>. Its okay Google, you’re not the only retarded one here – the BlackBerry AppWorld is no better; PayPal is available in Malaysia, but you can’t buy apps either.<\/p>\n

You push globalisation to the core, yet you refuse to embrace it.<\/p>\n

Give us the content that we want to pay for. It doesn’t matter where we are located. Really.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I live in the “rest of the world”. I do not reside in the USA. Why is it I cannot get content that I’m willing to pay for? As a preamble to this, you might want to read an article in The Economist: Cupertino’s cold warriors: What has Apple got against eastern Europe?. The iTunes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[1139,1140,1137,1141,314,805,1061,1138],"class_list":["post-1775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-audible","tag-audiobooks","tag-digital-content","tag-ibooks","tag-itunes","tag-itunes-music-store","tag-oreilly-safari","tag-rest-of-the-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vJD-sD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1775"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1780,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions\/1780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}