I read about Vongo, the $9.95 a month subscription service. With it you can download unlimited movies (from their library of about 800) and watch them on up to 3 computers or portable media players. This would be quite cool but it’s not available to those outside the US. Perhaps because we are Geographic Failures.
If you go to the Vongo site, and you’re outside the states, you will see what I mean. I love when designers use this type of language. They tell me that Vongo’s minimum system requirements are: located in the US. Well I’m not, so I guess I failed.
Update: I tried the link again and was able to get to the subscription page. Hmm…if only ip location could be exact.
This reminds me of my frustration of geographical limitations on sales of downloadable goods and products. Example: Canadian ITunes Store selection. I guess there might be laws that limit a company’s ability to sell types of downloads (like movies and music) to anyone in the world. (Does anybody know more about that?) But those laws get in the way of my impulse spending…grr.
i probably shouldn’t have unlimited movies
chris said,
I think the geographic restrictions have something to do with different companies owning the rights to movies in different countries. For example, many films in Canada are released by Alliance Atlantis, and they would have the rights to those works for this territory. They might not permit digital distribution of those films whereas the American rightsholder will.
Music works the same way; some artists will release their CDs on different record labels in different territories, which explains why some songs are available on the US iTunes store but not the Canadian one or vice versa. Sometimes you might get a slightly different CD depending on whether you buy it from amazon.com vs. amazon.ca; the album art might be different or there might be a bonus track or two on one of the releases but not the other.
In the DVD world, it gets even more restrictive. Most DVDs are stamped with a “region code” and they will not work on DVD players sold outside that region. The US and Canada is Region 1, Europe is Region 2, etc. It’s not uncommon for a movie to be released on DVD in one region but not another, but importing it from where it’s available is impossible because of region coding. Some DVD players are “region-free” or can be hacked to ignore region codes, allowing them to play DVDs bought in any region. Naturally, the movie studios and rightsholders really don’t like that feature.
