The Internet Is Global... Unless You're Watching BlogTV

from the sorry,-not-for-you dept

Mon, Jun 25th 2007 3:39am — Mike Masnick

One of the tenets of the internet age is that any company is automatically an international company, just by the nature of being online. You can no longer just expect to launch a service in one country and keep everyone else out, so it's common for new startups to embrace a more global viewpoint right from the start. Apparently that's not true of all companies. There's a startup called BlogTV that is apparently offering video streaming services so people can create their own video shows (yes, they have a ton of competition). However, the company behind the technology is apparently licensing it on a country by country basis -- so folks in, say, Canada, who want to see what all the fuss is about after a discussion about the service on US blogs are discovering that they simply can't access the same site. If they try to go to the main .com site, they're automatically redirected to a .ca version, with no way to see the same content that American users can see. The same is true for those of us in the US who want to see any of the Canadian content. The company claims that the artificial barriers help create more local communities, but it seems like it really is only going to push people to go to other solutions that don't put up these unnecessary restrictions.

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12 Comments

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Bob Jones, 25 Jun 2007 @ 4:56am

Its fine here in Britain, clearly they want to push their localized version if they have one.

The YouTube model of pushing localized versions which promote local content but don't limit you to it, is clearly better.
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MadJo (profile), 25 Jun 2007 @ 5:19am

Interesting...
I can access blogtv.com from The Netherlands just fine, but I can't access blogtv.ca.

Very interesting...
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Brian McKechnie, 25 Jun 2007 @ 6:07am

Started in Canada
Interesting enough BlogTV was started in Canada - and the one thing Canadian bloggers didn't like about it was that it was only open to users in Canada!
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Jason Jenkins, 25 Jun 2007 @ 6:54am

Great for Content Providers
The fact that blogtv has created a system that only allows certain users from certain locations access content is great! Being a content provider at www.abstract10.com, we have created a large amount content that we distribute throughout the net with the common video distribution sites. To now have the ability to only provide certain content to certain users will be great for special promotions and should lead to more targeted advertising campaigns and dollars.
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Panaqqa, 25 Jun 2007 @ 7:01am

Hah! Good luck...
One word: PROXY
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Fred Flint, 25 Jun 2007 @ 7:16am

Re: Great for Content Providers
That's the second time I've been directed to that web page, which is surely one of the worst web pages ever created and inflicted upon the world. If you want to try and sell me crap, you're going to have to do a lot better than kindergarten programming. Better yet, keep your crap to yourself and don't inflict it upon me on a class blog like Techdirt.

Also, why isn't Jason Jenkins considered a lowlife spammer and why hasn't that link been removed as spam?

If these scumbag idiots like this idea, it's got to be a real loser.
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Matt, 25 Jun 2007 @ 7:24am

Re: Hah! Good luck...
pretty much :) too bad the simple net surfers or surf-at-work surfers probably can't use one though
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Bryan Price, 25 Jun 2007 @ 8:20am

Reminds me of Google and their underlings
I was visiting Switzerland earlier this year. I wanted to look up some stuff about Linux (how to permanently mount a drive) and typed in google.com, which gave me google.ch because of my IP. German. Which I don't know. Now I do get an English link to set my language to English. That works fine. I get the answer I need (and I checked when I got home, I pretty much got back the same answers from what I remember).

Fine. Now I want to blog about stuff in Switzerland, and I use Blogger. I'm thrown into the German language again. But this time there's no (obvious) way to switch languages. My google account is set to English, everything in my setup for Blogger says English, but I'm still getting German. On my last day of WiFi access I get an answer (not from Google!) on what to change to get back to English. Which did work.

Next time, I'm setting up my home computer as a proxy so I can avoid this crap over IP addresses.
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KB, 25 Jun 2007 @ 8:22am

Good job there's no such thing as anonymous proxies or they'd really be in trouble....
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Cathy Brooks, 25 Jun 2007 @ 10:11am

Re: Started in Canada
Actually that's not true. BlogTV.com is an Israeli-based company that launched a Canadian site in May.
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Jason Jenkins, 25 Jun 2007 @ 4:27pm

Re: Re: Great for Content Providers
Fred, thanks for the reply. How much do you charge for programming projects that could help our site out. We are ALWAYS looking for advice on how to improve. Email me if you have a quote. Sorry the site didnt meet your expectations. Hopefully you at least liked my artwork. :)
thx
j
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Matthew, 1 Jul 2007 @ 3:44am

Re: Hah! Good Luck...
I agree with this user. There's anonymous proxies that can be used, and also IP Address Spoofing. I can "live" in Uzbekistan if I want.
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