Amazon revealed a new service called Amazon Unbox, where you can download movies and TV shows for a cost, and watch them on a PC. Hey! I could get the complete CSI season 6 for download for less than $40! Only I can't. The offer is only for US citizens. Which doesn't really surprise me, I'm not allowed to use Apple's iTunes US either. Apple later opened European iTunes sites with a smaller selection. If Amazon Unbox is a success, we'll probably see Amazon Unbox UK, France, and Germany in the future. Which won't help me much, because they will mainly have British, French, and German TV shows, and not the US ones I want to see.
If you send TV over antenna or cable, you automatically stop at the borders. At the borders regulations change, and if the country on the other side speaks a different language, your possible market share is limited anyway. And building a network of antenna or cables is expensive. What I don't understand is why the TV still stops at the border when it is sent over the internet. There is not only a long tail of content which the internet can distribute cost efficiently. There is also a long tail of customers. Not every European would want to watch US TV, but some would, and as distribution to Europe by internet doesn't cost more than distribution to the US by internet, it is kind of foolish to exclude these potential customers. And the same is true for many other regions of the world where English is spoken at least as a second language. When will legally downloadable content on the internet become international?
No comments:
Post a Comment