Madness of Geo-Blocking (Hidden Camera Prank)
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This is probably only marginally related, but just the other day I had a conversation with a coworker from Morocco. We were talking about the fact that in his country, every purchase you make involves bargaining. That makes me think now that what we in the Western world have come to think of as the norm -- fixed prices on products, being the same for every customer -- is probably a fairly recent phenomenon if we consider the history of mankind. And if I think about products like airline tickets, that principle is not even true in our culture: you may have to pay vastly different prices for the same product, i.e., for a seat on the same flight.
Now, my next sentence was going to be "... but at least the different in price is not because your nationality is being discriminated against", but now I'm actually not so sure any more that that is true?! I mean, I guess no-one who's in the air fare business made a business decision along the lines of "let's charge Germans 20% more" or so, but if factors like your locations (and hence with a high probability also your nationality) are factors in the data mining which is the basis for what determines the price of a ticket, isn't that de facto an implementation of discrimination in a sense?
And how about the pharma industry? The same medication can sometimes cost orders of magnitude more depending on what country it is sold in (think Africa).
So coming to think of it, I think at least in the globalized world, different selling conditions depending on the geographical location are actually not that rare, even for non-digital product. Minimally, wouldn't all produces that target large markets at least adjust for things like average income / purchasing power in the respective regions?
Normally, we only care about the first country, and the seller and buyer can be anyone from anywhere. With stores on the Internet, we have a different deal. Prices are set based on the buyer's citizenship, regulation and taxes is based on the country of the server, and prosecution of crimes is based on the country of the seller.
For those stores that enforce geo blocking, I only have one question: Which customer protection laws should govern the purchase?
So they don't deal with this kind of internet discrimination so often.
You can't really compare "selling an item in my shop, to someone, in the shop...that's from another country" to "selling an item online and shipping it out of the country".
The customer's nationality is not the relevant factor for shipping costs.
There may be added cost for accepting payment from a non-UK citizen as well. I understand that's less of a problem between EU members, but it would certainly apply to a US seller, Mexican Buyer, Canadian recipient, for example. It's not just one thing. AVS, one thing US sellers would use to reduce fraud, doesn't work outside the US. And, for online sales, sellers are on the hook for credit card fraud. Mexican buyers would likely want to purchase with a bank transfer...that service isn't easily available or cheap for US sellers.
The bank transfer example would however be acceptable since its a different service and thus can be prices differently. It the same reason why a credit card purchase can have a different price than physical cash. The store do not care about the nationality of the customer, but it do care about what service the customer purchase, which the purchase method is a part of.
A faster way to parity would be to put pressure on the credit card industry to enact technical improvements that made card-not-present purchases the same risk profile as card-present purchases.
Or am I missing something?
Whether they intended it or not, what they are doing is xenophobic.
Calling this xenophobia is absurd.
You can blame the system all you want, but if they participate - they are part of the system. I.e. they aren't forced to make such moral choice, they voluntarily make it.
So? How does it justify xenophobic behavior?
As a seller you can mitigate this by having your company registered in multiple countries (for example Amazon does this).
If you buy as a company and can provide a valid sales tax id then the seller can exempt the sales tax at the moment of the purchase in case of exports.
But on second though that shop was geoblocking the entire world except tiny room. One has to buy at their place and there is no free world wide delivery service.
It's close enough. Netflix refuses to sell you anything when you access it through VPN.
Racism is prejudice or hostility towards a person's race, colour, language, nationality, or national/ethnic origin.
Access to the Internet is a basic human right - and to block access to the Internet based on nationality is xenophobic and racist.
Blocking Internet access based on nationality is toxic - and should not be tolerated in any form.
But what country does an online purchase happen in, and which country gets the tax money?
The company can register in a tax haven, or host servers abroad etc.
The customer can connect via a proxy etc.
With real world online retail there are many reasons for not delivering goods to certain regions of the world, inability to work with a good courier for the final miles being one of them.
Yep, or a bookstore. Since the source of the underlying mess is related to copyright.
Better analogy would be a book store. Imagine, you want to buy a book that's not available in your country. You can travel to the country where it's available and buy the book there.
In the digital space, the analogy of travel would be using a VPN to bypass geoblocking. That's why using the VPN for that purpose should be perfectly legal, and those who try to forbid it (Netflix and Co.) are xenophobes (it would be like refusing to sell a book to a foreigner which comes to a store in another country).
The problem of course is that as usual, some try to translate realities of the physical space (with regional market segmentation) to the digital ones, where they don't make any sense. But they are eager to do it when is suites their interests (geoblocking). But when people use the same invalid translation, and virtually travel to bypass geoblocking (VPN), geoblocking proponents whine and want to declare it illegal. Hypocrites.
The messy implementation of distribution rights does not make sense, but companies trying implement new distribution models are not the ones to blame for it.
If local laws forbid selling merchandise to foreigners - the laws are xenophobic themselves.
> Netflix blocks stuff because the content owners have managed to negotiate different terms in different countries.
They can't use an excuse of content owners' xenophobia for their own execution of xenophobic policy.
Anyway, this whole mess stems from completely inadequate attempt of translating physical realities into digital space, and hypocritical approach of forbidding others (i.e. customers) to do the same.
No amount of demagogical justification will whitewash such xenophobic practice.
I get that you've chosen your rhetoric here, but you've drawn the lines in the wrong places.
What law in France requires Netflix to ban users who access it through VPN? There is no such law. Same as there is no law in France which says that you should forbid selling a book that's not available in another country, to a customer from that country who comes to a store in France to buy it. So don't shift the blame here. Netflix run ahead and performed xenophobic ban because they decided to, not because they are required by any laws.
"fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign"
I'm pretty sure these companies don't hate the foreigners or fear them.
Please find more suitable words to express your opinions.
Forbidding selling merchandise to foreigners who come to your store based on the fact that they are foreigners is xenophobic. But if you have a better term for it, please describe it another way.
So the charge of xenophobia is wrong on both aspects of the definition that matter.
But by all means, reiterate your loaded terminology.
Except there is no such law (unless we are talking about some xenophobic country, Third Reich style). Rather than any laws, they fear that their crazy partners will pull a plug on them. And they are being xenophobic to oblige their insane content overlords. Their exact intentions don't matter however for the end user who is being discriminated. What matters are their actions.
Neither of which is an irrational fear of outsiders.
I agree it's a shitty situation, but you're not going to get anywhere by demonizing merchants. We need to change the system they exist in.
That's what it ends up being in their actions towards the user.
> but you're not going to get anywhere by demonizing merchants. We need to change the system they exist in.
I agree that system is wrong. But merchants can't use it as an excuse. They are part of the system and they contribute to the problem.