I saw this at Boing Boing just now:
Because I visited from a UK IP address, Viacom doesn’t want me to be able to see a Colbert clip. Because — I’m guessing — Viacom is afraid the ads on Colbert’s streaming videos are for products I won’t be able to buy if I’m not in the U.S. And even if I could buy them, I’d be buying them in the wrong place.
There are so many good ways this kind of stuff could be working that wouldn’t be about piracy or copyright infringment or anything untoward, and that would reward the creative efforts of Colbert and his team, and even Viacom. (Like, you know, letting me give a credit card number in exchange for a monthly or annual subscription to The Colbert Report, maybe even in a package deal with The Daily Show. Imagine that!) But these good ways would give consumers too much power — it might make people drop their cable subscriptions! horrors! — and so it won’t happen.
And so if I want to watch Colbert, I have to do it in a way that doesn’t support him. In what universe does this make sense?
(The Boing Boing post is here, FYI.)
