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Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
Some coverage, finally, of the increasing practice of denying access to websites based on location. These restrictions are being blamed on copyright; thus, Hulu, for example, asserts that access in Canada is blocked due to copyright restrictions. But the real reason is that the market is not deemed profitable enough to serve. "The earnings, however, are very different; compared to the US, in India, Brazil, Poland or China these sites are earning next to nothing." Well, while the laws of the marketplace make this fragmentation of the internet a virtual certainly, we would hope that a broader sensibility prevails. People should not link to or embed players that will not play everywhere. Commercial censorship is as unacceptable as political censorship, and it doesn't matter that the mechanism that creates it is unfeeling and amoral. Related: the same trend in online music.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 23, 2024 10:54 a.m.

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