Internet censorship
Sunday, 8. June 2008, 17:09:32
Half an hour ago I was checking some video sites, including Vimeo, Viddler, Revver and Veoh. I have account on all of them (but not uploaded videos on all). I was unpleasantly surprised to see this message on Veoh:
W.T.F.?
I didn't get any message about it! What if I had videos uploaded there?! That's bad bad service.
Finally I found Veoh forum where I saw the reason.
Someone asked what happened and this is official response by Veoh's staff:
"Unfortunately Veoh will be ending service in your country due to a low concentration of users. Veoh is maintaining markets when we have the highest concentration of viewers."
(yes, with all grammar mistakes)
And then later I found a topic with a list of blocked countries - 165 of them. Mostly 3rd world countries in Asia and Africa but lots lots of them from Europe and South America too.
I personally find it offending, but most importantly I find it business suicide. Every user/customer/viewer is important, no matter how poor/rich their country is and no matter how many users in that country are.
That is not first case of internet censorship of course. I think most of the people know about Flickr not being available in Iran, China and United Arab Emirates (because of governments) and content filters for Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea (from Flickr's side); Google not being available in China...
Then only yesterday I was faced with blocking. I tried www.hulu.com (movie, video and tv show website), and earlier www.pandora.com (music streaming website) which are available for USA citizens only.
Why is that?! Isn't it better if they have more users? Is politics involved again? I thought that business always overcame politics at least on internet.
Yes I know there are other sites, but some are really good but blocked.
Geeks and techie people are trying to overcome barriers by making different scripts and programs to get behind the shield. I found 2-3 of them but one didn't work, other had some error and third one slooowed down internet badly so the video couldn't be loaded.
*sigh*
Enough of the ranting.
Geeks' revenge will come!!
Veoh is no longer available in CROATIA.
W.T.F.?
I didn't get any message about it! What if I had videos uploaded there?! That's bad bad service.
Finally I found Veoh forum where I saw the reason.
Someone asked what happened and this is official response by Veoh's staff:
"Unfortunately Veoh will be ending service in your country due to a low concentration of users. Veoh is maintaining markets when we have the highest concentration of viewers."
(yes, with all grammar mistakes)
And then later I found a topic with a list of blocked countries - 165 of them. Mostly 3rd world countries in Asia and Africa but lots lots of them from Europe and South America too.
I personally find it offending, but most importantly I find it business suicide. Every user/customer/viewer is important, no matter how poor/rich their country is and no matter how many users in that country are.
That is not first case of internet censorship of course. I think most of the people know about Flickr not being available in Iran, China and United Arab Emirates (because of governments) and content filters for Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea (from Flickr's side); Google not being available in China...
Then only yesterday I was faced with blocking. I tried www.hulu.com (movie, video and tv show website), and earlier www.pandora.com (music streaming website) which are available for USA citizens only.
Why is that?! Isn't it better if they have more users? Is politics involved again? I thought that business always overcame politics at least on internet.
Yes I know there are other sites, but some are really good but blocked.
Geeks and techie people are trying to overcome barriers by making different scripts and programs to get behind the shield. I found 2-3 of them but one didn't work, other had some error and third one slooowed down internet badly so the video couldn't be loaded.
*sigh*
Enough of the ranting.
Geeks' revenge will come!!
