Anyone can plainly see simply by browsing Netflix Canada's title selections in the Canadian marketspace that they, indeed, have a much narrow offering to the Canadian public than Americans have available to them. In fact, this is such an obvious fact that there are so many how-to guides, explanations, available for free, on how to purchase a very cheap VPN, and with it access the American version of Netflix instead. The company itself has many reasons and public statements about this difference, including MPAA and RIAA rules and similar justifications about territorial licensing agreements and so forth. And while all of this is very valid and plausible, it in no way is the real reason according to some. Personally I do not agree with the licensing explanation as I will attempt to explain.
As a kid in Canada in the '90s I used to download video games from as far places as Iceland. This was before Mosaic, the web brwoser like Firefox or Opera and before Netscape even existed. We had a sort of an Internet back then, but it was called a BBS. And it required using the telephone system (POTS) to make a direct call to a computer in someone's living room in some part of the world. Do not ask me how I made such long distance phone calls, just trust that I did, for we were so poor as immigrants I had to walk an hour in -40 degree weather just to get to school. All this aside, I got video games that my child mind could not even conceive existing for they were not sometimes even available on Canadian store shelves. And even if they were, my family could not even afford the computer we had, let alone the content that any computer user needs. Now this does not mean they were stolen nor pirated, it just means they were not available to us in Toronto. Kind of how Netflix Canada does not have the movie Boss Baby but the American one has the entire Matrix trilogy, and so forth. Making a video game available in every city back then was not as easy as today, so I bought into the logic that it was mere logistics, but it wasn't. For if I could dial in and get the title, so could any store owner act as a proxy and make it available to local customers. But nobody did this, and there is a reason. It's called licensing.
Now these days many musicians are demonstrating this licensing concept fairly well. Taylor Swift is perhaps one of the best known examples. She pulled all of her work from Spotify, which upset me tremendously. Not because I am a fan, for lord knows I prefer Katy Perry and never listen to anything nor anyone who does their work in a swift fashion. Good work is never quick work, right? But it's the principle of the thing. She was discriminating on the choice of store the customer could access her product at. It would be as if U2 did not want their music sold at HMV but only at Tower Records, back then these stores existed. None of you would grasp that, would you? And it never really was like that back then was it? But today artists can decide what stores sell their products. And it's kind of a blessing and a curse. You see as a poor person I can't really subscribe to a thousand different streaming services, I have to choose. And streaming services are making jumping ship a difficult pursuit. So those of us whom build a playlist on Spotify can not easily take it over to Google Play, or elsewhere. This is their abusive dictatorial business model. There is no technical reason for it to be this way at all, but they claim it is a limitation of software. It took me two hours without knowing an ancient programming language to recreate it and compile it in a modern environment a decade or so ago, and I'm not even that good of a programmer. So when Spotify makes these claims I laugh and know it's just another North Korea-like mindset hell bent on taking money for providing the least service needed to justify their rich lifestyles. The entire community support approach to Spotify is a mere platitude to claim they are a democratic offering to offset those without. When in fact, it is just a laugh in all of your faces at providing a service so poorly designed that only those without a choice would be using it. There is absolutely zero reason why I can't export my playlist into a text document for my personal usage, but there is a corporate agenda that would prevent coders from implementing this feature and that is at the core of the matter, just like why video games in the '90s were not available in every nation.
Today we have Netflix which have a lot to do with DVD design principles of regionality within the DVD players. There is no reason for Disney's Little Mermaid from North America not to be playable in Japanese homes. No technical reason whatsoever. But there is a licensing and a business agenda reason. There is a dictator-at-work constraint imposed upon all of our digital freedoms and that is the heart of this problem. Do books from the book store prevent you from taking them to Mars? Can you not read The Lord Of The Rings in any nation you choose, except perhaps North Korea? You see, that is freedom, the ability of the consumer to take whatever they bought and do with it as they please. But the moment dictators get involved they make their mental psyche's known by imposing artificial limits upon the consumers allthewhile making them still pay prices, even greater fees than before. This is what happened with the MPAA and regions for DVDs. It's one way of ensuring content stays where the creator intended it, and that even people stay where the content is. For if I love the entertainment of America and I cannot enjoy my library of it in Australia I am less likely to move there aren't I? If my music is not available in your clubs, I am less likely to go to them as well. But my collection of books I can take even to a place governed only by maritime laws where the very couch I am sitting in is moving non-stop due to the gentle waves of mother Earth herself. Mr. Grisham can not control under what circumstances I am reading or not reading his book, in fact, not even Stephen King can throw an axe at me if I choose to burn his books to shine the light in a dark cave, right? This is real freedom and currently not a single offering from Silicon Valley seems to offer its equivalent counterpart, or does it?
As I started talking about Netflix let's get back to that product. In America, the streaming giant offers almost everything one could desire, except behind-the-scenes and alternate audio tracks and so forth. Consumers have all kinds of excuses for it, from believing it's technically difficult to do, to even magic explanations such as nobody watches that stuff anyway. The fact is, those in power, the dictators, do not wish for us consumers to have these things in a non-physical form. If they could make the movie available they could make the bonus and even the booklets in digital form, too. But they chose not to, and it's a choice, nothing else. And it's not our choice as consumers, but their choice as providers, as dictators, as those whom have money, control, weapons and power. They chose, we pay and obey. But in the Canadian marketspace the Netflix offering is but a quarter of the American. So many do not understand it. Most say things related to our population being smaller and so forth. But remember that Netflix Canada is just a website. And making content available does not really entail anything elaborate. Extending video delivery to a few more million people on the same continent as the other hundreds of millions of Americans is as if Netflix was not available in a little crap state such as Idaho. Sorry, I'm not a fan of you couch potatos very much. But honestly speaking, making the full catalog available to even Mexico is not even remotely problematic for Netflix as a corporate giant of America. The CDN (content delivery network) is built out and could handle twice the capacity it currently serves. So through the process of elimination we arrive at the fact that it is merely a corporate directive and nothing else. And it stems from an agenda of control. A dictator-like rule that says what nation shall enjoy what films and where and how long and in what format. Unlike books, our media is now fully governed by the rich and powerful titans of the entertainment industry. It's why I love books more I suppose, but also less.
When a man commits a crime, his rights in that society become limited do they not? Prisoners do not have the right to lounge on beaches, to take vacations to Cuba, nor to even play billiards whenever it suits them. These are in those circles known as privileges. Even though we all thought of them as human rights, they are nothing more than luxuries. Housing, food and health are rights, but the authorities define these other things we all take for granted as privileges. Even lifting weights in a prison can be seen as a privilege. Bathing with soap is not, it's a right. It's important to grasp how the mighty guns see the rest of us before we explain Netflix. Believe me, they are related. Prisoners are allowed to do just about anything that will not set them free. This is why the moment prison walls became strong and guards could be on towers with sniper riffles the prisoners were allowed to lift weights, not before. If the prison were a barn made of wood, allowing prisoners to lift weights would make little sense. So all the privileges in a prison are the ones that can not possibly set you free, ever. No matter what muscle the prisoners build, those muscles would never set them free. This is also why prisons do not have extensive libraries of martial arts books. Nor volumes upon volumes of chemical reactions between household items. And you betcha that the prisoners will never be allowed to read on how to deteriorate prison walls with a tool, a substance, or a natural process. These items are not allowed, the others are. I hope this makes sense, as here comes the Netflix bit. The giant corporate entities see consumers as a type of prisoner. The longer they can enmesh you within their monopoly, their walls, the longer they can suck money from you and into their wallets. This is why Spotify does not offer certain luxuries or privileges. You do not have the privilege to take your playlists to Google, or Spotify would lose business. You do not have the privilege of easily connecting your Android phone to your Mac. You do not have the privilege of taking your DVD library to Japan dear Americans, sorry. You most certainly do not have the privilege to lift weights without paying a huge gym membership, for big muscles could lead to violence, right? So big business votes what nation has what privilege according to how much it trusts what society. And America votes through licensing what Canada is worthy of enjoying. Canadians, it seems, did not earn the full trust of the most creative minds in this world. Hollywood does not currently feel the entire Iron Man franchise is what Canada should be enjoying on Netflix. But Americans should. In fact, America feels this is a type of sanction. Just like it boycotts business with certain regimes, so, too, do now artists have the fundamental freedom to boycott whom should not be allowed to enjoy their works. It's reverse-piracy of sorts. As a musician I can choose now not to let rapists dance to my music. I can choose not to let dictators of combative nations enjoy my films. I can choose by voting through entertainment sanctions not to let crooked cops watch my happy child-like drama. This is a type of freedom, but also not. For there are good people in these nations and we have nothing to do with how a nation is run. So while the Canadian government did not yet earn the full trust of Hollywood, as a mere mortal and citizen I am also punished for the wrong doings of my nation, which is in no way fair. Just because my government is doing things wrongly does not mean I should not be enjoying the full Matrix trilogy on Netflix Canada does it? And yet, it's the only tool available to nations to demonstrate to everyone around whom they hold to be problematic. And I finally agree with this perspective, though it did take me a long time.
At first I was upset, I felt entitled, for if they have it, so should I. But my nation did not earn it. My nation did not create it. And quite possibly, my nation may have sabotaged its greatest and most talented assets and prevented them from shinning and creating even better content. And if that is how a nation is, if it harms those who are better than the leadership or those in its limelight, then why should they enjoy the content of the stars of their neighbours? If North Korean leadership destroys the artwork of it's citizens unless they make the leader supreme then why should North Korea be given South Korea's entertainment in full? But they should still be given some of it so they have an example of what is possible when good people are rewarded. This is why Canada lacks the full stream. Because something's wrong up north.
No comments:
Post a Comment