Is it just me, or is the Internet increasingly becoming a bordered world?

From iTunes store accounts linked to credit cards, to GeoIP technology, it seems that services are relying more and more on being focused on one, geo-politically defined audience.

The most annoying instance of this is the BBC iPlayer. The absurd situation of BBC Worldwide, the commercial division of the BBC which sells programmes and formats outside the UK, as well as bandwidth concerns, has led to geographic restrictions being placed on where the iPlayer can be accessed from. Unfortunately, the implementation isn’t linked to having paid for a TV licence (and therefore accessible from anywhere), but rather based on GeoIP technology: checking AS numbers, reverse DNS lookups and other such things against known geographic locations. There are workarounds, but blech to that.

This seems poor to me. The geographic restrictions are some of the main reasons the iPlayer is reliant on DRM and proprietary technologies, things the BBC, as a public broadcaster, should not be involved with.

The same sort of thing is going on with Hulu, NBC.com, and the like. But those are commercial companies, not publicly-funded broadcasters with a public service mission.

It’s unfortunate not only for that reason, but also because end-to-end openness and non-discrimination is one of the best things about the Internet. It’s a positive benefit to me that a I get exactly the same connectivity regardless of location. Things might happen slower, but a lack of discrimination and intermediate futzing is definitely a good thing.

We don’t want to get to a situation where there’s a British Internet *shudder*, German Internet, Australian internet, and so on. So let’s just nip this in the bud, folks. If it’s out there, it’s out there.

</rant>

Time difference from broadcast to posting on iPlayer: 1 hour
Time difference from broadcast to availability (in presumably higher quality) via BitTorrent: 2 hours

Impressive no? Especially as the BitTorrent release groups have to re-encode the stuff before posting it.

#1: The talk mentioned in the post below. It was very stimulating – and eminently relevant to teaching and learning. Well presented too.

#2: Watching Cory Doctorow compose the post below. Randall Munroe’s xkcd cartoon about him wasn’t inaccurate.

Raph Koster describes a “fun Amazon”:

Cory Doctorow:
Alice from the Wonderland blog is at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference and she blogged her extensive notes from Raph “Theory of Fun” Koster’s amazing talk on game design’s lessons for web applications. Raph took us through what Amazon would look like if it was designed to maximize fun. It was mind-blowing.

If people don’t care to come to it over and over, then it will fail.

It has to involve skill. You need to be able to do it better or worse. Purchasing on eBay is compelling – you figure out tricks! Sniping. Evaluation. In order to learn, you have to feel like you’re growing more competent.

Fun comes from a growth in competence.

As you come to accomplish it, there need to be variant challenges. Connecting to a CEO on LinkedIn vs. connecting to the pr dude = different.

What you want is for the game to acknowledge the fact that it’s tougher to get on Reed Hoffman’s linkedin rather than someone who sells ads.

Social media is about cooperation, but the core of games is competitive. As soon as you give people a ladder to climb, they’ll climb it.

Ratings. Metrics of contribution. Other people need to see it to measure against it.

Link

See also:
Koster’s amazing “What are the lessons of MMORPGs today?”
Koster’s keynote from Game Developers Conference
Areae: online world startup from “Theory of Fun” Koster
Mudflation: inflation in virtual worlds
Destiny of Games: what will become of fun?
Theory of Fun PDF – UPDATED
Theory of Fun: Understanding Comics for games
Civil liberties in gamespace
Star Wars Galaxies economy laid bare
What would an MMORPG about healing be like?

(Via BoingBoing).

Just who are the complaints? And where are the commercial interests that are supposedly being run rough-shod over?

And perhaps yet another reason (as if we needed one) not to trust Tessa Jowell.

BBC Jam:

BBC Jam has been suspended by the BBC Trust following complaints made by commercial interests through the Commission of the European Union:

Despite a rigorous approval process involving the BBC Governors, the Department for Culture Media and Sport, and the European Commission resulting in extensive conditions on the service, BBC Jam has continued to attract complaints from the commercial sector about the parameters of its activities. Recently complaints were made to the European Commission alleging the service had not complied with its conditions of consent.

This raises concerns about the nature of commercialism. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the issues of “fair competition” the suspension of a service which has been very successful and is relied on by many schools is unfortunate. Its immediate suspension in mid-term without (I understand) prior notice reflects a set of values that must surely be deprecated. Are these the values of the commercial organisations that would have us put the education of our children in their care? Or are they the new values of the public authorities – the EU and the BBC Trust – who are the tax funded guardians of of the public interest? Or is this an simply an ill considered legalistic reaction…

Surely the best interests of the pupils should be the first concern in this matter and any suspension of the service should have been negotiated and incremental?

(Via PolEconMatters).

What UK’s copyright industries are up to:
Cory Doctorow: The BBC’s Matt Locke has written a great report on yesterday’s meeting on copyright in the UK that was held by a minister who is reported to have called for extending copyright on performances to the performer’s life plus one hundred years.

Adam Singer gave a response from the stage that was full of fantastic rhetoric, describing the emerging market for 3D printers as a harbinger of a world in which all creative IP is under threat from piracy: “It doesn’t matter if the button says ‘print’ [in reference to 3D printers] or ‘burn’ – all design will become simply a file to be shared”. He saw strong IP as the “intellectual hygiene of a networked world”, suggesting that IP law should be taught as the “new domestic science” in schools, as it was the most important future skill for creative entrepreneurs. His rhetoric, although very entertaining, was from the dystopian end of the telescope – “each time bandwith increases, another industry will fall [because of IP theft]“. You could try to unpick all the false assumptions in that last sentence, but frankly, its not worth it. Just sit back and bask in the warm glow of his fire and brimstone. In fairness, Adam Singer is far more measured and informed than the above quotes suggest (despite describing Lawrence Lessig as the “Martin Luther of copyright” that the music industry had failed to burn…), but he’s a great public speaker, and it’s his job to provoke.

I asked a question to the panel about the kind of industry trends that the DCMS were looking into when developing new IP models for the creative industries. Writers like Henry Chesbrough and Eric Von Hippel have documented trends in ‘old’ industries like Pharma and Engineering towards ‘open innovation’ models. Emerging best practise is to maximise your return from IP through a range of licensing models outside your own company, moving from old models of patent enforcement to open licensing models with peer companies and even Von Hippel’s ‘Free Revealing’, where IP is given up in order to drive other competitive advantages.

Link

(Via Boing Boing.)

On a related note, it looks like the late Sonny Bono is posthumously taking his views global via proposed European legislation. It is indeed a sad day.