Survival of the fittest might be the nature way, but all tentative to build a long lasting civilization using it didn't work that well.

Even if it's "naive" and in a way goes against nature (even human nature), I consider that "same chances for all" paradigm is probably the "less worse" one we can follow.

The bottom line is that the creator of the content has control of the content. If they don't want to do in business in x country, that's their prerogative.

For the example, take the BBC. Their iPlayer service is strictly only available for people in the UK, largely because people in the UK paid for it in the first place. If the iPlayer was open for all, I'd imagine it would have been shut down by now due to over-use.

"Sooner or later" or "one way or another". Back here legal software distribution didn't really get off the ground until the mid-nineties, I would say (in no small part thanks to CD Projekt and their do-or-die release of "Baldur's Gate")...
It's the same with VODs now - there are some dispersed sites that TRY to offer some of this functionality, flooding the viewer with an insane amount of ads, offering almost nothing worthwhile and in most cases non only not having English subtitles as an option but forcing Polish ones on -_-'. My ISP is supposedly working on a VOD system of their own, but these guys don't even span the entire CITY... All the while I see sites like Lovefilm, offering a somewhat reasonable subscription system but - obviously - not around here.

You know what the worst thing in all of this ? People will shake their heads at me and say "Well - that's what you get for all your anti-piracy BS. I never faced those problems in my life" x_x...

Yeah, I've felt like this in more ways than one... I'm totally using that metaphor from now on xD.

It's certainly a difficult issue. My intuitions, for one, lead me in opposite directions, so it certainly needs further and deeper inquiry...

Well... That's just it - the free market created a situation which basically made no sense but was kept in place because the opposition wasn't strong enough... In other words - most people, unlike me, didn't decide to boycott every smoke-filled place... so there was no strong incentive to change anything.
Isn't that like the situation we have with DRMed games ? As long as the system is not TOO extreme (the smoke not being outright blown in our face), we grudgingly accept the situation to support PC gaming in general... What would you say to a piece legislation that would ban DRM (or certain, most unacceptable forms of it) ? On one hand - it's obviously the right of the publisher to put this kind of software on their games, but...
I don't know if *I* would necessarily approve of something like that but it shows the issues at hand a bit clearer - the "rights of the consumer" versus "the rights of the owner"...

I changed my title too... we can both cuddle the metaphor.

Hahaha... you know, my first instinct was to support an anti-DRM law on the basis of consumer rights. You're smart, you're one I like.

In that context I guess the company is free to sell DRM'd games all they like and unless the market resists it will go on and on, get worse and worse. If people never complain about it then it must not be that bad, right? That would be the free market thought process on the issue.

Applied to cigarettes one assumes people would have kept going to bars and restaraunts that allowed smoking and that must mean dealing with it was not that bad. Of course the truth there is hard to pin down, since many studies show second-hand smoke is indeed a health risk.

Both arguments are about the same societal question though: at what point should the government control you to protect you?

You're only correct if you define the "Internet" as the World Wide Web. Regardless of how you package it, and regardless of how you want to retconn it, the Internet was originally DARPANET, which, as distributed to universities across the USA, was very much about democracy and freedom of information. You know, the kind of hippie nonsense that is still taught in some institutions of higher learning.

Well, this has already gone too far for me to contribute intelligently, but I don't think distributors should have the right to determine from where a consumer is accessing their content and utilize that knowledge. The internet should be abstracted from physical locations. I can't imagine an explanation for the discrimination that isn't arbitrary and useless, a hindrance to global progress.

I think you're missing a significant point. People love to criticize "greedy big business", using the argument that profits trump all else. Your paper states something to the effect that "there's money to be made in those other countries, so those companies should be trying to get it." If we stick to that reasoning, then there is likely some financial reason that they don't pursue that business, that revenue.

With regards to your questions above, here's how I see it:

If someone inside America wants to buy a product form me, I don't care what ethnicity flows through their veins, or their nationality. It makes no difference to my own costs of doing business, so selling to a white guy is the same is selling to an Afghani, Filipino, Venezuelan, or one of those dirty Canadians. ; )

If someone from outside the US wants to buy my product (Canadians being the only ones so far), I have to consider the cost of completing that sale. For instance, I have not the first idea of what paperwork hoops one must jump through to sell to South Africa, what tariffs need to be dealt with, Customs procedures, the international agreements and laws regarding product support, and on and on. After spending umpteen hours finding the answers to these issues, it may turn out to be a losing proposition for my business to take on those customers.

Since my items are advertised online, should I be forced to accept a loss simply because I would be forced to sell to all who ask? I would point out, also, that there is a significant difference between refusing entry to a physical store and refusing to complete an online sale. In-person sales means that the cost of that sale is equal, regardless of national origin of the buyer; any difference in profitability comes from the specific products purchased and the method of payment. Customs and import / export rules, should the buyer be taking the product out of the country, become the problem of the buyer, not the seller or shipper. Edit: there are probably some restrictions for certain products; for instance, a sale of prescription medications to a foreigner in Canada might incur some extra costs.

As shown previously, online sales are not necessarily equal when ordered from different nations. This applies to both a physical product shipped to the customer and digital products 'delivered' digitally, as both face import and export restrictions, tariffs, etc. As the buyers we don't usually see the hurdles of completing these sales, but they do exist and there is a cost to dealing with them.

And it still is; just as then authors, bulletin board admins and newsletter curators could back then chose to exclude someone from a piece of information so can website administrators do that now.

That's what people don't want to know or idealize: even back when it all started, the content creator could chose where and to whom to disseminate that information.

I really recommend reading A History of the Internet and the Digital Future by Johnny Ryan to understand more of what I'm talking about.

Also, DARPANET wasn't at all about democracy and freedom of information at its beginning when it was just a military network, it grew that way because the underlying technology behind the network made it so that content can't be centrally managed. And even when universities started connecting to DARPANET, they still held the keys to the kingdom and could chose who can access what piece of information and perform what action on their mainframes. Heck, they had control over the IMPs that stood between their internal networks and DARPANET (at that point it already had another name) so they could cut off anyone if they so chose.

Oh, I disagree...

You've just made a very insightful contribution by reminding us that the issue of privacy is also something to consider here.

How much information is it exactly necessary for us to divulge before we make a purchase ? If an online store decided to sell only to albinos over 30 would it be a crime if I pretended to be one, just so that I could make the purchase ? Or am I legally bound to part with any kind of information the seller decides is relevant ?

I failed to be clear - that's my fault. First of all let me say we're not disagreeing about much - I quibble with not your content but your scope.

Democracy in theory has myriad definitions and too many to entertain seriously. I refer to the popular sovereignty (and by extension social contract) concept, which has historically been the traditional sense of democracy - as part of this, you allow equality of citizens by defining a partially exclusive class of citizen. Because I have some experience in networking and information security, I make unreasonable assumptions sometimes; in part, I assume an understanding that freedom of information is an extension of but subordinate to the classification of information on the old ARPANET. What you're saying is correct but only if you disregard the entire context of the network at first; that's what I meant when I said your argument hinges on defining the Internet as the World Wide Web. They've become synonyms, but the global equality of the WWW was not part of the democracy and freedom of information (information freedom - or sharing - is of course as you know the entire reason for creating a routed internetwork in the first place) of the original Internet.

Ryan's book isn't bad, though if you've a university degree in computer science, engineering, or any related discipline there's nothing new there that your textbooks haven't covered, and he makes at least one glaring error in the beginning about the purpose of the designed network. A good recommendation in any case ^_^

I will admit again, shipping items to other countries can be a pain.

Digital content doesn't need to be shipped across physical border. It doesn't have to clear customs.
Take a look at the information GOG requires when creating an account:
(desired) username
(desired) password
email address
date of birth

I don't think that GOG processes transaction differently based on where your from. In fact I'm not entirely sure that they even know where your from.

Border security takes a very dim view of such actions.

And moose! Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti

Yeah, that's why they're the exception and not the norm :|... But that IS how stuff should be done over the Internet... and it's part of the reason why we're all here, isn't it ?

If you are selling a car or an airplane then maybe you have to care about that, otherwise, no. You don't have to give a damn about it, it's the buyer responsibility to pay for customs and to make sure that he is authorized to import the goods he buys not yours. When you sell some goods it's the law of the seller that is applied, if your website is in the US the it's US law that apply, no matter where your buyer is located.

That's why you can buy Region 1 DVD from Amazon.com even if you don't live in the US. It's not permitted to sell those DVD outside US but Amazon can do it because they are located in the US therefor the sale takes place inside the US territory, no matter whenever the buyer himself is living in US or in the middle of China.