Date: 9 Feb 2010 Comments: 0

On forums and blogs across the internet , this is a frequently asked question. Quite simply, the reason is that these companies block access to most countries. Although there are several reasons, the main one lies in the business model of internet TV and how the viewing rights are sold.

Most TV companies, the owners of the content on these sites, rely on advertising and overseas sales for the majority of their income, of course BBC Iplayer is slightly different being publically funded.

For Hulus advertisers, the target audience is vital, they want their adverts seen by a specific geographic group. Of course the manufacturer who supplies goods or services to the US market wants US people to watch them. There is little interest in advertising their products to European or Asian viewers for instance.

But probably the biggest reason, because it can result in a direct financial loss – is the way these content rights are sold. You buy the broadcast rights for a particular location. This leaves the content owner able to sell or market the overseas rights seperately. Of course if everyone was able to go to a single web site and watch the series anyway, then these rights be would worth much, much.

There are other slight nuances to this situation particularly with regards to public broadcast companies like the BBc who are funded by a fee, but generally this covers the main blocks to accessible content worldwide.

The problem is that this model is doomed to failure, it is simply too difficult to restrict content on a largely unregulated internet. Even if you could block all the P2P sites that would only be half of the problem. Technically it is fairly easy to mask your IP address through a proxy or a VPN, which instantly bypass all current geolocating blocks. You can certainly block individual addresses but this can easily become a huge job very quickly. It’s not that hard to switch and use another IP address and it will get significantly easier with the advent of IPV6 when addresses will be in abundant supply.

In essence these media companies like Hulu and M6 Replay will have to start looking at the internet as a whole, there is no way in my opinion that this market segregation will work in the future. We are too well connected, a work around or a pirated copy can spread across the electronic world in hours. The new technical blocks and checks will become more costly to run than the revenue it saves. This market needs to seriously rethink about how it does business in the digital age.