The Media Economics Of The Internet
You’d think that when you put up a web page it would be pretty much viewable by all. I don’t for instance write my personal blog and then decide which countries should have access to it, to be honest I’m desperate enough for readers as it is! But this is exactly what many of the big commercial websites do as a matter of course.
There are many reasons that they do this but one is based on a concept called price discrimination. Companies have long been aware that they can maximise profits by charging completely different prices to different sectors of the community. But of course on the face of it the Internet rather spoilt this for some companies, at least the ones who were providing a service that was the same pretty much the world over.
So they restricted access to their websites depending on which country you are in, try accessing the German Napster site from outside Germany it’s quite tricky to do. Same with the media sites like Hulu, BBC Iplayer and RTE player all only accessible from the country of their origin. I have to say it’s not quite what I expected of the global communication medium – the Internet.