So im having this problem lately.
Some time ago i found cool Band on YouTube, so i bought their CD in shop, after a while i wanted to watch their vido again and gues what, this content is not available in my country due to legal rights. Its legal tu buy their album, they are even aired in radio, but it is illegal to watch their music wideo witch is in my opinion a promo material that makes u want to buy a product.
There is less and less things i can watch on YT, hell i cant watch some clips from "Funny Video" topic.
Next thing, i bought Gears of War PC at release. Game that needs GFWL application installed. I installed it (polish version), installed game just to find out that GFWL doesn't support my country, so i payed full price and get only 33% of content.
So i should stay away from games with GFWL logo, but i had to find out how diferent is Fallout 3 from originals, so i read that there won't be GFWL support, but it seems there is almost no support at all. Patches dont work, no way getting DLC.
i can buy lots of things in shops, but their are unavailable for me in internet, or have online options disabled because of my localization.
So are there more borders in Internet, than in real life.
Only thing that is global are prices, there seem to be the same, but even then for europe is not $ at the end of numbers.
And im not sure did i heard right but didnt Australian goverment banned 15+ Content in their country??
If its gonna go this way soon will get Country Wide Web. Only pices will stay for Europ and rest of the world.
I say something is going wrong way with this whole regionalization, wasn't Internet Global thing. With no restrictions where u want go and what u want to see. Without censorship, categorizing because of your localization?
Its like if i bought a cake and then realize that i am not allowed to eat 1/4 of it because i live on the other street than the shop i bought it, 1/4 of it is forrbiden to be eaten on my street, and cream on it has one ingredient that is part of some other cake that is sold in other shop, and they dont allow u eat it if u bought it in different shop.
This probably dont make sense.
But im starting to feel it this way.
Sorry for being boring, wrong spelling, but it makes me mad more and more every next day.

Thread to GFWL lovers.

If you create your microsoft live account with a north american zip (can be anything as long as it is a real USA zip code) it will assume you're in USA and allow you to use GFWL.
Brazil suffers from a similar problem, so when I learned about that "cheat" I went ahead and used it. Works fine.

There's a way to get around the GFWL ... thing - you just need to set windows to be... Well... American or whatever :D Just browse trough language settings a bit and set everything to US, after creating an account you can simply switch back :-P
No, I'm not saying it's good, it was just a little advice. I hate it as much as you do. Territorial restrictions anywhere have always pissed me of, and I've never really seen a point in them. I'm really hoping that, as internet ages, companies will realise there's a huge difference between real borders and those on the internet - until then, we'll just have to suffer

The more the web becomes commercialised, the more regional restrictions I'm seeing. Not happy, Jan!
It just makes me buy less, and I tend to avoid services that restrict like that. Hence I have more money to spend on places where no regional restrictions exist.
Our government --- Well, This is a community board so I will restrain myself, plus I don't want to get banned for what is really on my mind.
We have no R18+ rating for games (they get refused and banned from the country, unless modified), and there are (ridiculous and unachievable) plans to make the web no worse than M15 thanks to feature creep.

about making false live account, i did it just to have achivments, proper non deasappearing game saves and to check multiplayer, so there was everything allright as long as i played single player campaign. after 2 weeks i entered multiplayer game ant next day my live account was banned ;/
all saves went to hell.
GFWL could be cool feature but it seems it really dosent support games for windows, it just supports games for XBOX that came out on PC as well.
Anyway on official polish XBOX Live forums they say in ur face taht u should make ur account using polish embassy adres in some of suported countries. They even sell those prepaid cards for XBOX live accounts.
So if ur account get banned u have just lost a lot of money.
GFWL is good idea, but execution of this idea is really bad.

Oh now thats just silly, its totally workable, all they need to do is station someone nehind you whenever you're usign an internet capable device and they can smack you if you go to look at things that might be slightly naughty. Imagine what such a scheme would do for the unemployment rate and its not like we really NEED privacy anyway...

You know what someone should try that I haven't seen done in ages? Use one of those websites that uses a different IP address. Those are usually used in America to get around blocks corporations and schools put on the internet, so it could possibly let you guys access parts of the internet they don't let you access.

:) hehe
Wait, why am I laughing? don't give them any more ideas!

It's still worldwide, it's just that some copyright owners / lawmakers haven't figured that out yet. Like TheCheese said, circumventors. A quick googling will find you a list of open proxies in any country you want, so regional restrictions are a bit pointless.

Hey I've gotta get a job SOMEHOW damnit!

Hey vangordon,
The whole "world wide web" scheme is just as big a scam as the old advertisements were for America and how "the streets are paved with gold".
In other words, absolute BS, no more no less.
I can't even access Mibbit.com from Poland because, for some godawfully strange reason, that site is CENSORED China-style in Poland. O.o

Well at my tech college, they introduced an automatically generated blacklist system for websites and the website for popular childrens group the wiggles was deemed offensive and blocked. Sure it would never be needed in an educational context but it shows what happens when you let machines or idiots make the decisions, worse when its machiens programmed by idiots

No, it's not, it never was.

It used to be pretty world... though as for wide? It used to be a worldwide network, but used by only a small group of people (academics, students, techies).
Now it's used by everyone from toddlers to grandmothers, but it's becoming increasingly segmented. Regional IP filters seem to pop up on almost every website these days... BBC, Hulu, Last.fm, MTV, etc, etc, etc...
It must be one of the most frustratng things to encounter... its a virtual roadblock that is purely artificial.
I understand the complexities of international copyright, but that doesn't make it easier to stomach. Content MAKERS should just separate DIGITAL IP from broadcast/physical IP and make sure all digital IP is worldwide.
(Hulu is my pet hate... if that site was international it'd cut down piracy by 80% and make money for the publishers... but it's unlikely it'll ever happen. sigh.
(plus all the games i most want on steam are unavailable to me). )