A Digital World Without Borders – But What About the Caribbean?

By Cathrona Samuel

In a highly digitised world, providers of entertainment services strive to control the distribution of their content as best as they can. Technical protection measures are used to safeguard games, music, movies on CDs and DVDs. Such measures limit the capacity of the user to access and copy content. In some countries, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are instructed by courts to block access to certain sites, for example, the Pirate Bay in the United Kingdom.^[1]

At the heart of this is the content owners’ desire to protect their intellectual property rights and benefit from the distribution of what is rightfully theirs on their terms. Such bans and restrictions have given rise to what can be seen as more “legitimate” means of distributing content. The same applies to music services such as Spotify and iTunes, video distribution services such as Netflix and Hulu.

Conditional Access to Digital Content Breeds Work Arounds.

For us in the Caribbean, and other parts of the world, these legitimate services are not openly accessible but come with other restrictions, namely geographical. The IP addresses assigned to the devices that we use to connect to the Internet indicate our location, and geographical restrictions use these IP addresses to limit access to certain sites. One popular way of circumventing this restriction is the use of a virtual private network (VPN). Essentially, VPNs conceal the IP address of a device, allowing you to surf the web anonymously. Therefore, sites with geographical restrictions will have no way of telling your real location and no premise on which to refuse your offer to accept their service.

Service providers for the most part are acutely aware of these circumvention practices. But many who offer subscription-based services have turned a blind eye to them, in part because it also provides them with broader revenue streams. For this reason, content providers have been urging those who carry their content to implement stronger anti-circumvention measures. A recent example of this is Netflix’s announcement in January of a move to increase efforts to deter users from accessing content outside of their country.^[2]

The major thrust behind geographical restrictions is one of economics. An e-book may be available in one country and unavailable in another, simply to subject the consumer to the tax regime that exists in their geography. Content owners sometimes use licensing and copyright restrictions to offer higher prices for the same services in different regions, a practice broadly known as price discrimination. In Australia, for example, consumers pay 52% more for downloads from iTunes than their counterparts in the USA.^[3]

In the Caribbean, the multinational tech giants don’t even bother to discriminate against us, there is no customised offering, and licences are only acquired on the initiative of the larger service providers operating here who deliberately search them out.

We need to raise the profile of the region so it takes a legitimate place at the negotiating table.

Within this region and others, however, the solution is not a continuous adaptation of circumvention methods, but a move towards legitimately accessing and sharing content across borders. The concept behind the worldwide web was to remove—not create—barriers that present themselves in the brick and mortar world. Geographical restrictions act counter to this concept, and it is time to remove the Caribbean from the realm of exclusion.

Raising the profile of the region and taking a legitimate place at the negotiating table can first accomplish this. The Caribbean must be seen as a viable market capable of securing rights to content. For this, we don’t have to wait on telecom companies to step out on our behalf; such representation and negotiation can take place on an organisational, sub-regional or regional level.

On a wider scale, the philosophy behind geographical restrictions must also be confronted. Everyone, regardless of their location, should be able to access digital content at the same price. Such a model allows content owners to gain compensation for the access to their intellectual property, and removes the opportunities to recoup more from the market than is necessary. It’s time to tear down the virtual barriers and allow for the free flow of resources across the globe.

[1] ‘UK ISPs Quietly Block Sites That List Pirate Bay Proxies’ <https://torrentfreak.com>

[2] http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/01/netflix-starts-blocking-vpns-proxies-and-other-unblocking-services/

[3] ‘How to Get Past Geo-Blocking – Internet’ (13 August 2014) <https://www.choice.com.au>

Cathrona Samuel has a variety of passions centred on Communications, Technology and Law. She heads the Marketing & Communications Department at the Antigua Public Utilities Authority, which provides nationwide telecommunications, water and energy services. She also works on legal, regulatory and compliance issues related to the company. She is on Twitter at @cathronasamuel.