Most of us are aware how geoblocks are one more reason people nudge towards piracy. Well, I didn’t knew that companies imposed geoblocks even on free content.
The 2024 eBook experience (with a pocketbook e-reader)
No Piracy:
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Go to bookstore in webbrowser on reader.
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Pay for book
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Download book (you can only do this 5 times)
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Open book (not really the book, its a link to ad*be to download the book.
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Get network error when opening my fucking ebook I paid for.
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Troubleshooting for 5 minutes
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Proceed to piracy section step 3
Piracy
- Go to bookstore Website and pay for book (cause personal ethics but you do you)
- Ignore download link
- Go to website of preference
- Download ebook
- Enjoy without ad*be enshittification
*edits cause formatting
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You sound like you aren’t from Australia! Vast majority of geoblocking is for free content actually (selectively free, that is). Things like Netflix US having different titles to Canada isn’t really geoblocking, unless it’s for a Netflix Original (not aware of any such cases)
Many US based websites are no longer displaying content to Europeans, since they can’t legally harvest data. Youtube, Instagram and other websites/apps playing licensed content are also increasingly disregarding countries where licenses are expensive and/or revenue is low.
I’d really look into getting a good VPN. Mullvad ($5/month) is awesome, or else Proton in the free tier (can’t pick the server but get one assigned at random, might need to restart to get one in a useful location).
Anybody remember when the fucking optical disks were locked to certain regions?
I remember buying a region unlocked DVD player that would also play DIVX discs. I just recently got rid of it when i moved and cleaned out my garage.
My favorite is streaming apps geoblocking contents and blocking access from all known vpn networks, then wondering why piracy on the rise again.
