Locked out regional restrictions in digital entertainment culture / Evan Elkins.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Elkins, Evan, author.

Series:

Critical cultural communication.

NYU scholarship online.

Critical cultural communication

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Trade regulation.

Multimedia systems.

Interactive multimedia.

Entertainment computing.

Digital media.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (188 pages).

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, 2020.

Summary:

"This content is not available in your country." At some point, most media consumers around the world have run into a message like this. Whether trying to watch a DVD purchased during a vacation abroad, play an imported Japanese video game, or listen to a Spotify library while traveling, we are constantly reminded of geography's imprint on digital culture. We are locked out. Despite utopian hopes of a borderless digital society, DVDs, video games, and streaming platforms include digital rights management mechanisms that block media access within certain territories. These technologies of "regional lockout" are meant first and foremost to keep the entertainment industries' global markets distinct. But they also frustrate consumers and place territories on a hierarchy of global media access. Drawing on extensive research of media-industry strategies, consumer and retailer practices, and media regulation, Locked Out explores regional lockout's consequences for media around the globe. Power and capital are at play when it comes to who can consume what content and who can be a cultural influence. Looking across digital technologies, industries, and national contexts, Locked Out argues that the practice of regional lockout has shaped and reinforced global hierarchies of geography and culture.

Contents:

Introduction: regional lockout as technology, distribution, and culture

Dvd region codes : technical standards and geocultural status

Console games : how regional lockout shaped the video game industry

Video on demand : geoblocking, borders, and geocultural anxieties

Digital music : regional lockout and online listening

Region-free media : collecting and selling cultural status

Conclusion: the end of geoblocking? or, region-free media literacy

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the author.

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4798-0226-3

OCLC:

1105557843