Is it racist? I think it is.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
No this is about products and services being restricted geographically due to licensing, legal, tax, etc reasons, and that it's never, if not rarely, due to racism.
Name any product restricted in that way for that reason? Legal, tax, etc. I've never heard of any case, ever, where that applies. Literally never one. I can't think of how it ever could.
LIcensing is different and doesn't include geoblocking in any example we know of so does not apply until we come up with an example. Hulu blocks access, not licensing so is clear cut racism. Netflix does not block access, only customizes licensing by what they are limited to provide. Seems non-racist. Nothing suspicious.
The two are polar opposites and are perfect examples of my point. One is out to hurt and trick. One is honest and helpful. They couldn't be more different.
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Legal and tax laws work off of what country banking or activity is in, never the "nation of association with a network address at the time of request." Ever. I work in international business, no government or business could ever use IP in that way. That's instant jail time. If you allowed tax or other violations and tried to claim you used an IP address, you can't even claim you tried to do the right thing. If you, like Hulu, breach your contracts and refuse to do business because you detect the wrong place or just use it to ignore legal requests, you are in hot water too.
Nothing with tax or legal can ever, will ever, ever has been able to use geo IP. That's clear cut. I'm open to being wrong, but I'm telling you logically it's so far out there it's like trying to argue that you don't have to pay taxes on leap years because the IRS automatically forgives all your debt. It makes no sense, and no entity would ever be so crazy.
LIcensing is a different animal and that's never using geo blocking that we've seen. Whether or not licensing by country is racist is a question on its own, but isn't about geo blocking. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But no one uses geo blocking for that. Nor would they, as it would be terrible business. Just throwing money away.
Example: Hulu is racist because they are willing to risk their customers who travel thinking that they are technologically incompetent (which is true, even if you don't travel, their service sucks at a tech level, fails constantly) and possibly out of business and cancel out of confusion rather than just inform them that the content isn't available where they are. Geo blocking isn't about restricting service, it's about hard stopping communications.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
LIcensing is different and doesn't include geoblocking in any example we know of so does not apply until we come up with an example. Hulu blocks access, not licensing so is clear cut racism.
That's not how it is at all.
Hulu doesn't own every show or movie they have available. They license them from the content owners which give them the right to stream that content but often come with restrictions, including where the content can be shown.
So they implement geo-blocking, I'm assuming as a way to check a box to show the content owners they are actively doing "something" to prevent breaching their contracts, agreements, etc.
I'm sure there are other ways to do it, like confirming real credit cards and addresses, but that can also be faked easily or just use someone else's to sign up, etc. Official country IDs (passport, drivers license, etc), but that'd be expensive to support.
Do you honestly think Hulu is racist to the entire world except the U.S. (even though every race exists in the US)? Or do you think it's more likely they are limited to where they can stream their content due to other reasons such as legal / licensing / regulatory / agreements / competitors / etc.?
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@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
That refers to your ancestry or ethnicity, which is more about cultural and geographical origins than race.
Those are my races. What race would you say that I am if not those? If you say American, I don't agree, but that would defeat the point about Canada.
I don't know you personally, but I'd assume that I would say you are one of the 7-ish major races. None of which are Swiss, Dutch, or Scottish.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
That's not how it is at all.
Hulu doesn't own every show or movie they have available. They license them from the content owners which give them the right to stream that content but often come with restrictions, including where the content can be shown.
It's exactly how it is. Netflix, Amazon and all the other streaming services have the same licensing issues, often with the exact same programming, and not one does geo blocking. Only Hulu. ANd they restrict customer service, not just streaming. There's no possibility of making the argument you are trying to make because it goes far, far outside of their licensed content. And Hulu owns much of it, so licensing doesn't count either.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
So they implement geo-blocking, I'm assuming as a way to check a box to show the content owners they are actively doing "something" to prevent breaching their contracts, agreements, etc.
No, no semi-competent technical person could ever use geo blocking for that reason. Even if someone was that dumb, and all their management was that dumb, all they have to do is look at Netflix, Amazon, Disney (that owns them), BBC, Pluto, and on and on and go "oh shit, tha'ts NOT how it works, doh!"
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
I'm sure there are other ways to do it, like confirming real credit cards and addresses, but that can also be faked easily or just use someone else's to sign up, etc. Official country IDs (passport, drivers license, etc), but that'd be expensive to suppor
The degree to which one is trivial and the other is super hard for most people is extreme. There's no comparison. I bypass geo ip blocking by accident, constantly. ANd get blocked by accident, constantly. Easy to bypass is when someone bypasses it without even thinking. No intent, just... doesn't do the job it is meant to do.
Passport, driver's license, credit card... those all require legal fraud to work around.
You can't compare them.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Do you honestly think Hulu is racist to the entire world except the U.S.
If it isn't clear...
Both I and the customer service rep at Hulu are saying... "Hulu sees America as a race and everyone else as inferior and blocks more than their licensed content, but violated the law to act as if they have gone out of business to both foreigners AND to Americans who travel and associate with foreigners." That Americans who we know see American as a race will then be racist should be the assumption and never a surprise.
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This is my ethnicity:
But I consider my race to be White -- not German, English, or Scottish.
I assume it's because I've grown up in the U.S. and have learned to base my race off of that.
But yes, I do realize that other parts of the world identify more so off of nationality and ethnicity than by race.
I think that it's important to clarify that what you identify as and race are not the same things.
I can identify by nationality, ethnicity, or race. They are not same things.
You may identify by your ethnicity (Scottish for example), but your race may be White. (as an example, I don't know you)
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@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
No, no semi-competent technical person could ever use geo blocking for that reason.
So what is the website in question here? I want to know who is being a racist.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
I don't know you personally, but I'd assume that I would say you are one of the 7-ish major races. None of which are Swiss, Dutch, or Scottish.
I agree that most people see a few racial top level categories. I don't agree that racism doens't exist between those categories. If you try to do that you dismiss the idea, for example, that Arabs could be anti-Jewish or that Jews could be anti-Arab at a racial level since they are the same "race" both top level and sub level group. Yet clearly, the world sees them as racially different.
The world has always seen Europe alone as having about seven major races... Celtic, German, Slavic, Hellenic, Latin, Iberian, and Magyar plus the tiny race that is in Finland, Estonia and the Basque country.
When we were kids the world was like "four major races". But who is in which one keeps changing and everyone has different opinions. But essentially everyone considered like Irish and Polish to be two different races (and they are in every meaningful way) and groups that have recently all been labeled as white have had millennia of racism between them.
You can't just wash away the responsibility that companies or people have for being racist by attempting to wipe away the human concepts of racism. You and I can have nice, logical discussions as to whether races are real, imaginary, useful, etc. BUt what matters for racism to exist is for people to perceive and detect a race to which they belong and races of other people. Race is a perception. So for most people, "other people" are another race even if they are genetically the same. Meaning, the average American knows no more about the average Canadian or the average Afghani or the average Somali and may easily equally see all as "not American" because they have racism from afar.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
No, no semi-competent technical person could ever use geo blocking for that reason.
So what is the website in question here? I want to know who is being a racist.
How does that change the issue. The website doesn't matter. It's only an example.
I agree with Scott.
None of the reasons you listed would be for legal reasons and certainly not for Best Practices. None of them justify GeoBlocking.
Sure you can say it's a policy. But what is that policy based on?
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
But I consider my race to be White -- not German, English, or Scottish.
I assume it's because I've grown up in the U.S. and have learned to base my race off of that.
Right. You grew up in a German dominated country and are mostly German (Scottish is celtic, all the rest are Germans) that reclassified German as white about 80 years ago and has tried to make a point of making their white population unified (mostly, we suspect, as a means of banding together to retain a majority of more closely associated races as other races are more racial "distant.") That's a standard cultural trend over time.
If you lived in those individual countries, you'd see things probably a bit differently. But I also grew up in America and my background is shockingly close. however, I grew up one generation outside of a Swiss enclave and my family definitely didn't see ourselves as any closer to British as to Hispanic. Both were "other races". Not in a negative way, just "not Swiss". I grew up as Swiss German (not Swiss French as many are) with some Dutch and Scottish as "seasoning."
Both approaches exist commonly in the US. You get loads of people who see themselves as "American." But my wife's family is Italian and they'd never say American, they are absolutely Italian in every sense. Even though some of her family has been here since the Mayflower.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
I think that it's important to clarify that what you identify as and race are not the same things.
I can identify by nationality, ethnicity, or race. They are not same things.
You may identify by your ethnicity (Scottish for example), but your race may be White. (as an example, I don't know you)
Nationality is wholly different.
My nationality is American. That's clear cut. Your passport tells you this. It says nothing about you as a person. It's a legal thing.
Race is based on your DNA. It's who you are that no one can control. My race is predominantly, by no small margin, Swiss German. You can identify that by DNA. The chart you showed from 23 & Me or Ancenstry or whatever, is your racial information and nothing but racial. It can't determine anything else.
Ethnicity is your upbringing and culture. So for example, I was raised in a heavily Dutch influences, Swiss household. So my ethnicity is more heavily skewed towards Dutch than my DNA would suggest. But my ethnicity is also Swiss and Dutch.
Your race can never be changed. Your ethnicity is influenced by your life. So if I had been adopted by a family in Bogota and I was raised there as a local. My ethnicity would be Colombian. but my race would always be Swiss.
My kids are Swiss Italian by race. But heavily hispanic by ethnicity. Not fully, but partially whereas I am not.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
You may identify by your ethnicity (Scottish for example), but your race may be White.
Most people identify by their race, not their ethnicity. Or some combination. For example by race my wife is Italian and Irish. But by ethnicity she is just Italian.
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A great example of intra-racial racism is in common slurs. For example...
In Quebec, to be someone stupid is to be a newfie. Newfie is a racial slur against the slightly different racial group from Newfoundland. But it's been a slur so long, many people don't realize that that is what they are saying.
Or you might use the term vandal or vandalize. A racial slur against some Germans. But it is mostly used by other Germans. It's used by northern Germans as a slur against ones from the south. But as racial groups, they are separated by many thousands of years.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Arabs could be anti-Jewish
That would be religious / cultural (ethno-religious?) discrimination or prejudice.
@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Jews could be anti-Arab
That would be language / cultural discrimination or prejudice.
You are mistaking ancestry, ethnicity, culture, religion, nationality, and linguistic group with race.
Race is a categorization based on shared physical traits. (black, white, asian, indigenous)
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
You are mistaking ancestry, ethnicity, culture, religion, nationality, and linguistic group with race.
Which of those you use to identify with is your choice. But are all different things.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
You are mistaking ancestry, ethnicity, culture, religion, nationality, and linguistic group with race.
Which of those you use to identify with is your choice. But are all different things.
So what race is someone who is mixed?
They get to choose... How does that even work?
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@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
You are mistaking ancestry, ethnicity, culture, religion, nationality, and linguistic group with race.
Which of those you use to identify with is your choice. But are all different things.
So what race is someone who is mixed?
They get to choose... How does that even work?
Example?
