Globalization is supposed to be all about free movement of goods and people and all that stuff. Free movement of people is still a far-fetched dream and even casual intercontinental movement of people is inconvenienced by the US-driven security theater. Anyhow, in the face of all the talk about globalization, it’s amazing that even free movement of bits can’t be done. It’s bad enough when thanks to some obscure, stupid rule you can’t order stuff to an overseas address from the US, but it gets really annoying when even digital goods face stonewalling or blockage at the borders. What I’m talking about here is, of course, digital media content.
The media industry is constantly whining that online piracy is destroying their profits (a stand that has been belied more than once but keeps on living, kind of like an urban legend), but instead of taking some actions to offer consumers alternatives they have been suing their customers. Cute. Anyhow, in US there has for some time been encouraging, albeit still small, movements towards delivery methods that actually start making some sense. For one, you can buy movies and TV series etc from e.g. BitTorrent, which is great.
But there’s a small catch. You can do it but only if you’re in US. Oh, and only if you use IE. And only if you have Windows Media Player. And only if… the list goes on, but apart from the useless DRM-stuff, the most limiting factor is, amazingly, the user’s domicile. What exactly is so difficult in allowing anyone, anywhere, to buy the digital content? The delivery costs for the sending party are, under current business models anyway, usually the same no matter where the customer is.
The end result is that the legal content is blocked at the borders, but spam and all the illegal stuff certainly isn’t. So the situation in the digital domain is essentially the same as it is in the physical world: the only product that knows no borders is pollution.
—–
And in other news roughly related to global commerce, the VATT (Government Institute for Economic Research) in Finland had yet another gem for us some time ago; namely they’re basically trying to scare people to leave the country by appealing to their research stating that the tax rates will have to be significantly raised in the coming decades in order to pay for pensions and other costs of an aging society.
So the only idea to financing something are tax hikes? That’s just so representative of the thinking of certain factions in Finland.. But hey, since tax hikes would promote globalization as people start leaving, I suppose in the grand scheme of things it’s good! 
Right? Oh, it isn’t? I don’t know if it’s something they’ve eaten or what, but it seems VATT has been on a scaremongering crusade lately.
