> ...OR Series in target language and subtitles in English or native language...
In the ever-growing geo-restrictions world, this is no longer as easy as it was in the days of yore.
For example, if you're learning Norwegian and you want to watch anything on NRK, you need to get a BankId[1] - for which you need to be a resident _in_ Norway to have.
The alternative, of course, is buying DVDs/Blu-Rays on Amazon -- but you have to know what you want to watch and what is "good" before buying it.
It's not a geo restriction problem. It's a distribution rights problem. NRK doesn't own the right to distribute what they have worldwide, they bought limited local distribution rights. Why would local broadcasters buy the worldwide license ?
It's the producers of the tv shows which need to license their product to a worldwide broadcaster. NRK is only georestricting because the licenses forbids them from not doing it.
I talk about this very often because I'm learning a language. To me the easiest and best options is to watch series produced by the streaming platforms. They own their worldwide rights so they can let anyone anywhere watch any show in any language.
I'm talking about Prime and Netflix originals. But the absolute best streaming platform to learn a language is Disney+. Every content on Disney+ is available in all languages it was translated too, from anywhere. It absolutely changed my life.
> NRK is only georestricting because the licenses forbids them from not doing it.
I would be more inclined to say that they're doing it to be "safe". For example, their immediate neighbour, Sweden, has a selection "Kan ses utomlands"[2] -- which, roughly, means can see outside of the country.
Presumably, like elsewhere in the world, not everything NRK is showing is licensed only for Norway.
To the original point: The issue isn't that BankId is being used, it's saying you can just watch the originals, in their mother-tongue (person-tongue?).
For example, NRK produces some originals, like Vikingane[3] that eventually became Norsemen[4] on Netflix.
Clearly, that's been licensed for semi-global (if not global) consumption via Netflix; however, as you can see from the NRK link, you still need to login via BankId to watch it in it's original form.
Again: None of this is a problem, per se, but saying that one can just watch original shows - in their original language - isn't congruent at all with reality, these days.
I'm in Norway so I don't really know how it looks like from abroad, but I am pretty sure a lot of NRK content is available globally. Under the Vikingane show you listed it clearly says "available in Norway". However the first show on the homepage "Nytt på nytt-quiz" [1], a type of game-show, says that it is available globally. I am not sure there is a clear overview over what is available globally though like SVT has.
I think often fiction-type shows like Vikingane has complicated licensing as it is normally produced by some sort of third-party, but other programs like news and the mintioned gameshow is produced in-house and NRK has all the rights. There is a very nice page with an archive of old programs [2], I think most of this should be globally available.
I of course agree in general that geo-restrictions and localized distribution rights are stupid concepts.
"Skam" is a bit different because even though it's produced by NRK it got so popular elsewhere that NRK is licensing it to other countries. So they aren't free to just dump it freely worldwide.
>"Presumably, like elsewhere in the world, not everything NRK is showing is licensed only for Norway."
NRK doesn't buy world-wide licenses, even if the same show/program is available everywhere. They still can't distribute that. What they can distribute is what's 100% produced by NRK. If there are collaborators, they can't.
It's a distinction without a meaningful difference. It's geo-locked because non-global rights exist, and non-global rights exist because geo-locking (implemented technically or not) is possible.
The context matters very little to the users who can’t access content, but it gets somewhat interesting when it comes to things like geo-locking. I can imagine a situation where User X can normally access content from their home country Y, but can’t access that same content on the same service when working abroad in country Z without using a VPN. The service detects they are using a VPN, but doesn’t care because the IP matches the county of the billing address of their payment method and thus complies with the content provider’s contractual obligations with respect to streaming rights. It’s frustrating when a different person using a VPN to that same country can’t access the content simply because their account is not in the same country as the VPN exit point.
But I agree with what you said, I just think it is an interesting topic and so the distinction matters to me more than it may to you.
Things like the above are infuriating to me as someone who appreciates the position content creators and licensees are in, I just don’t have much patience with the failure modes of copyright.
> In the ever-growing geo-restrictions world, this is no longer as easy as it was in the days of yore.
I totally agree with despising these restrictions, but isn't it likely that more total material is available worldwide than ever before?
My nephew was learning Norwegian for a while and we easily found Norwegian newspapers and magazines online to attempt to read together. It doesn't seem like finding such reading material would have been so quick and easy in the United States thirty or forty years ago.
Even for video, he readily found lots of material on YouTube that interested him, including lots of contemporary Norwegian music videos. That also would probably not have been straightforward to find a few decades ago!
I've been watching NRK for years, in Japan, with a Chromecast plugged into the TV. No problems watching news. Can't watch BBC nature programs, for pretty obvious reasons, but some other locally produced material can be watched. And that about summarizes my interests.. there's nothing else there I would want to watch anyway. Never tried bankID - that wasn't a thing before, with NRK. First time I heard about this, in fact. In any case I suspect that will not help at all when I use Chromecast.
Yep. The internet means information can be shared almost anywhere on earth simultaneously, and so a great deal of human effort must be spent ensuring this does not happen.
In the ever-growing geo-restrictions world, this is no longer as easy as it was in the days of yore.
For example, if you're learning Norwegian and you want to watch anything on NRK, you need to get a BankId[1] - for which you need to be a resident _in_ Norway to have.
The alternative, of course, is buying DVDs/Blu-Rays on Amazon -- but you have to know what you want to watch and what is "good" before buying it.
[1] - https://tv.nrk.no/direkte/nrk1