No Export for You/New Media

• The absolute ultimate example of this trope is Hulu, which you've probably seen linked to in a forum. It constantly bills itself as offering free (albeit ad-supported), legal TV over the Internet, and they're right... as long as you live in right part of America. If you're not, all you get is "We're sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed within the United States." Note that this even applies to shows which air legally on regular TV outside America — you can't even watch an episode that aired last week which you might have missed.
  • Hulu has also specifically blocked the Playstation 3 which was briefly fully capable of playing video from the site in your living room. Apparently they only want you watching it on a computer and this was far too convenient a way to do otherwise.
    • Word has it that Hulu is being blocked from consoles because the Corrupt Corporate Executive plans to introduce a paid for premium service that will be forced onto viewers who want to watch Hulu on consoles and mobile devices.
      • Confirmed true. Hulu now forces you to buy a paid premium service if you ever visit the site on a console, handheld or mobile device.
  • This is particularly frustrating if the only reason you find yourself outside the United States is because you enlisted in its armed forces and are currently deployed overseas.
  • Additionally frustrating now that Hulu has begun hosting exclusive series such as the award-winning Pink, though the series eventually was made available (officially) through YouTube, after everyone had stopped caring.
• The BBC iPlayer does this to anyone and everyone outside the UK, even continental Europeans who have access to all the BBC channels. Which is because to watch TV in the UK, you must pay the license fee, which funds the BBC.
  • If that's the reason they give, it's a lie. You don't need to pay the license fee to use iPlayer in the UK, if you only watch shows after they've been broadcast live. And as mentioned below, ITV/4oD/Five do the same thing, and they're not funded by the license fee at all.
  • Other TV networks in the UK. i.e. ITV, Four and Five does this as well.
  • The UK service TV Catch Up does this as well.
  • The Belgian/Dutch public channel versions of the iPlayer are also not available to foreigners.
  • on top of this the Moral Guardians made ARD (german public channel) block people from viewing 12+ content on their version of the iPlayer before their watershed. Making the whole service less than useful.
    • Update: as of late July 2011 BBC iPlayer was made available to European users, albeit for a fee. To the rest of the world however, it still remains No Export For You.
• The ABC Australia's iView service also performs this stupidity, the only difference is that Australians were never required to pay for a TV license. The reason given by the service is that it's not available overseas due to copyright reasons, which is most likely a lie as well.
• YouTube has bouts of idiocy where it suddenly blocks access to an official music video by an international artist in certain countries.
  • It Gets Worse. About 85% of music videos in YouTube would be moved to a service named Vevo, which is basically Hulu for music videos (complete with the US-only availability).
  • Youtube is officially in the list for people outside the US and UK. Almost all official content on the site are blocked from viewers whose IP address is known to be from outside the US or UK, depending on the content providers' whim and fancy. If they're feeling generous, you get content without sound. Otherwise, you won't be able to access the content at all, even if the content's a 8-bit remix of a copyrighted song, i.e. D-Pad Hero clips, which is a stupid considering the fact that D-Pad Hero is a homebrew and can be freely downloaded by anyone from just about anywhere in the world.
  • Gema talks have broken down and now we can add Germany to the list of countries where youtube has less functionality.
  • This is known to happen
  • It's goes from annoying to downright Rage inducing when certain videos from US and UK-based record labels block videos in countries that the artist is from.
    • Ironically, however, quite a bit of video content from "geo-locked" websites often ends up on YouTube worldwide.
  • To add to this, companies have the power to block videos with copyrighted footage from certain countries. Even countries where the user who uploaded said video came from.
  • Some channels that can legally upload entire episodes, like Manga Entertainment, will have the rather grating habit of region-locking a few episodes, but not the rest of the same series. So, your experience will be something like: "Whoa, they took it to a whole new level! Wonder what's going to happen to Kamina in the next episooOoh no, you've got to be kidding!" give or take a couple long groan of frustration.
    • Toei's Youtube Channel has this also for other countries, similar to MANGA's above.
• While most radio stations have no qualms about webstreaming worldwide (although some do replace the commercials), many Clear Channel stations block webstreaming outside of the US for something over licensing.
  • And CBS Radio jumped on the "No Streaming For You" bandwagon in early 2010.
  • Disney's been doing it on and off with Radio Disney. When they launched in the late 90s, it was available as a Real Player stream worldwide. Then it went down for decentralization in late 1999. They started transmitting again in early 2000, but now because each state has their own RD affiliate, having online streaming now seems unlikely. Then Apple carried the New York Affiliate over Quick Time 4 as a showcase of their then-new Quick Time Streaming Media feature in mid-2000. Then the stream stopped and Disney remerges back into a single network circa 2004, and it was at this time that the no export madness started- Apparently they started transmitting internationally again in 2005, but stopped again soon after. By then tho, the station has gone through Network Decay anyway and many international listeners who tune in for the oldies and lullabies slots are no longer interested because those slots are long gone. The question though if it's still accessible outside the US.
• Up to 90% of the traffic generated by a well-known pirating site are American TV-shows that have been recorded the night before.
  • Of course, considering the popularity of American shows in many foreign markets, popular American shows are guaranteed to be exported.
    • Not always true: there's a lot of British/American shows that will never be aired again despite critical/commercial acclaim.
• Some of Microsoft's services, such as Windows Marketplace and Games for Windows Live are only available in selected countries. Sure, the list is long, but it doesn't cover all of the world, much to the dismay of anyone living in the remaining countries.
  • Trust me, you're not missing anything.
    • You will if you own a Windows Phone 7 handset tho, since if you can't add programs to them, they're pretty much useless.
• For reasons uncomprehensible to the human mind, Nickelodeon UK and US does this for video clips hosted on their sites as well, As do Disney UK and US.
• Kewlopolis' Kewltoons video on demand site does this as well, dispite that much of the content on their site are either aired on TV elsewhere in the world or are readily available on DVDs.
• The BBC's official Doctor Who website often makes original content available - webisodes, software, etc - but blocks access to anyone outside the UK. The irony being most video-related content shows up on tube sites within minutes anyway.
  • This is particularly true of a series of free Adventure Games released since 2010. Although the games are later issued internationally for a fee via a third-party service, it qualifies as Bad Export for You due to the fact only the Windows version of the games is circulated, and not the Mac OS version available in the UK.
  • It should be noted that during the 2011 season of Doctor Who, international access improved somewhat on the Doctor Who site, with some videos now being made available for international viewing, specifically a series of online episode prequels. Others, like interviews and some trailers, remained geolocked. Videos related to the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures remain UK-only.
• "Rai televisione" (Rai television), a TV station that was created to help expanding italian culture, has a service called "Televizione diretta" (Direct television) which allows people to watch it online: [1]... but it's only available if you live in Italy.
• The video-sharing site Veoh decided to block access to its site in multiple countries. According to them, this was due to the relatively low amount of traffic coming from said countries.
• Steam (the digital distribution service run by the makers of the Half Life series) does this with some of their games.
  • Australia gets screwed arguably the worst by this. It has games simply vanish from the service, and if they aren't, a lot of them charge two to three times as much as an American version of the game for the exact same thing. The worst example of this was Call of Duty, which was listed at the most expensive prices (which are all in Us Dollars).. the Australian dollar proceeded to tank, increasing the price to over $120 USD.
• Many of Nickelodeon's tie-in websites start their life as being open to all countries, but slowly have mirrored regional sites created which then compltely blocks all access outside the US and Cananda. These mirror sites are sometimes years behind the current US site, and reflect that many of the regional Nick affiliates are years behind the airing schedule. They are rarely updated with the tie-in/bonus videos that the US site is, and when they are, it's usually just plugging the latest episode that airs 8 months after it aired in the US. The worst offenders are the ICarly and Victorious tie-in sites, which makes watching the ending credits of their shows a bit infuriating...
  • Fortunately, some countries that don't have local versions of the tie-in sites can access the US iCarly and The Slap sites. What countries can access them, however, is yet to be found out...
  • However, there's still hope to access the US versions of the sites... Those in other countries just have to add "origin." before the whole site url.
• The Hub. Good lord, The Hub... Considering that the content is mostly owned by Hasbro themselves, you'd think they'd make the video clips on the site available internationally to promote the toys. But noooooo, it's only available to the US. This is especially rage inducing in certain parts of the world where you can't get said shows due to the stupidity of the local pay TV providers. Physical transmission? Not happening either- the channel is not available outside of the US.
• As of current, there's no Philippine Feed of Disney Channel. it's either the Walt Disney company is lazy to make one or They Just Didn't Care. Not to mention there's no South East Asia version of Disney XD. Well, out of the 4 international youth channels in the Philippines, only three (Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Animax) have Philippine feeds separate from other countries' versions.
  • Trust me, the generic Asia feed is many times better than a localized feed. This troper has no interest in the crappy local cartoons from production houses that are not associated with Disney in any way injected into the Malaysian feed of the channel. Disney started broadcasting a Malaysia-specific feed in 2008, and half of the shows aired since is just that. It's basically why this troper just stopped caring about the channel anymore.
    • The generic feed though, might be a bit subjected to Network Decay because despite being for Asians (and shared by the entire region), The feed still acts like Malaysians and Singaporeans still have more say on the feed than Thais, Filipinos, Indonesians and Vietnamese (One example: Christmas 2009's So Syok Holidays's promo was only open to Malaysians and Singaporeans than to the whole region, not to mention the main feed is near to act like the Malaysian feed (because recent months show that the main feed is now a dumping place for Malaysian content the other countries don't want anyway), one show is with subtitles instead of dubbed.) So yeah.
  • Speaking of Animax, that channel has yet to be available in North America.
• On the topic of channels in Asia, Boomerang is not available in Malaysia. Although this is more likely because the local PayTV providers just didn't care. Also, BBC Entertainment used to be available in Malaysia, but it was Screwed by Astro in 2009. You think you're unlucky because you get Doctor Who a few months late? Think of the Malaysians who're denied access to new episodes of the good doctor!
• In 2011, Netflix stated that its services will not be available in New Zealand due to what it says is sub-par Internet connections and data caps. However, Netflix changed the decision for New Zealand and the service was made available in the country in 2015.
  • Netflix is not available in North Korea because it is a criminal offence to recieve broadcasts or content outisde of the country. The Chinese government prohibited Netflix from operating in the country, but its content can be found on Chinese homegrown streaming websites such as iQiyi.
• iQiyi is not available in Taiwan due to the country's national security concerns.