The James Kilgour BlogA Life Blog.

So Ugly Betty Season 2 has finished broadcast in the US, however over here in the UK it’s still on hiatus from episode 10 because of the Writers Strike.

I totally agree with their cause, but now that it’s over, why aren’t Channel 4 showing the rest of season 2?

Again it goes back to the unfairness of media distribution between the US and the UK. Across the Atlantic, downloads from iTunes are roughly 50p, yet here we have to pay 79p! For exactly the same product! It’s the same with movies; we have to wait ages for DVD releases, and yet Americans get them months earlier.

The situation is mirrored across sites such as Qtrax, SprialFrog, Rhapsody, Pandora, Hulu and hundreds of other media portals. There only for the US! What’s the point of the World Wide Web when it’s restricted to only a 16th of the world’s population?

High prices for media in countries other than the US fuel illegal file sharing. If the ‘big four’ want to reduce it, open up music and films to the entire world, offering it region-free for an equal, fair price. That is what I think we deserve. I for one will not be taken for a fool.