Watching US Online Media Outside the US

I logged on to see if I could watch part of the debate in Texas between Clinton and Obama. The debate, I believe, was partly sponsored by CNN. I tried to view the live feed on CNN but was given a message that is all too familiar to those of us outside of the United States.

Various online media providers sniff out your location from your IP address and block your access to online media. This is how Netflix prevents me from watching movies online through my membership when overseas, how various programs now online through the websites of various US television channels cannot be viewed outside the US, how BBC blocks access to their regular programs usually accessible online to visitors outside the UK, and CNN blocks live streaming of the US presidential primary debate in Texas.

Thanks to the technological art of IP location sniffing, traditional and new media have found another powerful way of rebuilding national borders online. I guess I will have to wait until someone uploads clips of the debate onto youtube and try to view them before they get taken down for violating the copyright on this US presidential debate held by CNN and others.

In Korea, the media have taken a different approach: Just ask everyone for their citizen registration number. Since I am here on an A-3 US government visa, I cannot even get a foreigner registration number in Korea. That means, when I am living in Korea on a one year visa, in addition to not being able reserve train tickets and use the vast majority of the thousands of online retailers and websites, I can’t view any (that I know of) of the Korean television media streamed or archived online.

In short, in Korea I cannot use the internet to see Korean online commercial media and I cannot use it to see major sources of online media in the United States. Fortunately, there is a reason I have never used my TV since beginning my current fellowship (and it isn’t the fact that I recently discovered that the TV in the furnished apartment may never have been working in the first place): this helps reduce the distractions to my studies to that last minor source: the rest of the internet.

UPDATE: CNN blocks the video feed to everyone outside the US but an audio feed is available here. HT dailykos.com.