Algae is the answer to our energy problems
Perhaps there should be a setting for videos, like NSFW that applies to region-blocked videos.
I suggest:
-Users & uploaders can invoke whether a video is region-blocking (*region)
-The video will show up as unavailable to the user (greyed out?)
I don't know how often I've loaded a video only to think my computer is screwed up or sit through a few commercials to find out it's blocking the content. I'd definitely love to filter these duds out from my list, and would be willing to *tag/categorise them as *region blocking to save others the waste of time.
I suggest:
-Users & uploaders can invoke whether a video is region-blocking (*region)
-The video will show up as unavailable to the user (greyed out?)
I don't know how often I've loaded a video only to think my computer is screwed up or sit through a few commercials to find out it's blocking the content. I'd definitely love to filter these duds out from my list, and would be willing to *tag/categorise them as *region blocking to save others the waste of time.
Would it be *region, or *block or *regionblock or *fuckoffcomedycentral?
*onlyforUSA
And *region wouldn't even tell what region is blocked. Sometimes it's only Canada that gets blocked, and other times it's the whole world outside the US.
It's still not a bad idea, but it needs a little fine-tuning, IMHO.
I was thinking that if users specified what country they were from, then the invocation would be specific for that country.
I believe the blocking has thus far been not against specific countries, but against non-US countries...can we get verification on this?
If so, then the *region could apply, yet users will need to specify in their user profile (unless Videosift wants to go down the route of backtracking IP addresses...erg...) if they are in the US or not and if they want region-blocked videos to show up or not.
Maybe it can be as simple as a CSS-blocking check mark in the navigation. Check this to hide Region-blocking videos. I would love to see this for NSFW videos...
Sifters could be stimulated to knowingly post regionblocked videos.
And they could become lazy in not spending time to find a non-regionblocked version of the video.
And as kp says one generally is not aware that a video is regionblocked, especially when posting while online in the US (or other countries, this indeed complicates the invocation).
But on the other hand its good to know a video is regionblocked.
But seriously, I do believe those on VS have given up on the region blocking show down. Region-blocking videos are making to the top of the most popular lists (i.e.: Colbert's dance-off with Rain). Us Canadians can't watch it. I know it's not an option to have a Canada-specific VS (as there is with some country in Europe, but a "Hide" feature would help.
I for one have given up downvoting region-blocked videos. But damn I would love to *tag'em.