Some websites are available only from US. Or some streaming service allows certain content only from US.
Why does such geo restriction exist? What is the benefit for the company to implement this?
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legal reasons or media manipulation reasons
On top of all the legit reasons here my former, itsy bitsy company geo blocked everything not US/Canada because our customer base was entirely US based and that wasn’t changing. The only traffic we got from overseas ips was looking for vulnerabilities. So why not just block it.
If the website is selling physical goods it could be to prevent having to export. That can be anything from having to deal with different laws to just plain old more work with customs and everything.
Yes, like to ship to the new UK we are supposed to register with a UK government agency, collect the customs on each shipment, and pay it to the UK government monthly/quarterly. Or…we can just not ship to the UK which is a lot easier.
Another reason could be for test market. For example, some products launch into smaller places as a test bed to see if they will be successful at a larger scale. Some websites and services start this way as well.
There’s a Lidl Plus app which is just a coupon and discount app for the Lidl stores. It’s geofenced and there’s no way to install it from the Play store as a user from NA when traveling in Europe. To me, this make zero sense.
I hit a lot of American sites that want to process my data in a malicious way that would be illegal.
Rather than fix the issue, the side just redicts to a “we’re sorry to our European friends” - like fuck off, it’s been years you cunts.
Anyway, to answer your question - it protects them from legal liability.
I imagine it probably has some IP law purposes.
I think the reason might be related to the cost. For example, ChatGPT may not be available in Iran because in order for them to use ChatGPT, OpenAI would have to implement a server in Iran’s network, which could be costly. If only 1% of the total population in Iran would pay for GPT-4, it would be impossible to make any profit.
