Not Addicted

..or ‘Why does Direct2drive hate Japan’?

I’m trying to buy Warhammer Online. This is a problem, since apparently with a copy of it in my hand over here in Nippon, I would be able to build dirty bombs and wipe out western civilization once and for all. Terrorism would win the day, and everyone in America would suddenly realize what fools they were wasting all that time in the airports making you take you shoes off when they should have just been concerned with the exportation of MMOs to foreign countries housing expatriates. Thankfully this is not the case, and everyone can sleep peacefully at night knowing that I’ll never get my hands on a copy of the game through the nefarious INTERNET. I’ll have to resort to torrenting the actual data and having a friend physically walk into Best Buy and get me a copy, and then email me the serial number. Capitalism thrives on, communist Japan loses the war on terror, and Timmy is safe to slay orcs in Arena with cherry pie smeared all over his face, reruns of Jerry Springer playing softly in the background.

Sorry if I misunderstood Direct2drive’s mission statement here. I kinda thought they were offering the convenience of digital distribution for those of us who either A) don’t have access to a Best Buy, or 2) are too lazy to get off their asses to drive to one. I think I fall under the first category, but apparently the mission statement could be translated as “have a Best Buy nearby, and are too lazy to get off your ass”. Understanding your core demographic is an important business practice!

Being ‘on the internet’, you would think that Direct2drive might eschew physical boundaries in favor of, oh I dunno, a more global, internet-y, approach to business. It always seems ridiculous to me that server location is the smoking gun in any case involving website legality. The Pirate Bay is safe from the RIAA because its servers are firmly planted in Swedish soil. Direct2drive is located somewhere in America, so therefore its services are for Americans only. Oh, actually that’s not the case… there are a few countries you can use, but sucks to be you if you aren’t on the list.

The hell comparison came to mind as I tried connecting to the Tor network to give myself an ‘American IP Address’. Suppose a portal to Hell were opened in Spain. Would Hell then forever be ‘Spanish’? Would only people who sinned in Spain suffer eternally and forever? I'm not big on the scripture, but I kinda thought Hell was everywhere. The same comparison could be made for Heaven, but seriously… the thought of comparing the internet to Heaven makes me queasy. Getting an American IP address is a pretty trivial matter, which only further shows how ridiculous it is to limit sales based on IP address blocks alone.

In the end, Direct2drive refused to sell me the game, even when my packets were being delivered out of Washington DC via Tor. I imagine they have a pretty clever system in place where my credit card was flagged as ‘JAP-O’ when the first purchase attempt was made from Japan (even with my credit card's California billing address), and subsequently, when the packets then arrived from America, they were like 'Ho ho ho, not so fast! CHOTTO MATTE KUDASAI as you say in your native tongue, you trickster!' I currently have an email into customer support, telling them ‘even though I live in America, I use Tor, and therefore perhaps my packets appeared to originate from Japan?’ They say making a lie with a grain of truth is the best kind of lie to make...?

I propose a new future for internet commerce, starting from this day forward! From now on, the fact that you can read the fucking website should be the only factor limiting your ability to use it. If you can get online, and find the ‘checkout’ button, you should be entitled to make a fucking purchase. Furthermore, the concept of currency based on geographical boundaries is ridiculous. The internet should have it’s own currency, and I hereby propose that currency be called ‘beans’. Warhammer online should cost 49 beans, and I should be able to convert my local currency automatically at the time of purchase from rupees to yen to euro to shiny clam shells.

Of course this is all never going to happen, because then how would governments tax everything? Oh, humanity. Move forward. We’re ready for it. The sooner we stop acting like the lines drawn on maps that don’t actually exist are important, the better off we as a planet will be.

The side effect of me getting a new MMO to play has nothing to do with my wish for global peace and unity. Honest!

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