Technology of Convenience

I last left New Zealand on 31 August 2011 which was 1 day before the new legislation "Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011" came into effect.  Copyright holders could use information collected as of 12 August 2011 to prosecute, however.  Still, my name has never been on an ISP account and I wasn't a fan of using peer-to-peer file sharing software which is what the law targeted.  I wasn't immune to the concern about the law, though, so it was something of a relief to be leaving the country when I was (avoiding the Rugby World Cup was also a huge bonus).  I wasn't glad because I thought I could go to a place with more lax copyright law, not at all, but because I was heading somewhere that has all the services that I need without having to break the law.

In the USA I can watch House M.D. and new episodes of The Simpsons on Fox's websites.  I can watch free content directly from the copyright holder themselves; all legally.  Sure, the copyright holder chooses which episodes to make available to me at which time, each site has about 5 episodes available at any given time and they rotate them, but it's still incredibly convenient.  In NZ the closest I came was TV 3's "TV on Demand" which usually just made available a few episodes from earlier in the day or week.  Usually the shows were NZ made shows too, not the property of big US copyright holders, so there was a limited variety from what I recall.  So, to sum up: in the USA I don't need to break copyright law (even if I wanted to) because my needs are met with free media directly and legally from the source.

Now, NZ readers out there might think: "But wait a minute, what about your monthly bandwidth limit?  If you're watching so much online then you'll be downgraded to dial-up speed or charged a mint for exceeding your limit!"  My answer to that: bandwidth limits don't exist here.  Fiancé told me that some of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) tried to introduce limits, individually, and it would just cause their customers to migrate en mass to another ISP.  Basically, unless all ISPs introduced limits at once then it could never happen because the ISP that does loses too large a portion of their customers.  Sweet deal, huh?

Cable television here is a lot better than in NZ, too, in my opinion.  I've been in a household where we had Sky TV but, with the exception of a few cartoons that were repeats of repeats of repeats, I found that there was never anything to watch.  Or I would turn the TV on at the end of a movie that I really wanted to see or end up watching half a movie because I only caught the end of it.  I know TiVo has come to NZ now, and other recording devices of a similiar nature, but there's still not as much good and recent content as in the US.  And, because a lot of the good content is owned by US copyright holders, there likely never will be.  In this household there are 3 TiVo machines, 3 widescreen TVs and 3 people.  Excessive, I know.  By hey, fiancé and I at least share 1 TiVo while the man paying for it all (bless his soul) monopolizes the other 2.  Far be it from me to complain; fiancé and I watch many of the same shows and we're both happy with this arrangement.  Fiancé was already recording Futurama (a rare show in NZ), The Daily Show, Colbert Report and he set it up to record House M.D. for me.  There is, sadly, a lack of British shows available.  There's BBC America but when I tried watching that once it was during a marathon weekend of Top Gear.  Hmm, no thanks.  I shall investigate and see if the TiVo can't pick out a few gems for me, however.

Not all is sunshine and cupcakes in terms of US technology, however.  In the US it's normal practice (and they all do it) for Mobile Service Providers to charge customers to receive text messages.  When I found this out, since I had previously thought that this only applied to when International text messages were received, I was flabbergasted.  I can get unlimited text plans here for around $20 US but otherwise texts are $0.20 each way so, effectively, $0.40 per text!  In NZ my phone company charged me $0.09 NZ ($0.07 US at today's exchange rate) per text message sent - nationally or internationally - and nothing to receive text messages even if they were international.  They would also give me a number of free national texts each time I topped up my pre-paid account and, because I was mostly sending international texts to fiancé, I can honestly say that I never used all of the free national texts that I got.  I usually had about 700-900 free texts just sitting there waiting to be used, though they did expire after 30 days, so all I had to do was pay for the international texts.  To be honest, that company was an anomaly because most other phone companies charged $0.20 NZ per text send, nothing for receiving texts and $0.30 NZ for international or Pxt (picture) messages.

Another sore point with me about US phone companies is that they don't have to unlock a phone when a customer leaves them.  Say I purchase a phone from a company and, since it's their hardware, they make me sign a contract.  I have to pay to leave them if I want to go before the contract is up which is pretty standard (though scummy) and is done in NZ also.  If I then want to move to another company with the phone I purchased from the last one then I have to ask the first company to unlock my phone so that it can be used on the other company's network and plan.  Legally, they are under no obligation to do so.  I've never come across this in NZ.  Perhaps they do it with smart phones but I've never bothered to own one so I wouldn't know.  I like to give my old handset away or have it spare when I upgrade so this would be a major pain in the backside.  Fortunately, I still really like the phone that I got in NZ and since it's not locked I can get a sim card from a US phone company here and pop that in without even signing a contract since they can just add my phone to fiancé's contract with them.  I could go pre-paid but I figure this way is less hassle and there's just 1 bill to deal with each month.  It seems to work out a bit cheaper too, from what research I've done, so it's probably the way to go.

Games are ridiculously cheap here too.  Even if you factor in the exchange rate, console and PC games (especially pre-owned) are incredibly cheap when compared to NZ prices.  A game that would retail in NZ for $80 I can get a pre-owned copy of for $10 US.  And the beautiful thing about my main console of choice is that I don't have to deal with any region lock issues.  Lack of bandwidth limits also makes purchasing music and games online to download much more manageable.  Supposedly, electronics are much more affordable here than in NZ but I have yet to find evidence of this.  I was (window) shopping online for a netbook and found that the prices seems comparable to what I recall from NZ.  Then again, I didn't compare specific models so fiancé may be correct in his claim that PCs and their parts are much less expensive here.