Veoh high on blocking
Veoh is no longer available in MALAYSIA.
If you are not in MALAYSIA or you think you have received this message in error, please report the issue below.
(Refer to picture shown below by clicking on it for a larger version)
Was what greeted me this morning when I got online to find some videos to download. Can you say “omgwtfwhyisveohblockingmalaysian?!” in 2 seconds? I believe I did just that in the span of 2 seconds for a whole 5 minutes.
I don’t usually frequent Veoh due to the load time. I much prefer crunchyroll for my daily dose of anime and drama. But hey, Veoh happens to have Gokusen 3 where crunchyroll does not.
Curious to find out the reason behind the blockage of Malaysian viewers into Veoh, I scouted out their forums to find that it wasn’t only Malaysia! In fact, they have blocked just about all the minor countries there is!
The list of blocked countries A to Z updated as of 1st July 2008 :
- Afghanistan
- Albania
- Algeria
- Andorra
- Angola
- Anguilla
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Argentina
- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Bahamas
- Bahrain
- Bangladesh
- Barbados
- Belarus
- Belize
- Benin
- Bhutan
- Bolivia
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Botswana
- Brazil
- Brunei
- Bulgaria
- Burkina Faso
- Burundi
- Cambodia
- Cameroon
- Cape Verde
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Chile
- Colombia
- Comoros
- Congo
- Costa Rica
- Côte d’Ivoire
- Croatia
- Cuba
- Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Djibouti
- Dominica
- Dominican Republic
- East Timor (Timor Timur)
- Ecuador
- Egypt
- El Salvador
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Estonia
- Ethiopia
- Fiji
- Gabon
- Gambia
- Georgia
- Ghana
- Guam
- Grenada
- Guatemala
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Guyana
- Haiti
- Honduras
- Hungary
- Iceland
- India
- Indonesia
- Iran
- Iraq
- Jamaica
- Jordan
- Kazakhstan
- Kenya
- Kiribati
- Korea, North
- Kuwait
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Latvia
- Lebanon
- Lesotho
- Liberia
- Libya
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Macedonia
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Mali
- Malta
- Marshall Islands
- Mauritania
- Mauritius
- Mexico
- Micronesia
- Moldova
- Mongolia
- Montenegro
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Myanmar (Burma)
- Namibia
- Nauru
- Nepal
- Nicaragua
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Oman
- Pakistan
- Palau
- Panama
- Papua New Guinea
- Paraguay
- Peru
- Qatar
- Romania
- Rwanda
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Vincent and The Grenadines
- Samoa
- San Marino
- Sao Tome and Principe
- Saudi Arabia
- Senegal
- Serbia
- Seychelles
- Sierra Leone
- Singapore
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Solomon Islands
- Somalia
- Sri Lanka
- Sudan
- Suriname
- Swaziland
- Syria
- Tajikistan
- Tanzania
- Thailand
- Togo
- Tonga
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Turkmenistan
- Tuvalu
- Uganda
- Ukraine
- United Arab Emirates
- Uruguay
- Uzbekistan
- Vanuatu
- Vatican City
- Venezuela
- Vietnam
- Western Sahara
- Yemen
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
And countless others that haven’t noticed that their countries were blocked as of yet. Not to mention the number of countries being listed here is GROWING by the minute!
The question here is…Why?!
The answer as per what the administrator of the forum says (repeatedly answering the same over and over again as I might add) and the conclusion that COULD be made :
“Hello Everyone,
Unfortunately Veoh has ended service in your countries due to a low concentration of users. Veoh is maintaining service in countries when we have the highest concentration of viewers.
We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for using Veoh.”
We can conclude that yes, minor countries MAY not bring in as much revenue when it comes to their advertisers and what not. And yes, minor countries may not have the highest concentration of users. BUT, as I’ve already mentioned, MINOR countries. Compared to MAJOR countries, of course we minor countries will have less viewers compared to them.
“Folks - bear with us on this front. It certainly seems like a harsh decision, especially when you’re on the wrong end of the rule, however this is something that is necessary for us to do to keep providing the service that we have. I am sure this, like the 5-minute preview limit, is something that will likely undergo some tuning as we go forward.”
Was it really? Was it really THAT necessary for them to block minor countries to provide their current services? Wasn’t Veoh doing fine even before this blockage? I don’t see other video sites such as YouTube, Google Videos, Crunchyroll, FlickPeek, Imeem, or other sites for that matter, doing what Veoh has currently done.
Think of how many viewers they have now lost due to this blockage. As minorities, it wouldn’t look like much, but if you add these minority countries together, the number of viewers can come close to equal to at least one or 2 major countries. An ant does not build a nest on its own.
Furthermore, I’d like to mention that, in these modern times, there are a considerable amount of bloggers out there whom are going into the whole video blogging frenzy where they like to make videos of things that interest, fascinate, intrigued them to make a video out of it. Where do they upload these videos? Video upload sites of course. What happens next? They get a link of their videos and post it up in their blogs.
Their initial goal? To keep a memory of their video. Their secondary goal? To share it with the world. But how can this be done for these Veoh video bloggers if their videos can ONLY be viewed by major countries? More or less upload the video if they so happened to be in the minor regions. And not to mention, the videos that were ALREADY uploaded!!
I’d understand if it was bandwidth problems and such but excuses such as “low concentration of users” is just plain discrimination in my point of view. And here I thought most the world have went past those barriers. Especially if you’re a matured individual/organization/country. We are, after all, residing on the same planet and would die the same way as everyone else when the world comes to an end thanks to our contributions to the growing amount of pollution, global warming, and everything that plain kills.
So dear Veoh, why discriminate us minorities and hurt yourself? Think about it! If you combine miorities together, you’d come up with one third or half the worlds population! (This is a rough estimate from me which I’m unsure of.) So do us all a favor, unblock us 
EDIT : I smell a crisis from this corner of the world where Veoh is concerned. Veoh users are on the move with their protest! *Arms self with rotten tomatoes*
EDIT EDIT : For your protesting delights, please look for more information at Veoh forums.
EDIT EDIT EDIT : Added more regions to the list of blocked countries. My my, how the list have finally grown up…
EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT : * updated blocked countries as of 1st June 2008, FYI, that’s 17 updated countries.
EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT : Finally finalized the list. Look at that…a whopping 166 countries blocked.
