Hulu, the much hated then much hyped, now much, well, online, video website has officially launched.
But, and this holds true for everyone residing outside the US, they won’t actually show me any clips. Which renders it totally useless and an utter failure in my book. Over at Mashable, Stan Schroeder comes to the same conclusion, writing:
And you know what? As a user, I don’t care what the reasons for this are. I don’t care about copyright. For me, the site doesn’t work, and that means it has absolutely zero value. The Internet knows no boundaries; if you try to set up artificial ones you’re going to fail, period.
I totally agree. Even though the website explicitly states that they only cater to US-residents, there’s still no need to laud that. It’s an infliction brought to us by the abomination that’s international copyright law that websites that actually offer content suitable for international audiences, like video, can’t do so.
Hulu’s main goal was to counter the unauthorized use of copyrighted content on sites like YouTube or DailyMotion. Well, they won’t have much luck in that regard, the way they are doing business now.