:'(

I hate that message so much...

+1, The copyright holders need to realize this is not the right way to go. Otherwise, they'll experience the fate of the music majors.

Can somebody explain me why other people are not allowed to view those videos? I mean I could understand it for Kuba (ok, I cannot really understand it), but what is it that makes us different, except we do not live in the USA. Is it because we are not paying taxes there?

Another nice example is Steam (www.steampowered.com) – do you want game? No, or wait month, and of course pay some extra taxes!

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/restofworld

Yeah I get frustrated about it all the time as well... I tend to use all different kind of proxies, but public proxies appear as soon as they disappear... I even considered paying some friends in america to buy a cheap server and install some proxy software on it...

I don't get it for games, or, really for clips either..
But for TV there's a point to it.
If you stream an episode of (say) Heroes from the US site, 2 weeks before it's on in the UK (is it 2 weeks? Can't remember. It's short, anyway!) Then what's the point of watching it on BBC. It means all my lovely license fee money is completely wasted on a show that everyone's watching online 2 weeks earlier..
..
Of course, we're all downloading it anyway, but that's not the point!!

I think it has more than anything to do with advertising. Advertisers during say a Hulu show may not have a product in another country or have a separate advertising budget and want to restrict their advertising to their actual market. In all reality it probably has nothing to do with the shows themselves. At least with US tv/movies/etc.

It just sucks. Hulu, I can sort of understand, but YouTube? Come, on, people!

There's no single, globally-valid or "universal" (un)reason for geolocational filtering. Mostly it's dogmatically-applied copyright, that's supposed to govern only subjects within given geographical boundaries. At other times, it's due to strictly-mechanical needs to restrict streaming/ bandwidth costs/ to only own subjects (=UK-only iPlayer for BBC stuff). Or combinations thereof. At the bottom of most such cases is, however, the absence of a viable, modern (rewriting of) electronic redistribution rights for original productions, with derivative clear secondary renumeration tracks or strategies (ie. just as example, if something recorded in the 80s is subject to renegotiation for each redistribution attempt after original context for XY years, and individual parts-copyright holders cannot even agree who gets reimbursed and to what degree --which is frequently the case – then there is not much hope of a solution). The powers that be either don't care, or listen to the loudest commercial /AND WITHIN CURRENT LAWS FRAMEWORK/ lobbies that peddle their case. Indeed, I believe this will go on for quite some time yet, until someone finds a way to half/illegally monetize the bypassing of such IP-barriers – perhaps by harnessing the technology of spam botnets for setting up by-subscription private proxies for serving otherwise "inaccessible" content. Perhaps then, when the same tech is abused by child-pornographers and the like, the authorities will finally reach a conclusion – YOU READ IT HERE FIRST – that it's better to open the gates and retain some control of the flood, than imagine the flood can be legislated away.

You could try getting after your government goons who impose regulations upon providers such as Google and tell THEM to stop imposing asinine restrictions that make the providers put in such blocks.

Rob,
I think this has more to do with US-based companies than our gtovernments.

As for Hulu there is a workaround i am currently using.

You can look it up here:
http://lifehacker.com/394410/access-us+only-web-content-with-hotspot-shield

Although I have to admit that it lags a little bit sometimes here in Germany

Some can not understand what internet is :(

These restriction really suck ass.

We remember the launch of YouTube Olympics Channel too :-(
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-08-08-n56.html

Obviously, you should move to the US to fix this problem, or allow the US to annex you. Simple, isn't it?
:p

Seriously, I agree this is a terrible inconvenience, but until copyright owners are ultimately convinced that roadblocks such as DRM and restrictive copyrights hinder more than help their cause, the law will continue to protect their right to impose such obstacles.

If foreign countries are blocked because of the advertisers' concerns, why not using geotargeting to deliver country specific ads?

According to Alexa dailyshow.com – which doesn't geblock (yet) – has 7.3% visitors from Germany. I'd say this is quite a lucrative audience for German advertisers.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/dailyshow.com

stegan: the countries are not blocked because of advertising, they are blocked because the content is licensed, and the company licensing the content to Google only has the rights to license it for certain countries.

It sure sucks though. The long-term solution is for consumers to seek content with liberal distribution arrangements (such as Creative Commons licenses), and leave the content restrictors "out in the cold".

Pandora.com is the next one...
You can easilly bypass that ban using SSH tunneling on some USA server (f.e. free/paid hosting accounts like Dreamhost)

This sucks. From South Africa as well! But actually a lot more then in Europe.

:`-(

Me too.

On the other hand, hopefully it will allow (local / non-US) competition to grow faster, inspiring innovation across the board... sooner or later :)