[Commlist] new book: Locked Out: Regional Restrictions in Digital Entertainment Culture

We would like to announce a new publication from New York University 
Press, which we hope will be of interest.

*Locked Out***

Regional Restrictions in Digital Entertainment Culture

*Evan Elkins*

**

*_http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/locked-out_**__*

A rare insight into how industry practices like regional restrictions 
have shaped global media culture in the digital era.

*__*

“This content is not available in your country.” At some point, most 
media consumers around the world have run into a message like this. 
Whether trying to watch a DVD purchased during a vacation abroad, play 
an imported Japanese video game, or listen to a Spotify library while 
traveling, we are constantly reminded of geography’s imprint on digital 
culture. We are locked out.

Despite utopian hopes of a borderless digital society, DVDs, video 
games, and streaming platforms include digital rights management 
mechanisms that block media access within certain territories. These 
technologies of “regional lockout” are meant first and foremost to keep 
the entertainment industries’ global markets distinct. But they also 
frustrate consumers and place territories on a hierarchy of global media 
access. Drawing on extensive research of media-industry strategies, 
consumer and retailer practices, and media regulation, /Locked Out/ 
explores regional lockout’s consequences for media around the globe. 
Power and capital are at play when it comes to who can consume what 
content and who can be a cultural influence. Looking across digital 
technologies, industries, and national contexts, /Locked Out/ argues 
that the practice of regional lockout has shaped and reinforced global 
hierarchies of geography and culture.

*Evan Elkins *is Assistant Professor of Media and Visual Culture in the 
Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University.

*NYU Press**| Critical Cultural Communication | August 2019 | 240pp 
| 9781479873876 | PB | £23.99**

*Price subject to change.

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