App Store games in South Africa “soon”?

According to Makhasi, the FPB was following the legislation given by Parliament which required certain things to be done in a certain manner.
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Now if they can just define "certain things" and "certain manner" then maybe they can catch a wake up.
 
Is this only games, or can we see Books, Movies and other media to follow?

Would love to access to full market, not just games and this goes for all markets not just Apple.
 
AlphaJohn said:
Is this only games, or can we see Books, Movies and other media to follow?

Would love to access to full market, not just games and this goes for all markets not just Apple.
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Movies and music we are unlikely to see thanks to greedy publishers.
 
R13... said:
Movies and music we are unlikely to see thanks to greedy publishers.
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False, i can assure you that the companies that hold the publishing rights are very eager to get their content online.
 
Ice2Cool said:
False, i can assure you that the companies that hold the publishing rights are very eager to get their content online.
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Aren't the rights held by the same greedy labels and record co.'s who insist on separate licensing across the regions an countries.
 
She went on to explain that classification boards in other countries had merely allowed the distributors to keep distributing whilst they found way to regulate it.

The FPB has allowed this in South Africa with manufacturers such as BlackBerry and HTC, Fisha said, but Apple decided that they did not want to go against the law so they would rather not distribute.
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So which one is it? These two statements are contradictory.

If other countries are the same as us, why is Apple happy to break their laws? Apple don't have a direct presence in ZA, do they? I think it's just that they don't care.
 
elvis_presley said:
Apple don't have a direct presence in ZA, do they? I think it's just that they don't care.
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I tend to agree, Google, Samsung, BlackBerry, Nokia, and Steam all operate stores in SA. The Google play store has a similar number of games and has been operating for over 3 years, it's obvious Apple don't care about SA.
 
oronte said:
I tend to agree, Google, Samsung, BlackBerry, Nokia, and Steam all operate stores in SA. The Google play store has a similar number of games and has been operating for over 3 years, it's obvious Apple don't care about SA.
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Well that is because they not officially IN South Africa. We have no Apple stores, in fact they not even registered in SA.
 
R13... said:
Aren't the rights held by the same greedy labels and record co.'s who insist on separate licensing across the regions an countries.
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Most of these record labels are already selling on iTunes anyway. Why not in SA? Well because, most likely, Apple never bothered to ask them.
 
AlphaJohn said:
Well that is because they not officially IN South Africa. We have no Apple stores, in fact they not even registered in SA.
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All the more reason for Apple not to care what the FPB thinks. Does Gog.com, mangagamer.com (an EU outfit) or Amazon.com care what the FPB thinks? DVDs sold by Amazon, often contain "for sale in North America only" on the cover. Has anyone ever sued Amazon for exporting to different regions? Play-Asia, GoG and MangaGamer allow purchase and downloads of games too.

What about Steam? And many other indie game stores.... ugh such as this one: MacUpdates from which I purchased and downloaded Call of Duty 4 for Mac?

Google.com runs YouTube. YouTube contains millions of videos, ALL of them are unrated by the FPB. YouTube does not rate them either. Why is YouTube (Google) operating legally in SA, when none of its videos have been FPB rated?

Obviously this requirement is not strictly necessary or else the government is morally and legally obliged to expel Google out of SA, and require ISPs to ban access to Google's YouTube until all videos there are FPB rated. Gosh.
 
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So in short, the FPB doesn't have the capacity , nor the skills , nor the regulations in place to do anything. So instead of allowing content until they can actually "regulate" , they simply block everything. Way to go, that is censorship due to incompetence.

I don't understand why government work like idiots, everything takes YEARS to do and they end up making such a convoluted and complicated mess of anything they try to regulate due to not having the people nor the skills. So what happens at the end of the day? They bring out something that's totally unworkable and not thought through. They say they work with industry on this, but i bet my arse these people have no idea what is going on in the industry. They probably don't even own an Apple device!
 
diabolus said:
So in short, the FPB doesn't have the capacity , nor the skills , nor the regulations in place to do anything. So instead of allowing content until they can actually "regulate" , they simply block everything.
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But that's just it. They don't block anything. They don't block YouTube, or Facebook or Twitter or any of the foreign websites which contain games (flash, downloadable or purchasable by mail order). FPB does not block anything. It is Apples' unnecessary self censorship which is to blame.
 
diabolus said:
So in short, the FPB doesn't have the capacity , nor the skills , nor the regulations in place to do anything. So instead of allowing content until they can actually "regulate" , they simply block everything. Way to go, that is censorship due to incompetence.

I don't understand why government work like idiots, everything takes YEARS to do and they end up making such a convoluted and complicated mess of anything they try to regulate due to not having the people nor the skills. So what happens at the end of the day? They bring out something that's totally unworkable and not thought through. They say they work with industry on this, but i bet my arse these people have no idea what is going on in the industry. They probably don't even own an Apple device!
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Good for them if they don't own Apple devices, it's not the government or the FPB's fault that Apple don't sell games or music in SA, it's Apple's.
 
oronte said:
I tend to agree, Google, Samsung, BlackBerry, Nokia, and Steam all operate stores in SA. The Google play store has a similar number of games and has been operating for over 3 years, it's obvious Apple don't care about SA.
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How do you draw that ridiculous conclusion?

Call Apple too conservative by all means but your conclusion is one too far.

They would make money by just publishing and it wouldnt cost them much to launch

Consider
* SA is one of 2 countries in the world that insists on classifying everything
* It simply isn't possible to do this legally without years long logjam
* So the FPB has said, go for it and they will turn a blind eye to the law
* Android, HTC etc are *not* doing it legally (despite how silly the laws are)
* If Apple just submitted and then they got pulled up by SA law for inappropriate violent content you would probably be criticizing them

When Apple changed Digital music they insisted on doing it legally.
There were many sites where you could get illegal music.
They did a deal with the artists and at 1st we had pesky DRM. Now thats gone and we can buy music (not so easily in SA) and we are all better off.
The insistence on doing things right has merits

Lets hope the non-availability of Apple stuff helps encourage the government and FPB to publish official policy and change laws

Personally I think Apple should just publish.. but thats me
 
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