PRESENT TENSE:SOMETIMES, when it comes to revolutionary technology, we in Ireland find ourselves feeling like the poor kids of the neighbourhood, our noses pressed to the window, watching the neighbours feasting. We want what they're having, but we're not allowed. So a little sleight of hand is employed.
For instance, increasing numbers are joining the online music revolution that is Spotify.com. Or, to be more accurate, they’re breaking into it; using a fake identity and gently letting themselves in without Spotify noticing that they shouldn’t be there. They’re not exactly master criminals, admittedly.
This isn’t a column about Spotify, but I should first explain what it is to those who don’t know. The site allows free access to what is effectively the world’s jukebox. If you want a band, a tune, an album, it’s likely to be there, streamed online and legal. It’s paid for through advertising. It is, frankly, wondrous. Not least because, although it has a premium service, they also offer it for free. Unless you live in a country in which Spotify has yet to launch its free service, such as Ireland. Which is why Irish shouldn’t be busting in. But we manage it using sites that pretend we’re in the UK, and handy guides posted on YouTube by Norwegian hard-rock enthusiasts.
The point is that Spotify is the latest revolution to sweep the globe only for the wave to run out of energy just before it gets to Irish shores. Or, more accurately, for it to hit a wall that runs along a jagged line separating the North from the rest of the island. The UK gets Spotify. Just as it gets the BBC’s extraordinarily popular iPlayer. Just as it got the iPhone before we did. And each time this happens, we press our noses to the window, but someone keeps pulling the curtains closed.
Our retorts aren't exactly comforting ("You've got the BBC's iPlayer? Well we've got the RTÉ player. Nationwideon tap!"), so the only way in is through the back door. There are occasional Boards.ie discussions about how exactly someone gets access to the iPlayer, although that's a trickier system to get around.
It’s understandable that the iPlayer is unavailable here – or anywhere else outside of the UK – but it really is a tease. In the Republic, many of us grew up with the BBC as a main channel, so that even though we have never had to pay their licence fee we feel such a sense of ownership it seems unfair that we can’t watch Doctor Who when we want.
Instead, we have to hear and read about how much it has changed viewing habits over there, how awesome it is, how life-changing, until we stick our fingers in our ears and hum loudly in the hope they will just go away and find a new toy.
There are many more Irish, it would seem, who have found a way to circumvent Spotify’s borders. They now get what the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Finland and Norway get, and what the US will get by the end of the year. Spotify has no immediate plans to extend the free service to Ireland (it’s €9.99 a month otherwise), and says that it’s aware some users are bypassing its terms and conditions, but that the accounts are “generally restricted after a short time”.
With the iPhone, we originally had to buy it online or brought it home from the States, as we watched it creep all too slowly towards the country. Every time a piece of technology is dangled at us from over the water, every time someone develops a paradigm-altering website but slaps digital border guards around it and refuses to let us in, it becomes something of an obsession to figure out how we can get over the fence.
It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it is a little akin to the way in which, until not too many years ago, a movie would be released in the US, but by the time it finally arrived here the sequel would already be out there. But this is an age when everything is supposed to be open and instant. We do not expect borders or delays.
More than that, it feels unfair. Because every time it happens, we get a reminder of our place in the grand scheme of things. A small island beside a bigger, more important one. Way down the list. Somewhere to be dealt with once the UK has been conquered. Perhaps it’s understandable that petulance kicks in and a few decide to punch a hole in the window.
shegarty@irishtimes.com
