EU Agrees To Cross-Border Access To Streaming Services (variety.com) 55
Putting in place the first piece of its hoped-for unified digital market, the European Union has agreed on new rules allowing subscribers of online services in one E.U. country access to them while traveling in another. From a report: "Today's agreement will bring concrete benefits to Europeans," said vice president in charge of the Digital Single Market, Andrus Ansip, in a statement. "People who have subscribed to their favorite series, music and sports events at home will be able to enjoy them when they travel in Europe. This is a new important step in breaking down barriers in the Digital Single Market." Variety explain: That said, "portability" is the least contentious of DSM regulations being advanced by the European Commission. Reached yesterday, the agreement between the Commission, the E.U.'s executive arm, the European Parliament and the E.U.'s Council of Ministers, representing its 28 member states, will allow consumers to fully use their online subscriptions to films, sports events, e-books, video games or music services when traveling within the E.U. The online service providers who will be mandated to make these services available range from video-on-demand platforms (Netflix, HBO Go, Amazon Prime, Mubi, Chili TV) to online TV services (Viasat's Viaplay, Sky's Now TV, Voyo), music streaming services (Spotify, Deezer, Google Music) and game online marketplaces (Steam, Origin).
Hi. (Score:1)
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I thought you were leaving the EU?
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I live in the UK. Can I has streaming pleez?
Yes. The UK has not invoked article 50, they've almost passed a law authorizing the government to invoke it but even after that there's a negotiation period of up to two years where they will still be EU members. After that, who knows...
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It's why America sucks to live in, and Europe does not
FTFY.
Re:Governments and Free Markets don't mix (Score:4, Interesting)
When I encounter geoblocking of content that I subscribe to legally at home, I pirate it. I support paying artists, not nonfunctional middlemen.
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Just for a moment, imagine that you are a creator of digital work that could be sold online, rather than being an AC troll. What possible reason would you have to prevent anyone, wherever they might be located in the world, from buying it?
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Just for a moment, imagine that you are a creator of digital work that could be sold online, rather than being an AC troll. What possible reason would you have to prevent anyone, wherever they might be located in the world, from buying it?
Why does Hollywood prefer to release movies to cinemas first and disc/TV/streaming later? Why does a book come in hardcover before paperback? It's called maximizing revenue. I'm not saying it's good for the consumer, but if you don't understand why it could be good for business it's because you don't understand business.
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Well for one thing, being able to buy from anywhere in the world will automatically mean "priced the same".
If I price it cheaper in Asian/African countries to be affordable in those low wage economies, why would everyone else in the world be willing to pay more ?
So, if everything gets priced at the lowest market value, it will probably prevent a lot of digital works from being created at all simply because the returns are too low or they loose money.
Creation of digital content costs money, everybody who works on it wants to be paid for their work.
Not necessarily, economics of scale could more that make up for the lower resale price. A small number times billions of buyers == still a very big fucking number.
I see what you are saying, and I acknowledge it could go either way for many a producer. But it would also open the gates to many, many others. Say, you are a small, independent film developer. Your film barely breaks in the US market at all (it happens all the time.)
But by being made available at affordable prices all over the world, all of t
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Well for one thing, being able to buy from anywhere in the world will automatically mean "priced the same".
Any distributor would like to be able to segment the market so they discriminate on price if it could, but in the digital market that's a mug's game. You're right - digital content will, over time, tend to be priced the same everywhere, but I consider this a feature, not a bug. An author's cut of the digital pie, be it an expensive hardcover or a cheap paperback was no larger than it is now in the days when publishers controlled physical book markets - when digital prices get cheap, it's happening because t
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Then why do copyright owners tend not to restrict availability or charge different prices within a single sovereign country, such as in Wyoming vs. California?
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Varying copyright terms; age rating (Score:2)
Region-restricted work B is based on an underlying work A whose author has been dead for more than 50 but less than 100 years. Copyright in work A has expired in the countries where work B is available but still subsists in other countries. If the publisher of work B were to make work B available in countries where copyright in work A subsists, the publisher of work A would sue the publisher of work B and win.
Or a work has an age rating in one country but is Refused Classification in another.
Or a work has a
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EU has fairly unified copyright rules.
Age restrictions apply, but except for a small set (e.g. Nazi symbolism in material to be sold in Germany), getting refused classification is unlikely - if you cannot/will sell a product in some EU countries because of differing age-restrictions, you wont want to sell it to non-EU countries either.
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EU has fairly unified copyright rules.
But a work available outside the EU might not be available in the EU because of said "unified copyright rules."
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From June this year there are no roaming charges in the EU and you'll be billed against your normal plan:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38825154
Great for us in the UK until we leave and end up with hefty roaming charges again :/
The EU doing what it should be doing (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't this the whole point of the EU? A single economic trading zone?
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It's mostly to do with freedom of movement. Companies can refuse to sell services to people in a particular country if they want, but what they can't do is sell it to someone and then block them when they move abroad.
This is all to make freedom of movement viable. An individual must be able to take their services (SIM card, streaming services etc.) with them, as well as their family, otherwise there are massive disincentives to doing it.
It's about damn time (Score:2)
Maybe this will keep LePen out of power. Seriously... circuses and all that.
Not available in your country! (Score:1)
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Doesn't solve the problem that "This service is not available in your country" in the first place. If I can't even subscribe to the service in my own country first what tf do I need streaming roaming for?
While it's not a complete solution, if you can manage to arrange payment details in another country, you can at least now work around the problem.
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arrange payment details in another country
Is this even possible in the EU anymore? On this side of the pond (USA) we passed a law [wikipedia.org] prohibiting* foreign financial institutions from creating or maintaining accounts for US persons. So how can some EU bank allow anyone to walk in and set up a credit card account without proof that they are not Americans?
*Well, not actually prohibiting. But if you are caught opening an account for a US person, you will be audited with a rubber glove. Repeatedly.
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huh? Pretty sure I've seen prepaid debit(!) versions of major credit card brands sold in America to anyone who'd buy one. Thinking that'd be enough to fake being from the US-of-A, online at least.
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major credit card brands sold in America ... fake being from the US-of-A
FATCA is designed to keep foreign banks from siphoning off US business. Once you are in the states, we don't care if you rip off some EU license holder.
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Can they do this? (Score:2)
While the EU (government) may agree to this, isn't it up to the companies providing the streaming service (and also the content copyright holders)
Copyright owner would have to stop trading in EU (Score:2)
If a copyright owner does not consent to the digital single market, it would have to withdraw its works from all streaming services across the European Union. I am not privy to the contracts between copyright owners and streaming services in order to determine whether they allow a copyright owner to perform such a withdrawal.
Summary blames the wrong companies (Score:4, Insightful)
Those service providers would love nothing more than to provide their service anywhere in the world to all their subscribers. It would vastly simplify their software and infrastructure.
They only reason they restrict their services based on geography is because they're forced to do so by the music, TV/movie, and game studios, who insist on different release schedules and different pricing in different countries and regions in order to eek out a tiny bit more profit.
Re: Summary blames the wrong companies (Score:1)
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And this makes one wonder what the result will be. Say you have Corporation X that wants to release its content through Netflix, but only to countries A,B,C,D, and E -- because F,G,H, and I have lucrative movie theater, TV distribution, DVD/BluRay sales, or other marketing channels that they want to play their course before streaming to. Now, instead of just telling Netflix where it can and can't stream within the EU, it must decide when it wants the entire EU to be able to view its content through Net