Labour policy review tells EU where to stuff its geo-blocking ban

Re: "should" ?

It's not about free

It's about not being able to buy a UK TV licence in and then be able to stream the Boat Race live on my laptop because I happen to be in Belgium that day.

Re: "should" ?

As a Brit who goes to France on holiday it is annoying that I've paid my license fee and paid for amazon prime and I can't access either. I could use a VPN but I haven't heard a single good reason why I can't access services I have paid for because I have temporarily moved location.

BTW the BBC would not have to give it's services away for free. I already see ads on the website when I travel and the iplayer could have ads on the same basis or have a login that comes with the license.

Re: "should" ?

Maybe the BBC could sell you a licence to watch their stuff. I've no idea if you would take them up on the offer, but some people certainly would pay it.

The single market is about the free movement of goods, services and people. Geo-blocking restricts services. There would still be ways to bring this in by the back door. I'd love to buy anime with Japanese, English and French dub and sub but as it is I would need to buy two DVDs/Blu-Rays because the dvd released in the UK doesn't have the French track and the French dvd doesn't have the Englash track. This is one reason why I liked HD-DVDs, they had lots of language tracks on them.

The sentence I was referring to hasn't changed. It still says they found only superficial reasons for *having* geoblocking.

DIRECTIVE 89/552/EEC - "TELEVISION WITHOUT FRONTIERS"

"What's called (propaganda-friendly term) "geoblocking" really means "freedom of licensing". The EU wants to stop this."

Or they're a bit confused.

http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/audiovisual_and_media/l24101_en.htm

"The Directive aims to ensure the free movement of broadcasting services within the internal market and at the same time to preserve certain public interest objectives, such as cultural diversity, the right of reply, consumer protection and the protection of minors. It is also intended to promote the distribution and production of European audiovisual programmes, for example by ensuring that they are given a majority position in television channels' programme schedules."

Except when this contravenes rights owners rights to maximise rights owner's rights to ignore the internal market and try to maximise revenues per territory. It's one of those strange situations where too many rights might make a wrong. Or smaller EU members may need some protection from the EU's broadcasting giants to try and protect their own customer base. The get-out I guess for content/rights owners is the existing Directive states 'broadcasting services' rather than content.

Re: I don't get it...

Andrew

so are you implying (or me inferring) the importing of goods or services between member EU states should be illegal ? Sorry but that goes against the whole point (and laws) of the single EU market. There have been plenty of smack-downs on this (especially big pharma) so companies cannot price gouge individual member states without being given the choice of buying the goods or services from another member state which is exactly what is being lobbied for here.

And you expect us to have sympathy with that ?

Re: I don't get it...

Because they can't maximise the price of their goods.

And this is the bit with which I have a problem. What gives them the right to "maximise the price of their goods", when that comes at the direct expense of others?

Just because people have historically been able to segmentate markets due to the need for physical manufacturing and distribution processes, does not mean that they should be allowed to impose artificial limitations where natural ones do not apply. And with digital media content, you have effectively made an unlimited number of copies when you have made the first one. You can sell digital content abroad for the same overhead cost as selling it locally, and it makes no sense to allow artificial restraint of trade like this.

P.S. Why not scrap VAT on copyrighted works, but tax the licensing fees earned instead? Then there is no need to be concerned with different rates of VAT in each country, and the tax still gets collected where the goods are sold from. It also incentivises collection, as you can be sure that authors will chase every penny due to them.

Re: It's just like DVD region coding...

Why should something have a different price in Liege than in Aachen? The cost of production is the same as is, if its delivered by land from Belgium, the cost of delivery.

I think what you are saying is that merchants shoukd be able to charge different prices in different countries and the consumers can't just druve across a border to buy the item where it is offered at a lower price....right?

Re: It's just like DVD region coding...

Then as a voter I should also want my government to extract the maximum price in tax and not allow them to sell stuff in my country while employing people abroad and paying tax abroad.

After all restricting foreign trade is the whole point of the eu isn't it?

Re: It's just like DVD region coding...

" If you sold stuff then you'd want to do this too."

I run into UK resellers of "stuff" on a daily basis who seem to think they have exclusive rights to sell to UK customers and get quite vocally upset(*) when told that I'm buying £x0,000 worth of kit from France or Germany because it's half the price and the vendor is offering better support options.

It's quite convenient for "cultural stuff" that they still have this kind of legal protection but as others have said it's at odds with the single market - and the argument about school holidays is a bit of a straw man given the wide variability of those within the UK, let alone across the EU.

(*) More than one has stated they're going to take legal action to prevent the sale. None have ever done so, presumably because their lawyers have told them they wouldn't get far in court trying to retrain trade in violation of single market rules.

Re: It's just like DVD region coding...

No you don't have to market your product anywhere, however if you were a Polish streaming TV company you couldn't stop me logging onto your website, entering my card details and watching your stuff.

Re: It's just like DVD region coding...

"if I'm a Polish company making a Polish product, I now have to arrange distribution, marketing, and advertising for my product across all the other territories in Europe?"

Nope. You just can't carve up the EU into "exclusive market areas"

ok, think of the children

I live in Portugal and would like my kids to be able to watch Danish TV in order to keep their language current. Extortionately expensive (~€500/y I think) at present.

"Think of the children"

In reality, the younger would watch crappy cartoons and shows from Disney/CN, whatever in Danish and the older not watch much at all.

Re: Meanwhile, in the real world...

That's a possibility; the BBC would, probably, have to pay a bit more for some imported material, which was now being watched across the continent. (Not least, because there might be less demand from, say, German broadcasters for a localised version now, thanks to many people there being happy to watch the English).

There is a distinct possibility that some big ticket programmes may not be localised for other markets, or may not attract such large audiences in those markets, if people have already been able to view the UK/American (and I'm thinking this could often be the case with US imports, say Desperate Housewives) versions via British broadcasters, thanks to the lifting of restrictions.

The BBC and Sky would perhaps be the least disadvantaged because both have some sort of mechanism for getting fees from people. ITV and Channel 4, for example don't, and would have to either give stuff away to people on the continent for no extra return (while likely paying extra for the content in the first place), or spend a lot of money on adding some sort of mechanism to allow for people to give them money.

Meanwhile, what of the foreign broadcaster that was previously showing a blockbuster import, dubbed into the local language? There is a possibility that they might find that the audience shrinks once people can get the non-dubbed version elsewhere. How much it will shrink we don't know, but isn't it at least possible, and worth considering that a loss of potential ad revenue because of this could then affect the amount of money that the broadcaster has to create original material in their own language.

And that's surely what the article was driving at - there could be unintended consequences in a variety of ways which would result in far less money being available for local material, while a wave of generic hollywood and euro-pap does far better.

To a degree, of course, some of this has been handled in the UK already, albeit on a smaller scale. Look at S4C, which receives subsidy specifically to create programmes in the local language, and to a lesser degree BBC Alba.

I'm not quiet sure how they handle this in Ireland - if TG4 has a subsidy specifically to support the language - but that may be the way that things end up being done, if people elsewhere in Europe are keen to retain the production of good quality material in their own language.