back to article Eurocrats deserve to watch domestic telly EU-wide, say Eurocrats

Content producers will be ordered to allow Eurocrats to watch football when they’re staying in Brussels, Eurocrats announced today. It falls short of the hints that the EU Commission would introduce a new pan-European copyright code – which got some slacktivists so excited a year ago. The European Commission’s once ambitious …

  1. AMBxx Silver badge
    Coat

    Dongles

    Return of the dreaded dongle?!?!?!?

  2. James 51

    "Even though the EU’s own research shows nobody apart from Eurocrats really care"

    I care. It annoys the he'll out of me that I've paid for content but can't access it. Imagine if the same thing happened with books.

    1. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: "Even though the EU’s own research shows nobody apart from Eurocrats really care"

      It annoys Eurocrats in particular.

  3. Dan 55 Silver badge

    How on earth do you implement this?

    Temporary logins sent to TV licence address holders' households valid for up to three months at a time (max. permitted temporary residency in an EU country)?

    Expats will be happy, at least, they'll just ask for a login off a family member every three months...

  4. Shane McCarrick

    I can see my Dad being very happy about this- as an Irish man- we have a limited number of 'Irish' TV events during the year that are ordinarily blocked while we're abroad- such as the aforementioned sporting events (in particular the All-Ireland GAA finals- both hurling and football).

    Ireland has gone to quite extraordinary lengths to stop both legitimate and illegitimate punters from accessing its terrestrial broadcasts overseas- notably by moving its FTA satellite broadcasts to KA-SAT 9E - with a spotbeam that doesn't even cover all of Ireland (never mind abroad).

    I presume the proposed fudge would mean the services would move onto a platform (such as Astra) in FTA form- or hell, even with some sort of limited encryption, to allow users avail of watching the channel overseas.

    I seem to remember Sky having a limited access card for core channels based on postcode about 15 years ago- where for a once off payment of £22 (I think it was)- you got a Sky card which decoded core channels that weren't in the clear (and it localised your menu etc).

    Something similar for Irish citizens please? (seeing as RTE already give Sky free access to its channels anyhow- on Astra- but Sky then charge a monthly fee for them- bundling them with its other products- something could be worked out, without it costing the earth?)

    1. Mage Silver badge

      Ireland

      The UK is 20x bigger market. So FTA Irish TV over UK would make TV for IRISH viewer prohibitively expensive for bought in content OR locally made. Any content that UK broadcasters have rights for would them be unavailable at ANY price to Irish broadcasters

      Also Ka-Sat has no crippling EPG costs.

      Sky ought to be paying RTE etc for the 28.2 Encrypted content. They get it free which makes Sky Ireland competitive.

      Sky Encryption, Sky EPG, Freesat EPG, 28.2 Carriage. EACH of those alone is more expensive than Ka-Sat, which RTE uses as a transmitter site backup feed. Sky was charging RTE a fortune for the viewing cards for transmitter sites! So Ka-Sat, which is fill in for people pay TV licence in IRELAND, is essentially free.

      The shame is that carriage on Ka-Sat is optional. So TV3 and I think UTV Ireland are not on it as the small cost is more than any additional revenue for 1% to 2% of viewers.

      There was originally the Solas Card. The money paid to sky was enormous. Then when BBC, ITV and C4 closed the scheme, Sky had "Freesat from Sky" card for small charge. Puppy dog trojan advertising to get full sub.

      Tara went bust on Sky because of the costs of Sky EPG and Encryption. Sky provides this free in Ireland for RTE etc as otherwise Sky PayTv can't compete with Cable (UPC/Virgin and now Eir as well as Crossey). Sky would charge RTE more per channel for UK EPG and Encryption so much that TV licence cost would double!

  5. captain veg Silver badge

    8% is a lot

    Online consumption of TV is tiny compared to broadcast, so 8% is a big chunk.

    And yes, I care.

    -A.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 8% is a lot

      I care too and I certainly don't buy into this bollocks that allowing free trade in the EU would only help American broadcasters.... and even if it did it would be a trivial matter to build in some cultural safe guards.

      This just provides more incentives to use VPNs and download sites.

  6. Crazy Operations Guy

    Or the better way

    The better way to do this is to simple mandate that if someone pays for a piece of media, they can watch it wherever the hell they want. I'd be more than willing to send the BBC a couple pictures of some dead presidents each month to access to iPlayer.

    What would be the problem with just determining how much it cost to produce a piece of media, then divide that by the number of people consuming it, then charging the viewers that much to watch said piece of media (plus a reasonable extra bit for profit)?

    IN the modern era, couldn't we jsut switch television viewing to a purely pay-per-view like model where you purchase a piece of media based on the production cost and the number of other viewers (and allowing for people to watch advertisements to reduce the amount the would have to pay). However once you purchase that piece of media, you can watch it however and whenever you want. There would be so many benefits for everyone involved, especially for the producers as they would get highly detailed rating information rather than trying to rely on Nielsen ratings and months-old data from the cable providers.

    I figure that a system where you'd request the media 24 hours in advance and the production company can only charge enough to repay the production cost, but anyone buying a copy of that piece of media after the broadcast time is charged the same amount as everyone else, but it becomes pure profit for the company. Thus it would give the producers incentive to make good media that the people would want (Since anyone buying after the broadcast time has seen/read a review of it and is still interested in seeing it).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Or the better way

      I'd be more than willing to send the BBC a couple pictures of some dead presidents each month to access to iPlayer.

      I suspect selling individual programmes would be relatively expensive to enable and collect, and if you wanted access to all BBC content then you'd be looking at the sort of telly tax that funds UK public service broadcasting, and that's actually somewhere around $16 a month.

      In technical terms you certainly can set up micropayment options, and buy your chosen programme for a couple of bucks, but if you look at almost any regular subscription service (be that phones, streaming music, movie services, cable etc) the lower bound for monthly payments is about $8-15 depending on the service. There's a tiny number of exceptions, but at lower monthly payment levels, it is generally uneconomic to establish and operate full function billing, collection (including forex and banking), and customer service function, and since (outside the UK) this would be purely commercially the cost base needs to cover marketing, customer acquisition and retention activities.

      Let's assume the BBC could identify $4 of UK-specific costs they wouldn't charge to international subscribers - would you really pay $12 each and every month for full access to iPlayer?

      1. Crazy Operations Guy

        Re: Or the better way

        $12 a month for iPlayer is much, much cheaper than paying my cable provider to push the BBC down to my television...

        But what I envisioned would be for all television channels to cooperate with this internet-broadcast company so you'd buy multiple shows during the billing period and pay at the end of the month. Payment could then be handled by someone like Paypal who already have experience in global micro-transactions.

        One of my main motivations is that since I'm paying for groups of channels right now, I want the networks to know that I want my money to go to shows I like rather than the crap talk shows and political scream-fests that also happen to be on the same channel (and would thus get a piece of that pie). Or to kill the practice where all show go on hiatus at the same time since I'm still paying for the channel despite a complete lack of anything new that I'd want to watch.

    2. Named coward

      Re: Or the better way

      "However once you purchase that piece of media, you can watch it however and whenever you want."

      Conratulations! You've just reinvented the DVD ( / bluray / VHS )

      1. Crazy Operations Guy

        Re: "You've just reinvented the DVD ( / bluray / VHS )"

        Except in this case I can get a copy of Doctor Who as it airs, rather than waiting a couple weeks while the local BBC affiliate catches up (Which, annoyingly, I have to pay close to $120/month to get since it only comes with the International Favorites HD package and Premium Cable as well as rent the appropriate HD receiver through my cable provider)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Speaking as a (very minor) eurocrat - we've mostly engineered our way past the geo-limits, OK so I have to have 4 parabolic dishes on the house, the BBC dish is getting largish at 1.25m with state-of-the-art LNB, the French Fransat was much easier. Most crypto systems were bypassed by buying the appropriate national Set-top-box from Amazon market sellers who were very happy to send a box anywhere. The eastern Europe TV was simpler, sideloading certificates & 'rogue'-DNS settings onto an AppleTV2 box.

    My kids don't watch *any* TV, they prefer the global internet to any of these small regional entertainment ideas, but I'll enjoy the more relaxed new ways for a time yet

  8. Mage Silver badge

    Only eight per cent of 26,000 Europeans polled had actually tried

    Because folk

    a) Know they can't get a sub.

    b) in UK your dish only gets UK content unless it's multifeed or you have a 2nd one, Sky almost satellite Pay TV monopoly.

    c) Newer satellites have narrower spots so pan Western Europe is now needing a very big multifeed or motor dish, or in case of Ka Sat tiny spots and frequency re-use, out of area is impossible even if you have a 4.8m dish.

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    a “Digital Single Market”

    A what? Is that like a patent but "on a mobile device" so making something "new"?

    We already have a single market. This it just an action to remove some exceptions or force sellers to sell across Europe as per the current single market.

  11. Andy Davies

    I think Mr Orlowski underestimates the number of people affected - and annoyed - by this (including peripathetic journos?) . It's not just TV, radio is also restricted - Classic FM politely asks for your postcode if you claim to be 'resident', but the BBC is more restrictive, and just unavailable on some devices.

    For UK access why not ask for postcode plus TV licence no. - this would at least prove that an entity which is quite possibly you/part-of-your-household has paid for use of the content - after all, it would be easier though less honest just to set up a proxy tunnel. There's probably something similar for other countries.

    1. nijam Silver badge

      > I think Mr Orlowski underestimates the number of people affected

      I think he has no interest whatsoever in the people, only in the income of the distributors ("rights holders" or whatever).

  12. bpfh
    Thumb Down

    Still annoyed by stone-age restrictions on products

    I'm a Brit, resident in France.

    I fail to see why, in this digital age, why for example the BBC will refuse to let me watch BBC programs in English, via iPlayer, even if pay them a licence fee just for myself because none of my French friends would be interested in watching the English version and it's not as if I'm going to retransmit to anyone, and that risk exists even if you are slap bang in the middle of England!

    No, I have to wait until it's released in France, in French. And be happy with it, even if most series lose something in the translation (ever heard a French dalek?), and I want to see it in the original version. Tough luck, you have to download torrents get a UK hosted proxy find an alternative legal means.

    Come on Auntie, shut up and take my money, give me access. You're always complaining about your budget problems, but until you do, i'm going to have to download proxify find a legal alternative...

    1. dogged

      Re: Still annoyed by stone-age restrictions on products

      I demand video of a French dalek.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Still annoyed by stone-age restrictions on products

      The first B in BBC is "British". If you want to watch it then move to Britain, until then get over yourself.

  13. Nattrash
    Trollface

    French Dalek?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6CM7Sk3Blo

  14. David Roberts

    Not really mentioned

    What is this expected to cost?

    Eurocrats don't care. They will have unlimited broadband paid for by the rest of us. Their only problem is licencing restrictions.

    Media suppliers would have to extend their platform to handle authenticated streaming over the Internet and/or broadcast from additional tramsmitters (satellite or terrestrial) with suitable encryption. Could be a use for those card slots in the back of TVs that nobody seems to use.

    Travellers would have to pay for access via the new broadcast platform or Internet. Note that this is for residents who are temporarily abroad not for ex-pats who would be expected to have a decent Internet connection.

    It would make a tablet with a 3 SIM quite attractive with the roaming deal but generally a short term mobile contract is limited on data.

    So of most interest to ex-pats who would find a way of fiddling it. Oh, and Eurocrats of course.

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