Euro bloc blocks streaming vid geoblocks European Union citizens will soon be able to carry their streaming video subscriptions across borders, without virtual private networks but not necessarily for free. Negotiators of the European Parliament, member states and the European Commission have agreed to lift geoblocks within the EU, as part of copyright modernisation …
"Given all the fuss they've made about now requiring a £145.50 TV license"
Got OAP parents, granny, etc? They are EACH entitled to a free TV license at their "primary place of residence" - which is wherever they declare it to be. So just get one of your parents to register a license at your house...
"Freebies such as TV catch-up or radio broadcasters won't yet be obliged to make their services portable"
Why?
Anyway, it will remove one driving factor for piracy and even if "abused" by someone in France taking out a Croatian sub, it can't be a bit part of market. The rights issue is mostly part of USA Corp's "divide and conquer" approach to Europe. Imagine the outcry if they treated USA states and cities the same way? I can't see the rights holders losing much money, any losses are out of their excessive greed as ultimately subscription services are a rip off. Note that Netflix's prices are probably predatory to build market share at expense of established pay TV.
"Imagine the outcry if they treated USA states and cities the same way?"
If baseball fans in America subscribe to MLB.TV, they generally can't watch their local team, thanks to the big TV providers having deals in place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_blackout_policy
It's shite for them, but luckily for me, I'm in the UK where the blackout restrictions don't apply.
"Why?"
If you have any contract with a freebie supplier it's most likely to be a disclaimer of obligations to supply you at all. With no obligation comes ability to force them to do much, needs more law changes.
The BBC will be caught though for licence payers, though I expect they'll delay for 2 years and wait for brexit to save them.
Because there isn't a subscription model to access the BBC iPlayer or other catch up services. They use Geo-blocking and a warning that you must have a TV licence.
If you live in Italy and it wasn't geo-blocked, you can't buy a TV licence and you also can't be prosecuted for watching it.
Other TV channels are paid by advertising which is all regional.
"If you live in Italy and it wasn't geo-blocked, you can't buy a TV licence and you also can't be prosecuted for watching it."
I think the point is that if you pay for a streaming service then you have the right to watch it even while travelling around other EU countries. Since the BBC are now pushing the "iPlayer requires a TV licence" then you are paying for it so they need to come up with a way whereby a licence payer can still use it wherever they happen to be in the EU.
IPlayer repeats the rubbish on BBC. Anything from elsewhere should torrented because hotel wifi in Europe sucks. Actually most non domestic internet in Europe sucks. To be honest the whole of Europe and the UK is fiddling while rome burns. 2018 ... Oh ok. By then streaming services will all offer offline and the law becomes pointless. Yay for the slow wheels of progress we left.... Good riddance to dealing with things in 10 years... Eu roaming for example. Yawn
If a copyright holder wants to geolock so discriminatory pricing can be used where certain countries pay more (either because they are richer, or because they are more interested in the content) but providers aren't allowed to do this, what do you think will happen?
Do you really think copyright holders will charge the lower price everywhere? Of course not, they'll charge the higher price everywhere. Since that might hurt their bottom line, if they lose income in the formerly lower priced countries, they might even raise that higher price in hopes of making up for that lost income.
This is nonsense. Why should the price for a product in one country in a single market differ from that in another country in the same single market, purely because of copyright? The geo-blocking has to go because it is in breach of the single market, pure and simple. Geo-blocking is discriminatory and removes opportunities for arbitrage. Well, except that with digital products, you essentially have new forms of arbitrage such as VPNs and torrents.
Copyright holders have for years flooded new markets with lower prices to drive out local productions only to raise prices once they have dominated the market. One side-effect of this has been to fuel the black market in places like China and Russia.
You haven't read the document, have you?
It's pretty clear that the idea is that someone who is normally resident in one Member State, and temporarily travels to another Member State, will still be allowed to stream anything they signed up to at home. That's all.
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