European Commission Proposes "Digital Single Market" and End To Geoblocking

An anonymous reader writes A new initiative from the European Commission proposes a reformed "single digital market", addressing a number of issues that it sees as obstructions to EU growth, including geoblocking — where services such as BBC's iPlayer are only available to IP addresses within the host country — and the high cost of parcel delivery and administration of disparate VAT rates across the member states. The ramifications of many of the proposals within the Digital Single Market project extend to non-EU corporations which have built their business model on the current isolationism of member state markets.

Comments

Re:Never going to happen

[thegarbz]

That's the thing about harmonisation of disperse markets, for every simple example of a drawback someone will come up with an example of an improvement. Regulations typically don't just magically appear, but are rather a reaction (often a knee jerk reaction) to a specific problem. Your example is good because it highlights some serious issues at both sides. For instance the increased overhead now placed on farmers, but at the same time the increased assurance placed on the customers and the government that everything is done as it should be. I.e. you know the bottle was cleaned properly before you used it, the government knows the measured quantity of goods changing hands for taxation purposes. The poor may be hard done, but they are also the ones reasonably protected.

Now this may or may not be the case here, but in a general sense this is where these ideas often come from.