Europe Vows To Get Rid of Geo-Blocking

AmiMoJo writes: The European Commission has adopted a new set of initiatives for digital technologies that aims to improve access to online services for everyday users. Among other things, Europe vows to end geo-blocking, which it describes as "a discriminatory practice used for commercial reasons," and lift other unwarranted copyright restrictions. Consumers will have the right to access content they purchased at home in other European countries. "I want to see every consumer getting the best deals and every business accessing the widest market – wherever they are in Europe," Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker says.

Comments

Yeah that will work

[Dunbal]

Yeah this will have about as much impact as the banning of involuntary cookies had...

Re:Yeah that will work

[teg]

I'm not at all a web "programmer", so excuse my ignorance. How exactly would you reliably keep "such a bit of state" without cookies? I only see that happening by essentially putting the cookie, i.e. the session id, as a GET parameter. I hope that's not what you're thinking about because that's even more horrible than using a cookie.

You could add a parameter to the URL, specifying no cookies.

Youtube in Germany

[Calydor]

Will this include having Germany unblock Youtube?

Currently, ANYTHING on Youtube involving music is blocked because GEMA (the German equivalent of RIAA) can't reach an agreement with Google. The end result is that all those videos out there where people play a bit of background music are effectively banned from being seen in Germany.

For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

An interesting excerpt for those too lazy to click on links:

A study sponsored by the video hosting website MyVideo estimated that 61.5% of the 1000 most viewed YouTube clips are blocked in Germany. This is significantly higher than, for example, in the United States (0.9%) or in Switzerland (>1%).[7]

Re:Youtube in Germany

[houghi]

It would either be "We block it everywhere in Europe" or "We block it nowhere". Remember that it wasn't Gernany who woke up one day and said" Let's block some video's. It was brought to court and the courts decided that this is what the law required.

So this would mean a change of law.

More interesting would be to see how this will affect (neo-)nazi content in Germany that they see as yelling fire in a movie-theater.
(And this is not aboutif that is right or wrong.)

God damnit

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we're screwed.

If the EU bans geoblocking, media corporations will push for unified copyright law in the EU as well - after all, it only makes sense, right? You can't force them to abide by every country's individual law, that's just unreasonable...

Now, I'm from the Czech Republic. Our copyright law has a lot of problems, but generally it's better than in the "west" - we don't have insane shit like the "three strikes" shit in France where you get literally kicked out of the entire internet for being *accused* three times of "piracy", no court, little or no recourse... this doesn't happen here, because we're a small and relatively poor market so it's not worth it to bribe our lawmakers.

With geoblocking forbidden and unified anti-piracy laws pushed on the entire EU, we'll get the combination of the absolute worst, most anti-consumer "anti-piracy" measures from all corners of the world. The corporations will only need to pay off a few politicians in Brussels, instead of having to do it separately in each country, and we'll all suffer as a consequence.

I'll gladly give up the ability to watch some shitty shows etc. on the Internet if it means I can continue to live in a comparatively free country. I mean, with the current local legislature, if I *do* want to watch a show that's inaccessible here, I can just legally pirate it... but soon I won't be able to. All that will be left to protect my freedom will be the local police's incompetence and indifference.