EU May Become a Single Digital Market of 500 Million People

RockDoctor writes: The Guardian is reporting that the EU is becoming increasingly vociferous in its opposition to "geo-blocking" — the practice of making media services available in some areas but not in others: "European consumers want to watch the pay-TV channel of their choice regardless of where they live or travel in the EU." That adds up to a block of nearly 500 million first-world media consumers. They don't necessarily all speak the same language, but English is probably the most commonly understood single language. And the important thing for American media companies to remember is that they're not American in thought, taste or outlook.

Comments

Blocked

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is blocked by GEMA in your region

Re: Blocked

[geogob]

For those bot getting the "joke", GEMA is pretty much the German equivallent of the RIAA in the US.

They are notorious for geoblocking in Germany videos from youtube which contains content under their licensing rights... Even youtube channels from the artists themselves.

The infamous message "this content is blocked because it contains material owned by GEMA" is a nightmare for youtube users in Germany

And this is where this joke becomes insightful. Once you open the markets in the EU and ban geoblocking, how do you deal with this type of geoblocking? Will they address geoblocking only in a commercial transaction (what would actually be much worse for GEMA in the business model they drive) or address geoblocking in all its forms?

Re: Blocked

[Carewolf]

For those bot getting the "joke", GEMA is pretty much the German equivallent of the RIAA in the US.

They are notorious for geoblocking in Germany videos from youtube which contains content under their licensing rights... Even youtube channels from the artists themselves.

Actually they are notorious for Google blocking youtube videos claiming GEMA demanded it, even if they didn't.

BBC / other state broadcasters?

[mccalli]

Although I'm more or less in favour of this (details around copyright 'compensation' nonsense from the EU to sort out), it does present a problem for state-funded broadcasters such as the BBC.

I'm a UK TV license payer, therefore I fund the BBC. Someone in France, for example, is not funding the Beeb and without geoblocking would be able to pick up for free all of the programming that I and other UK license payers are making possible. Now there seems a reasonably obvious way round it - introduce subscriptions, but this is more problematic than it seems at first glance. Would still need geoblocking + subscriptions for outside the geoblock, because otherwise the current practice in the UK of not caring where and what I'm streaming to will fall apart (you'd need to verify the subscription or similar - how would my kids do that when it's just me on the license, are we talking about having to name everyone covered by the license payment etc.). Worse, if the revenue from subscriptions starts becoming a significant part of the BBC's income, then it will start to produce more content geared towards those subscriptions and become less 'British'.

I'm using the BBC as an example I'm familiar with, but there are other state broadcasters in Europe. The BBC model of license to keep it independent of government editorial control is the only funding model of its kind I can think of, but I would imagine the same issues would apply to most of them.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[Anonymous Coward]

the EU have already stated that the beeb will be exempt to the rules due to the way it is funded

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[Anonymous Coward]

But geoblocking does not make sense. If you are abroad in, say Germany, you should still be able to log into BBC and watch the programming you have paid for.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[Runaway1956]

State broadcast means little to nothing. You're paying for it - let other people see it. In return, you get to see all of THEIR stuff. You specifically mention that the BBC is not the only state sponsored broadcast in Europe - you'll get all of their stuff too.

And, I'll point out that despite all the piracy in the world, America's "entertainment" industries continue to post record profits, again and again.

In short - you'll lose nothing. If anything, you stand to gain something. The bigger the audience, the more likely you are to find people WILLING to pay for the content.

The entertainment industries seriously need to change their business models, worldwide. "Entertainement", when done right, makes people WILLING to part with their hard earned money. Sometimes, I see, hear, or watch something that is so good, I actually WANT to give the author a dollar. However, I've never once in my life felt compelled to give some faceless corporation any of my money. Granted, the BBC is somewhat unlike most faceless corporations, but they are still running a scam with their GeoIP blocking.

Not that it's difficult to get around the blocking. There's not a whole lot that I want to see on the BBC entertainment channels, but when something catches my eye, I manage to grab it.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[xonen]

Valid points - however, most European countries have some form of national TV.

When i am abroad, i'm often annoyed with the dutch public TV digital online channels not being available, due to whatever IP issue causes it. Which i find quite absurd, since it's available for free within my country.

I would welcome a situation where i can watch British, German, French, Italian, Belgian and Dutch television stations online. If all countries open op public stations, i see it as win-win for everyone.

Commercial thinkers should realize i can only watch one TV channel at a time. The BBC will obviously put up the argument that 'everyone speaks English and not everyone speaks French or German, hence their audience is bigger and thus the market is skewed'. And while their may be some truth in that, the British tax-payer will not pay a penny more or less if half Europe watches their shows, since the cost is in creating them, not in distributing.

Likely, IP issues only play with purchased shows (overseas content, sports, etc). Everything produced by public broadcasters themselves - payed by taxpayers - will only profit from a bigger audience in my view.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[Z00L00K]

Well - it's a disadvantage - and an advantage. But the primary problem is not really the national broadcasters. It's when you actually want to pay for something to view like Netflix - or buy a DVD/BluRay.

National broadcasters can select if they want to provide streams of their shows to other viewers or not. Many countries in Europe have the same system as the UK - public funding.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[itsme1234]

State broadcast means little to nothing. You're paying for it - let other people see it.

THAT.

From the moment they started all the bullshit with DRM (and I think spending hundreds of millions on this nonsense) I've been thinking "what a nonsesne". You already have people collecting the money, very often by force (yes, people with guns put people in jail for not paying the fee). About 10% of all CRIMINAL prosecutions in the UK are for this bloody fee. It's already all paid. Just make it available!

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in its beginnings, TV content was "shipped" in radio waves without encryption. Thus it had a "Free rider" problem that was happily solved with a tax (read TV license).

Now that technology solved that "Free rider" problem (encryption), that is not reason for your(mine) tax anymore.

The only reason nowadays to have public funding for a TV Channel, is considering it a public good (debatable) and in such case you will have no reason to block it to anyone other than your sworn enemy (if you have).

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[ScentCone]

Wouldn't it just be easier to get the British government out of the news and entertainment businesses?

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[ScentCone]

Have you actually watched Italian television?

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC never asks me for proof of citizenship when I'm in the UK, so there's already something wrong about this argument. Other infrastructure, e.g. roads, is also state-funded but available to citizens and non-citizens alike. If something is a public service it should be available to everybody, if it's not it should require proof of membership instead of pretending to be public.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[yet another SanTiago]

And while their may be some truth in that, the British tax-payer will not pay a penny more or less if half Europe watches their shows, since the cost is in creating them, not in distributing.

Well, in IP there is also cost in distributing, esp. when local connectivity (exchanged at local peering point like LINX in London) to users in UK is probably much cheaper than international connectivity to users in rest of Europe.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think pretty much everyone who pays taxes for a state sponsored broadcaster agrees with this.
The content is already produced. Limiting its distribution doesn't benefit the people who paid for it it any way.
Information is a strange beast in that way. Distributing it costs next to nothing. Limiting the distribution takes away a lot of value from a lot of people.
The argument for copyright is that content wouldn't be produced if it wasn't possible to capitalize on it, but here we have content being produced despite it not being capitalized on.
When produced with taxpayers money it should go directly into public domain.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[Chrisje]

Well, mate, if you'd then bother to learn someone else's language for a change, you could enjoy the Dutch NPO, the French France Televisions SA, the German ARD, Sveriges Television and many other public broadcasters.

Now I would not mind at all if you watched programmes on the Dutch NPO which I payed for with my NL TV License fees. It's just that you can't. Because you're uni-lingual. The fact that the average German, French, Dutchman and Scandinavian can watch your shows because we hablo Ingles and possibly few other languages doesn't change that fact.

So instead of bickering about me enjoying the odd re-run of Allo Allo and nature shows narrated by Sir Attenborough, I suggest you go back to school.

Now you might say that I respond harshly to your comments, but please remember that the people in the smaller countries and smaller language zones bend over backwards to accommodate the English speaking world. One fringe benefit of me watching your BBC would be that you can actually get a fish and chips in Amsterdam, and we'll happily converse with you about the weather in Wales while we serve it to you from the English menu you just read.

So is it worth your TV license fee to not have to feel like a hapless idiot when you travel the mainland?

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[pr0nbot]

The BBC is not funded or owned by the government.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[jez9999]

introduce subscriptions, but this is more problematic than it seems at first glance. Would still need geoblocking + subscriptions for outside the geoblock, because otherwise the current practice in the UK of not caring where and what I'm streaming to will fall apart

You just talked about introducing subscriptions. So yeah, you would ditch the practice of "not caring where and what they are streaming to". The TV licence is an anachronism that should have been scrapped DECADES ago. It hangs on because enough people like enough BBC programming that they selfishly think EVERYONE in the UK should have to pay for it. Well I don't.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I'm an American, and I would happily pay for a subscription service to the various BBC channels. As it sits now, the only was people like myself have access to this content is via torrents / pirate streams. The BBC shows are the only content that even registers on my conscious, and "BBC America" just doesn't cut it. I too wouldn't ever want the programming to change from it's Britishness...in fact, that's one of the major reasons I enjoy it is to broaden my cultural knowledge. The amount of income from the potential subscriptions is probably in the millions, and that's just in the USA.

I'm already enjoying much of the content, if I could pay for it I would. The same goes for CBC in Canada, CH4, Space, etc.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[msobkow]

Not so. CTV and CBC here in Canada pay the BBC for the shows they air from across the pond. I presume the BBC buys content from CBC and CTV as well. I know, for example, that BBC America buys "Orphan Black" from Space here in Canada. Were you to allow foreigners to access CTV's website, they could watch Orphan Black for free instead of their local broadcaster paying for the rights.

I'm sure the BBC offsets a pretty penny selling Doctor Who around the world.

Still, I'm not so sure Hollywood would object all that much to being able to sell to a market of half a billion people with a single broadcaster's contract. But what it might do is price the media out of the range where any single broadcaster could afford to pay for it, because they're still constrained by the market revenue of their local nation and not getting paid by the entire half billion worth of people.

It's all well and good to say "down with geoblocking" until you realize that geoblocking is how the market share is divied up between broadcasters. None of the broadcasters in the world is set up on the basis of serving the globe, not even "giants" like NBC, CBS, ABC, or the BBC.

Re: BBC / other state broadcasters?

[JonnyCalcutta]

The answer is ... its complicated. The BBC is responsible for the collection of the license fee, not the government. There are laws making it illegal to watch live TV without a license but it is enforced by the BBC who prosecute license evaders through the courts. The BBC is a separate entity controlled by the BBC Trust and the Board of Governors and is in no way controlled by or a branch of the government.

Obviously you could argue about political interference but that is just as true with e.g. banks where they can be persuaded by the threat of changes in laws or regulations.

tl:dr - the answer is mostly the BBC

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[AmiMoJo]

The BBC is independent from the government. In fact the current government doesn't really like the BBC and is trying to wreck it.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[AmiMoJo]

Even if you don't watch the BBC, it serves a very important purpose that is worth funding with tax money. It keeps the commercial broadcasters in line. A channel like Fox News would never work in the UK, it would just look too ridiculous next to the rather dry and serious BBC.

Re: BBC / other state broadcasters?

[serviscope_minor]

Ah, so in Britain the government isn't involved in tax collection and enforcement.

What's that got to do with the BBC? You have to buy a licese if you wish to receive live broadcasts.

The BBC gets to collect the fees, which they outsource to Crapita. If crapita find you are doing unlicensed things, and can collect evidence, they can then send that evidence on to the CPS. If you're dumb enough to (a) watch live TV without a license and (b) let the Crapita people in to collect evidence then you'll get prosecuted. If you tell them to eff-off, there's nothing they can do.

or have any say, whatsoever, over how that money is allocated.

Nope. The BBC keeps the money (actually, Crapita keep the money, and they pay the BBC a fixed fee), and get to do whatever they like with it. Of course there's a corporate charter etc. The only lever the government have is to change the license fee which essentially controls how much the BBC gets. The BBC, like the NHS is a rather sensitive topic, so this is not something they do lightly.

TL;DR you are mistaken. The BBC is not allocated funds out of the general budget. The mechanism for collecting of funds is purposefully kept separate from general taxation precisely do the government has little control over the BBC.

That is an interesting system indeed! Who handles all of that, if not the government?

Now you know: the money isn't allocated from taxes, so the government doesn't handle it. And yes it is a good system. It's not perfect but it's the best we have. It's freer from government influence than other funding mechanisms and also free from corporate influences, e.g. Sith Murdoch.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[NicBenjamin]

Ever heard the phrase "Divided by a common language?"

In British English a member of "the government" is not a Bureaucrat with a public service-style salary, it's the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. Where they use "government" we'd use "Administration" (as in: the Obama Administration).

So you basically just said that the Right Honorable David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; actually has control over what the BBC does. He does not. No Prime Minister ever has. And in several recent memorable cases (in particular the run-up to the Iraq War) the Beeb took a stronger line against the Prime Minister (and this in British English, agains the government) stance then our non-governmental independent media did.

Even assuming that you actually meant 'government' in the American sense of a public bureaucracy, it's not really in business. The BBC is pretty much the only broadcaster, and is the only English-language broadcaster, that has 54 African correspondents for 54 African countries. If something interesting happens in Zambia the non-business BBC will immediately have a reasonably intelligent (tho not necessarily pretty) person posting to their website, appearing on their broadcasts, etc. Which is low ratings, and high cost, thus bad business; but tends to produce excellent journalism.

OTOH, Fox and CNN tend to have a stable of a dozen or so photogenic blondes who get air-dropped to trouble-spots, who compare everything to Iraq or Afghanistan because their entire career consists of spending time with our boys in those countries. It's low-cost, and high-ratings; thus good business. Then they juice the ratings more by adding heavy doses of partisanship. The business side gets even better if they can force some extremely dramatic turn of events that will keep people glued to their screens due to the constant potential for mass death.

Currently their business plan to do juice ratings is relatively harmless but incredibly fucking annoying ("Go go Donald Trump!"), but in the run-up to that Iraq War...

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[Wycliffe]

The BBC will obviously put up the argument that 'everyone speaks English and not everyone speaks French or German, hence their audience is bigger and thus the market is skewed'. And while their may be some truth in that, the British tax-payer will not pay a penny more or less if half Europe watches their shows, since the cost is in creating them, not in distributing.

If the BBC opened up all their content online and then instead of using geoblocking, used geotargetted ads, so in germany you could still watch it but it had german ads, i think they would come out ahead revenue wise.

Re:BBC / other state broadcasters?

[Solandri]

The content is already produced. Limiting its distribution doesn't benefit the people who paid for it it any way.
Information is a strange beast in that way. Distributing it costs next to nothing. Limiting the distribution takes away a lot of value from a lot of people.
The argument for copyright is that content wouldn't be produced if it wasn't possible to capitalize on it, but here we have content being produced despite it not being capitalized on.

It's more nuanced than that. The state-funded model is that the content is pre-paid. The staff at the BBC is effectively being hired by the State to produce the content. They get paid for it ahead of time at a price they've agreed to (usually their salaries, and various equipment and travel costs at market prices). Once it's produced it's already been paid for, so there is nothing lost by freely distributing it.

The copyright model is that content is post-paid. The individual or independent studio puts up their own money (or borrows it from investors whom they can convince this is a worthwhile project) to produce the project. They are then relying on sales post-production to recoup the production costs and hopefully some profit.

The difference is (1) the decision of what should be produced, and (2) risk in case the production is a flop. In the State-run case, the State decides what gets produced, and the State absorbs the losses if the production is a flop. In the copyright model, the individual (person or organization) decides what gets produced, and they absorb the losses if the production is a flop. Now, I probably agree with most people here that copyright terms have gotten extended to outrageous durations. But that doesn't mean the idea is not in itself sound. If you take away the ability for people to get paid post-production (by eliminating copyright), then the amount of creative production will decrease unless some sort of insurance industry springs up which which absorbs the risk of a failure in exchange for decision power for what gets produced (i.e. they screen your proposed movie before deciding to insure your production). The only time there's a real problem is when (1) and (2) get allocated to different entities. Like what the RIAA does - they decide what gets produced, but their contracts place the financial burden of a failure almost entirely upon the artists. In fact most things that Go Wrong with the world can be traced back to people separating the risk associated with decisions from the power to make those decisions.

Note that this is not necessarily a State vs individual thing. Ever since scanners and photo printers pretty much destroyed the model of shooting the wedding for free and selling the prints, wedding photographers have pretty much shifted to a for-hire business model. You hire the photographer for a fixed amount to shoot the wedding, and they give you the pictures. It's pre-paid endeavor, but being done at the individual level rather than State level.

This worries me

[Anonymous Coward]

Smashing Geo-blocking, great stuff,but there tends to be some sort of "regulatory framework" or other attempt to synchronize laws across the block. When you've got Germany censoring anything with blood (see: Wii-U online store) and the UK's hair trigger legislative response to anything remotely pornographic (see: 1984) along with every other nations particular scruples and mores the whole thing has the potential to turn into a horrible 11pm watershed restricted reduced-choice mess.

Logins

[Jobarr]

Why not just add usernames and passwords? No geoblocking necessary.

America != Hollywood

[jellomizer]

American media companies to remember is that they're not American in thought, taste or outlook.
What is American thought, taiste and outlook.
Americans are a rather diverse group of people. Ranging from extreamly liberal to hard conservative and with a lot of points in between.
Sure we have some cultural norms, like every other country. But judging our culture from our media doesn't give a full picture.
Based off of media.
1 out of every 4 people is an aspiring actor.
80% of the population lives in California
15% lives in New York City, no one lives upstate.
4% lives in Illinois .
1% elsewhere
(There is a wide range of cultural diversity across each state, most of it isn't covered my the media)
Nearly everyone is self centered/as some odd quark.

What is called American culture is just Hollywood culture, that isn't representative of the full United States.

Heck I live next to a Mennonite community in the middle of nowhere, we have High speed internet, decent cell coverage... And a diversity of pleasant friendly people and jerks who have no regulard for others. And like real life often they are one and the same based on the situation.

Re:Thank gof for that

[nomadic]

Never seen Italian television, have we?