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EU Agrees To Cross-Border Access To Streaming Services (variety.com)
Putting in place the first piece of its hoped-for unified digital market, the European Union has agreed on new rules allowing subscribers of online services in one E.U. country access to them while traveling in another. From a report: "Today's agreement will bring concrete benefits to Europeans," said vice president in charge of the Digital Single Market, Andrus Ansip, in a statement. "People who have subscribed to their favorite series, music and sports events at home will be able to enjoy them when they travel in Europe. This is a new important step in breaking down barriers in the Digital Single Market." Variety explain: That said, "portability" is the least contentious of DSM regulations being advanced by the European Commission. Reached yesterday, the agreement between the Commission, the E.U.'s executive arm, the European Parliament and the E.U.'s Council of Ministers, representing its 28 member states, will allow consumers to fully use their online subscriptions to films, sports events, e-books, video games or music services when traveling within the E.U. The online service providers who will be mandated to make these services available range from video-on-demand platforms (Netflix, HBO Go, Amazon Prime, Mubi, Chili TV) to online TV services (Viasat's Viaplay, Sky's Now TV, Voyo), music streaming services (Spotify, Deezer, Google Music) and game online marketplaces (Steam, Origin).
I live in the UK. Can I has streaming pleez?
Isn't this the whole point of the EU? A single economic trading zone?
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Maybe this will keep LePen out of power. Seriously... circuses and all that.
It's why America sucks to live in, and Europe does not
FTFY.
When I encounter geoblocking of content that I subscribe to legally at home, I pirate it. I support paying artists, not nonfunctional middlemen.
Doesn't solve the problem that "This service is not available in your country" in the first place. If I can't even subscribe to the service in my own country first what tf do I need streaming roaming for?
From June this year there are no roaming charges in the EU and you'll be billed against your normal plan:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38825154
Great for us in the UK until we leave and end up with hefty roaming charges again :/
Just for a moment, imagine that you are a creator of digital work that could be sold online, rather than being an AC troll. What possible reason would you have to prevent anyone, wherever they might be located in the world, from buying it?
What you are describing is and positing as a negative, is in fact, one of the stated benefits of the internet.
While the EU (government) may agree to this, isn't it up to the companies providing the streaming service (and also the content copyright holders)
Those service providers would love nothing more than to provide their service anywhere in the world to all their subscribers. It would vastly simplify their software and infrastructure.
They only reason they restrict their services based on geography is because they're forced to do so by the music, TV/movie, and game studios, who insist on different release schedules and different pricing in different countries and regions in order to eek out a tiny bit more profit.
Well for one thing, being able to buy from anywhere in the world will automatically mean "priced the same".
If I price it cheaper in Asian/African countries to be affordable in those low wage economies, why would everyone else in the world be willing to pay more ?
So, if everything gets priced at the lowest market value, it will probably prevent a lot of digital works from being created at all simply because the returns are too low or they loose money.
Creation of digital content costs money, everybody who works on it wants to be paid for their work.
Not necessarily, economics of scale could more that make up for the lower resale price. A small number times billions of buyers == still a very big fucking number.
I see what you are saying, and I acknowledge it could go either way for many a producer. But it would also open the gates to many, many others. Say, you are a small, independent film developer. Your film barely breaks in the US market at all (it happens all the time.)
But by being made available at affordable prices all over the world, all of the sudden your product gets exposure to far more customer than in the US alone. If your product is of any quality, it will be purchased and you will get your return on investment.
Region-restricted work B is based on an underlying work A whose author has been dead for more than 50 but less than 100 years. Copyright in work A has expired in the countries where work B is available but still subsists in other countries. If the publisher of work B were to make work B available in countries where copyright in work A subsists, the publisher of work A would sue the publisher of work B and win.
Or a work has an age rating in one country but is Refused Classification in another.
Or a work has an age rating in one country, and the other country requires all commercially available works in that medium to be age rated for that country, but the publisher has no evidence of enough interest in the work in the other country to justify the cost of submitting it to the other country's age rating board.
Then why do copyright owners tend not to restrict availability or charge different prices within a single sovereign country, such as in Wyoming vs. California?
If a copyright owner does not consent to the digital single market, it would have to withdraw its works from all streaming services across the European Union. I am not privy to the contracts between copyright owners and streaming services in order to determine whether they allow a copyright owner to perform such a withdrawal.
You're thinking small. Ask for ID and price the customer based on their income bracket.
Well for one thing, being able to buy from anywhere in the world will automatically mean "priced the same".
Any distributor would like to be able to segment the market so they discriminate on price if it could, but in the digital market that's a mug's game. You're right - digital content will, over time, tend to be priced the same everywhere, but I consider this a feature, not a bug. An author's cut of the digital pie, be it an expensive hardcover or a cheap paperback was no larger than it is now in the days when publishers controlled physical book markets - when digital prices get cheap, it's happening because the costs of physical distribution and middleman profit have been shaved out of the system.
No it will not. Companies will become more sophisticated in their pricing systems and find new ways to categorize their consumers. Generally speaking they don't care if they have 1000 consumers at a profit of 1/consumer or 1 consumer at a profit of 1000/consumer.