Netflix Geoblocking Loosened Under New EU Law (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: "The European Parliament is now finalizing legislation which will allow EU residents to access their paid subscriptions for online media -- such as video streaming, games and music -- while visiting other EU countries," reports The Stack. Under the new rules, companies will not be able to arbitrarily block subscribers from accessing the content catalog of their home countries while visiting other parts of the European Union, with country of origin to be established by various possible methods besides IP address, including payment details, public tax information and 'checks on electronic identification'. The issue was brought to a head last year when Netflix began blocking the known IPs of VPN providers, often used by subscribers to access the catalogs of their home countries while travelling.

Comments

Re:Look behind the curtain

[Dutch Gun]

Yes, I'd much rather the article had said "when Netflix was pressured to block the known IPs of VPN providers". They've publicly stated that they'd much prefer to have a single, global catalog, which makes sense from their perspective. I hope at some point they're influential enough to put enough pressure to demand global licensing for movies and shows, or tell the content producers to hit the road. Unfortunately the studios are also at war with Netflix, forcing them to turn into a studio themselves, so I'm not certain that's going to be happening soon.

One could argue that both piracy and attempts to work around geo-blocking (using a VPN service typically) are both economic pressure on Hollywood studios as well, but I'm not sure they see it that way. Think about this when they complain about lost sales thanks to piracy, and remember how long these major industries resisted new technologies, historically speaking. Hollywood should be ecstatic that consumers are willing to pay subscription fees for digital content, but instead, they're clinging to the illusion that they can still charge premium access rates in the days of the internet+torrents. If the legal market charges too much, the black market will happily step in and correct the situation.

Also, just fyi, it's "eke", not "eek".