EU Passes 'Content Portability' Rules Banning Geofencing (torrentfreak.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo writes: The European Parliament has passed draft rules mandating 'content portability', i.e. the ability to take your purchased content and services across borders within the EU. Freedom of movement rules, which allow EU citizens to live and work anywhere in the EU, require that the individual is able to take their life with them -- family, property, and services. Under the new rules, someone who pays for Netflix or BBC iPlayer and then moves to another EU country will retain access to those services and the same content they had previously. Separately, rules to prevent geofencing of content within the EU entirely are also moving forward.

Comments

Expect to see more content disappear

[SuperKendall]

Under this new rule anything you had access to must remain accessible in other countries...

The actual effect this will have though, is a lot of content is going to go away - because of the new rule content providers will demand more money for content and companies like Netflix will simply yank it rather than have to pay more to allow you to access it anywhere...

So instead of you getting your content everywhere, for most content this effects you will get it no-where.

At least for a while until contracts are re-negotiated.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[AmiMoJo]

Is that what happens in the US? Less content because it has to be licensed for every state?

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[JaredOfEuropa]

Depends. There's a ton of crap on Netflix for which they've secured distribution rights in larger or English speaking countries, not bothering to get rights for other countries (the selection here in NL is pretty crap compared to the UK or the US). If Netflix is forced to serve these shows to people who move to a different country, effectively they will be forced to secure an EC-wide license. It kind of seems a roundabout way of saying: "Either you license your content for all of Europe or you don't get to sell your license here" (for streaming or downloadable content)

So you may be right: maybe Netflix won't bother. However they have a vested interest here, with a fair number of subscribers and a very healthy growth, Europe is seen as a strategic market for Netflix. And already customers in their fastest-growing markets are starting to complain about the shit selection they get. So perhaps Netflix will instead choose to fight to get those EC-wide rights at a reasonable price. That's a fight that needs to happen if this fragmentation crap is to end some day. Hopefully at some point content providers will see the light and switch to a pay-per-view model like the music industry has, at which point they will beg Netflix to offer the largest possible selection of their content in any and all countries.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Are you equating states in the US to countries in the EU?

That would not be a valid comparison legally or historically.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a good idea, and one that Netflix (and others) would like to be able to follow.

However the distributors who own the copyright on these films have not agreed to allow it. In some cases, due to fucked-up laws, the distributors CANNOT allow it. (e.g. the french law that prohibits streaming content for YEARS after it's theatrical release in order to preserve theatre revenue.)

So how do we resolve this?

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

The same way we conviced the Japanese to surrender at in 1945. But we have much bigger bombs these days.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Its not state by state, but its provider (ie. cable company) by provider. Cable company A might have a deal with X, Y and Z while cable company B might have a deal with X, J and K.

And before you say "well this is the internet so that analogy is stupid", I have one word for you : Sports.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[alvinrod]

Don't be obtuse. The reason this is a problem is because the EU member countries have a much larger gap in per capita PPP than U.S. states. If you remove geofencing, no sane person is going to pay anything but the bottom rates that the service has to be sold for in poorer countries, which means lost revenue for the services offering content. Since they won't settle for that, it means less content gets offered or that the prices in those poorer countries get increased and fewer people can afford the services. About the only other alternative is adjusting prices based on language and not offering a full range of subtitles or dubs without paying more.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[DRJlaw]

No. Are you equating states in the US to countries in the EU?

That would not be a valid comparison legally or historically.

It's a perfectly valid comparison to anyone who actually knows the history of the United States from colonial times through ~1800.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[diga33]

Posting to remove incorrect moderation.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[gweihir]

That is not going to happen. Every sale lost due to lack of offering is money not made. At the moment, the content mafia still succeeds in hypnotizing everybody into thinking they are important, but the reality is that anybody providing entertainment is a beggar and dependent on the goodwill of their potential benefactors (i.e. customers).

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a bit more complicated that that, I'll give you an example.
Here in Italy, you cannot watch House of Cards on Netflix because Netflix sold its broadcasting rights to Sky before they entered the Italian market. Now, under these new rules, a German Netflix subscriber will expect to see it even if he moves to Italy. If Netflix allows that, it's liable to be sued by Sky, if they don't, it's now liable to be sued by the German subscriber. It's a legal conundrum I frankly don't know how to disentangle.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay! Less available TV! Can we speed up this please?

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[AmiMoJo]

The EU has already removed geofencing for a very large number of things. Goods, services, capital and people. There is nothing to stop someone in France taking a loan from a bank in Romania, or someone in Germany buying a DVD from an online store based in Latvia.

It's no different to Californians being able to buy stuff from Michigan if they want to. Or someone in London buying from a shop in Hull. Sky charges the same price to the most deprived council estate and multi-million pound town houses in Mayfair.

These businesses have a choice. Charge everyone the same as the law requires, or give up and make exactly â0.00.

Your scheme of charging different amounts for different languages would likely attract some legal action from the EU. The courts are not that dumb, and unlike the US they tend to implement the spirit of the law which is to be fair to all citizens and enforce freedom of movement.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

I've skimmed the document and as I understand it very little would actually change.

Your permanent country of residence would be relevant when it comes to determining what you can access. The only addition seems to be that you cannot be denied access if you TEMPORARILY go to another EU country.

All this means is instead of conveniently using your IP you have to provide your home address when buying content. That might not even necessitate renegotiating any contracts. More of a minor technical change.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It will presumably still be possible for content providers to supply content to EU nations, unless they have existing exclusive licensing deals with intermediaries from some of those nations already that would now be in competition with their own offering intended for another nation but now applicable EU-wide.

What this will do is mean that selling at a lower price in the less well-off nations is no longer acceptable, so the result is likely to be that some content will now only be legally available to those in the richer EU member states (and piracy will presumably rise in the others for content that was popular there).

As so often happens, the EU is putting its idealised principles ahead of pragmatism and the consequence will be shafting businesses and/or a significant part of its own population.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

If you remove geofencing

That's not what the linked EU document says. All it says that if you temporarily go to another country you should not be locked out. Your country of origin still determines what you get access to. Geofences are alive and well.

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting to look busy whilst surrounded by strangers.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Kernel Kurtz]

So instead of you getting your content everywhere, for most content this effects you will get it no-where.

Only for the people who actually want to pay for it. Everyone else will just torrent it.

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[mSparks43]

Does this mean the piratebay has to be unblocked in the countries that (tried to) block it?

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Golden_Rider]

It's a bit more complicated that that, I'll give you an example.
Here in Italy, you cannot watch House of Cards on Netflix because Netflix sold its broadcasting rights to Sky before they entered the Italian market. Now, under these new rules, a German Netflix subscriber will expect to see it even if he moves to Italy. If Netflix allows that, it's liable to be sued by Sky, if they don't, it's now liable to be sued by the German subscriber. It's a legal conundrum I frankly don't know how to disentangle.

It is not really a problem - the German Netflix subscriber is still a German Netflix subscriber if he temporarily stays in Italy. So Netflix just needs to give up restricting streaming by IP (country) and instead determine what you are allowed to watch based on the user's account, i.e. they need to ask for your home address and link it to your account. I guess they then just need to find a way to verify that home address, otherwise everybody will just sign up using a fake address from a country which offers the most shows.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Your scheme of charging different amounts for different languages would likely attract some legal action from the EU.

On what basis? Translating a work from one language to another could be a very expensive undertaking. This EU policy is already economically naive, but expecting all translations of works to be provided at the same cost would be economically absurd.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

But it is not a contextually valid comparison. It doesn't fucking matter how licensing worked two-hundred fucking years ago, what matters is how it works NOW.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Kjella]

Like they could afford to pass up the entire EU market, it's 741 million people and fairly wealthy ones at that. They will comply. While they're fairly liberal when it comes to international restrictions like non-EU vs EU countries, inside the EU there's very strong forces to make it one united market. Most recently they bludgeoned the cell phone operators, you can now roam the whole EU like home for one price. This is the second half, you can enjoy every content like that home. So once this is firmly put in place, I can go anywhere in Europe and watch anything for the same price I could at home. Despite Brexit and all that the "United States of Europe" project is very much on. I'll admit it also has some very clear upsides despite the democratic deficit it has.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[currently_awake]

The American civil war proved that an American State is not a country.

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

What years were the Civil War again?

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Hognoxious]

If Netflix allows that, it's liable to be sued by Sky

IANAL. But I'll go out on a limb here and guess that the illegality of an action pretty much voids any contract about performing the aforementioned action in a similar way to Acts of God, force majeur, action of the Queen's enemies etc.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Hognoxious]

In many ways it is. Income Tax is the same rate in Liverpool as it is in London. TVA (sales tax, sort of) is the same in Paris as it is in Perpignan.

You can't say the same about Michigan and Montana.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, Slashdot is now altright trolls and corporate shills... no wonder nobody posts here now. At least reddit cleans up their main forums.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the point though. To speed up per capita PPP equalization. Just think of why China can pay its workers so little, because their government isolates the shit out of their poor workers. That keeps them desperate with no place to go.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Hognoxious]

because of the new rule content providers will demand more money for content and companies like Netflix will simply yank it rather than have to pay more to allow you to access it anywhere...

Right. They'll take 100% of nothing rather than 95% of something.

You were is such a froth about OMG Gubmints that you totally failed to think it through.

At least for a while until contracts are re-negotiated.

Why do you think contracts trump laws? Netflix will either suck it up, or pull out and have to refund any subscriptions paid.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Crashmarik]

Actually yes. The conflict between licensing on streaming services/satellite services/ conventional ppv has limited content that under the original television model would have been available and available as advertising support over the air television.

You can get more now, but it is via seperate purchases,

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[DRJlaw]

But it is not a contextually valid comparison. It doesn't fucking matter how licensing worked two-hundred fucking years ago, what matters is how it works NOW.

"Legally or historically" includes historically. Presuming that you're the same anonymous coward, you set the criteria, so deal with it.

It's also contextually valid. You have two confederations of otherwise soverign states. One was the early United States. The other is the modern European Union. The states that became the United States often had constitutions before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. Hell, the states that became the early United States often had passed copyright laws well before the federal Copyright Act of 1790.

Your ignorance doesn't invalidate the validity of the comparison. It invalidates your opinion concerning the validity of the comparison, though.

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting because reasons.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. Since this is an EU directive that has to be transposed to law by each member state, Italy will have to allow it by law and Sky has no claim (and this particular directive had a deadline to be transposed by April 2016, a year ago... this part, online rights, is just being addressed now).

If for some absurd reason Netflix is actually sued, any court will just defer it to the ECJ (European Court of Justice), that in turn would refer to the directive and do a face palm on how would a case like that reach them. Case closed.

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Tranzistors]

Reminds me of Windows XP, where Latvian version was twice as cheap as English, but you couldn't switch to English. That was clearly market segmentation move.

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[corychristison]

A sale does note equal requiring translation.

You have no idea what langauge your customer speaks, or if they speak many languages including the language your software supports.

If your software is English, and someone from Czech wants to buy your software, you are not required to translate it into Czech. As long as it's clear what langauge your software supports, and the customer understands this, and still wants to buy it there is no reason to translate it into the customers locale.

What makes you think you're required to support more than one language?

Now, if you go ahead and offer said translations available for sale, offering differing price points for different locales most definitely should be illegal. If you cant set your price at a point that encompasses all of the labour involved in creating it, then you simply misunderstand business, where the rule is always "Charge everyone more".

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

You also can't say the same about Palo Alto and Mountain View ;)

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[tlhIngan]

Is that what happens in the US? Less content because it has to be licensed for every state?

That's obtuse. It doesn't happen in the US because the distribution agreements cover the entire US. Whether or not they include US territories and protectorates, though, is a different question altogether.

But in the EU, each country has historically had their own distribution agreement - there would be one distributor for all of the UK, another one for France, another for Germany, etc. It helps that each country has (or had) differing rules on content which meant the country delineation works great. Ditto for the fact most UK residents would want it in English, French citizens want it in French, etc. So this makes historical distribution agreements easy to come up with.

Now the EU has decided that's not the case. Though the implementation is weaker than expected (it was expected that there would be true portability - you cannot geofence at all).

In fact, it's not too bad to implement - you need to add one field to it, maybe more if you don't already track other information. First, you need to track the last time someone used their account in-country. Then you'd need to track your content as to when it was first made available. All you do is present to the user the intersection of all content available prior to their last in-country visit and what content is available not. They only have to have access to what they had when they left, and nothing newer.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[thegarbz]

Translating a work from one language to another could be a very expensive undertaking

Since you used the word "could" and thus seem unsure about it, let me clear it up for you: it isn't. Only a few major languages have audio dubbing, and subtitles cost next to nothing to make.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

So if the content, produced wherever it is, sells for less in some areas than others, despite not having changed in cost at all, why is it bad that we can shop around for the cheapest rates?

Movies, for example, go to Poland or Ukraine or Morocco where it's cheaper to shoot. They go to Ireland if they get enough tax breaks and government aid to make it worthwhile. THEY shop around for the best deal, despite labour being labour all the world around, so why shouldn't their customers do the same?

If they don't like it, they can offer it cheaper everywhere.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm not unsure about it at all. I've worked on a variety of professional projects, including software/UIs, written content and even video material, where translation has been an issue. Sometimes it's a significant expense. Sometimes it is relatively modest compared to the overall cost of the product or service. That's why I wrote "could".

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

If it requires translation - it's a different product.

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You have no idea what langauge your customer speaks, or if they speak many languages including the language your software supports.

Well, I'm going to stop you right there, because marketing is a thing and finding out what your market wants is a rather large part of that thing. So in fact you often have a very good idea of what language(s) your customers speak.

What makes you think you're required to support more than one language?

Erm... The fact that I have done this, multiple times, with large scale projects, and I have seen detailed data on both market research before the fact and the effects that offering different translations had on sales in different locations after the fact?

Some people will be happy using some products or services supplied in a language other than their native tongue. In particular, many people in Europe speak English as a second language and will consider buying some things that are only available in English. However, not everyone does, and depending on the nature of your product or service, you might still increase sales significantly if you can offer it in your target audience's native language(s) as well.

Now, if you go ahead and offer said translations available for sale, offering differing price points for different locales most definitely should be illegal. If you cant set your price at a point that encompasses all of the labour involved in creating it, then you simply misunderstand business, where the rule is always "Charge everyone more".

No, it isn't. In particular, it may make economic sense to offer your product for sale in, say, English, at a high price point that is accessible to western European economies but not to most customers in less wealthy eastern Europe. Given that you can't viably offer it at the same price point in eastern Europe, it may still make commercial sense to offer it to that market at a lower price point that they can afford, possibly translated to increase the size of the market, rather than giving up on sales to that region altogether.

This is what the EU is now trying to prohibit. Unfortunately, the EU is doing so in the hopes that western Europe will wind up paying the same lower price that eastern Europe might be offered. In reality, the reverse is far more likely, resulting in both the businesses offering useful products/services and the potential customers for those products/services in less wealthy EU member states losing out and absolutely no-one gaining.

When people criticise the EU for not understanding business, this is exactly the kind of ideologically driven loss they are talking about.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Not according to AniMoJo's interpretation, apparently.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU has open borders. Today for the ordinary people the borders are higher then every. Data is being blocked. Phone calls are extremely expensive in another EU state. 10 minutes of internet on a smartphone and you will lose hundreds of euro. But social dumping? No problem. Organized criminality? The more the merrier. Terrorists? Not all Muslims are like that you racist!. The EU is a failure.
 
This regional blocking has been a problem since digital television. I grew up with French and German television as a kid when signals were still send to antenna. Today in the digital age when there are few technical limitations the channels I grew up with are all blocked because I'm a Belgian. No more WDR, no more ADR, no more TF1, no more ITV, no more RTL, all blocked.
 
But I do get lots of channels with those funny curly names (In Arabic). Of course the EU is there to cater towards the Muslims. We have more Arabic channels then West European channels at the moment. And those Arabic channels have nothing but preachers on them. What are they preaching? Nobody knows. I repeat the EU is a failure. They are fast with regulations, they are way behind with deregulations. And now this news.
 
How long will it take to make a decision. How long can the lobbyist block the decision. And when finally the borders are opened for content, how long will it take until it's finally available? We're still waiting for non expensive roaming since 1997 (!!!!). A few months ago I still received a bill of 270 euro because I was streaming music on my iPhone while going for a run and I apparently moved too close to the Dutch border (without crossing it!).

And the latest years you see that the EU is welcoming to the millions of 'refugees' who want to profit from the European civilization they love to hate. But it are the people who have to live with them, not the Eurocrats. Our local swimming pool was invaded by pussy grabbing refugees. The police didn't do anything. A civil patrol was organized to protect our own people and this is when the police intervened: "no extreme right patrols on our watch!". Today the swimming pool is closed. And when something like this happens, the Eurocrats are fast to wave their finger at that naughty indigenous European. Do you think it is a surprise why the so called extreme right is on the rise?

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[AmiMoJo]

expecting all translations of works to be provided at the same cost would be economically absurd.

Why?

The cost of translating is relatively low. Translators don't get paid much, unless they are doing really specialist work. And the EU is familiar with this because it does a lot of translation work with its own material.

The only time it might get expensive is with dubbing, rather than just subtitles. Subtitles are so cheap and easy that anime fans do them for free, just because they enjoy it. Dubbing is more work, but even then you would find it very hard to justify charging more because the argument would be made that you did the dubbing to increase sales and revenue.

Anyway, there is clear evidence that companies won't charge more for translated versions. Cinema tickets/DVDs are cheaper in Romania than in the UK, even though American movies in the UK don't need any translation work doing at all.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[thegarbz]

The vast majority of the expense is in the initial programming / setup / design of whatever you present to the user, even on TV. Once you have that down pat the rest can be sent to a translator for a few cents.

Synchronising subtitles to audio on screen costs more than translating those subtitles into 50 different languages and given the requirement for English closed captions it becomes a sunk cost.

The same with software. Re-writing code to translate everything into a different language is expensive. Writing a program to read the interface from a file is the same cost. Sending the file to a translator costs next to nothing, especially for lesser known languages.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

For that to be the case, it would have to be sold at below cost in those poorer countries, since a profit of 1p is still more than a revenue of 0 when you've already paid to produce the goods or service.

Which would be dumping and proof that the free market is broken and cannot and will not work.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[thegarbz]

lesser known = languages from cheaper countries.

It's almost like slashdot needs a preview button :-)

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for equating all Muslims to terrorists and getting EU phone roaming charges completely wrong in the first paragraph. Knowing you're an uninformed dickhead up front saved me the time I'd of wasted reading the rest.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[MrL0G1C]

"There is nothing to stop someone in France taking a loan from a bank in Romania"

Yeah right, other than they'd likely simply just say no unless you can prove who you are via DNA, fingerprints and 50 forms of ID and prove you don't have a criminal record and fill out 12 different forms and have them notarised via lawyers and embassies. And there will be a charge for that and you'll pay a higher interest rate to cover extra risk.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

For that to be the case, it would have to be sold at below cost in those poorer countries, since a profit of 1p is still more than a revenue of 0 when you've already paid to produce the goods or service.

That doesn't follow if pricing in the poorer and richer states is artificially forced to the same level by law.

Which would be dumping and proof that the free market is broken and cannot and will not work.

These laws mean it's not a free market. They artificially constrain pricing so that suppliers can't offer what consumers want at a price they are willing to pay for it. They call it a "single market" but in reality when purchasing power is so different in different parts of it, it's not naturally a single market at all.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[AmiMoJo]

The ability to sell financial services, with harmonised rules, over the entire EU is one of the four basic freedoms that comes with membership.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The same with software. Re-writing code to translate everything into a different language is expensive. Writing a program to read the interface from a file is the same cost.

But writing code to read the interface from a file rather than encoding it in some other way may be a significant cost in itself. Perhaps more significantly, in internationalised UIs, we're typically not just talking about translating text. The whole infrastructure of your UI code may need to be different to support different time and date conventions, currency conventions, address and phone number formats, and so on. Again, the cost of generalising here may be quite significant, and it is not necessarily the same work with trivial language substitutions from one market to another. This all assumes that the functionality of your software isn't itself tied to some local standards, so it's just the UI that you need to localise.

If you think doing this for a large piece of software, with a complex UI that includes a lot of specialist terminology and notation, that needs to support a lot of different geographical and linguistic regions, costs "next to nothing", then I have to think that you've never actually done it.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The cost of translating is relatively low. Translators don't get paid much, unless they are doing really specialist work.

I think you're assuming some sort of direct translation, for something like a document or the soundtrack of a movie. If you're talking about something more complicated, like the UI for a software product that includes other aspects that might need to be localised for each regional market, it's an entirely different question.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[udachny]

This is why products are overpriced for everyone, because the idiotic courts and governments meddle with businesses to offer this idiotic idea of so called 'fairness'.

How do these politicians and courts reconcile this idiotic power grab with another idiotic power grab - the so called progressive tax schemes? The government steals money from people (in form of taxes) at different *rates* depending on the level of income. Not the same rate, which at least would *be* fair even for a thief, but at different marginal rates.

So it is good enough for government to discriminate against people while stealing but not good enough for businesses to discriminate to allow the poorer people to get the advantage of buying at lower prices.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[MrL0G1C]

I don't disagree with that, but having a freedom to do something doesn't mean you're going to want to do that thing.

Cross border costs = language, postage, security, risk. Business to business â volumes are likely enough for these costs to be minimal, but the overhead will likely be a much bigger % for niche non-business consumers.

Good luck living in France and trying to get a mortgage from a Romanian bank.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Computershack]

No. Are you equating states in the US to countries in the EU?

That would not be a valid comparison legally or historically.

For how the EU works it is a fair comparison. Many regulations and laws are pan EU. The EU is barely a single step from becoming a de-facto a United States of Europe which is why the UK wanted to leave. It is literally just the lack of an EU army and total monetary union that prevents it from being. Judicially and Legislatively it is pretty much the same as the US with each country having its own laws/regulations as well as EU wide laws/regulations no different from State and Federal legislation/regulations.

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that there's posting going on here?

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[thegarbz]

But writing code to read the interface from a file rather than encoding it in some other way may be a significant cost in itself.

Sunk cost. There's a world outside America. If you want to be part of it you can either set yourself up for failure or do it efficiently allowing for easy translation afterwards.

Perhaps more significantly, in internationalised UIs, we're typically not just talking about translating text. The whole infrastructure of your UI code may need to be different to support different time and date conventions, currency conventions, address and phone number formats, and so on.

Have you programmed such UIs before? Most of this is handled by locales in the OS and in the underlying API. Beyond that the rest of it is very simplified too. There's two date standards, the US one and the rest of the world. If you're in the EU you've already sorted this out. Within the EU there's only 2 number / currency formats, the one used in the UK and the one used on the mainland. Addresses need nothing special other than don't restrict post codes to numbers only and ask for house number and street name separately and give people an optional apartment field. You've again covered most of Europe with these simple facts. Telephone numbers, well no one really sorts these out but the easy way is to simply reject any entry without a preceding + then you have a system everyone in the world can use.

You're way over thinking this. One point of the EU is that the block of countries is actually incredibly similar in everything they do.

And if your software is tied to some local standards than I'm sure someone in Bulgaria is not interested if your French only software won't run on his machine making the entire point moot.

If you think doing this for a large piece of software, with a complex UI that includes a lot of specialist terminology and notation, that needs to support a lot of different geographical and linguistic regions, costs "next to nothing", then I have to think that you've never actually done it.

No if you're doing this for a large piece of software then you've thought about it in advance making the transference between countries trivial OR you haven't even thought about selling it to other countries, much less thought about localising it for them for a cheaper price and locking out others.

It is easy if you allow it to be.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

There's a world outside America. If you want to be part of it you can either set yourself up for failure or do it efficiently allowing for easy translation afterwards.

I know; I'm not American. But you're grossly oversimplifying the commercial decisions here.

Have you programmed such UIs before? Most of this is handled by locales in the OS and in the underlying API.

Yes I have, and no it's not. You're talking about trivial details like the conventions for printing dates and times or getting the right currency symbol. That's the easy stuff. Even things like addressing aren't nearly as easy as you're making them out to be. (Obvious example: How will you match up your proposed address schema with the databases for validating payment credentials, which almost certainly won't be in the same format? Get this one wrong and large numbers of purchases in the affected country may simply fail, so think before you answer.)

One point of the EU is that the block of countries is actually incredibly similar in everything they do.

Again, that's the nice, ideal world theory talking. In reality, the EU is composed of many member states with their own cultures and languages and conventions, not to mention very different economics. Even simple things like paying for things work sometimes completely differently in different nations within the EU. And again, we're only talking about the visible surface here. Under the surface, if whatever your software deals with is itself sensitive to the local context, it's an entirely different game again.

If you really think i18n support is some sort of binary state, then again, I'm afraid that's just lack of experience on your part talking. That's understandable, because like much in software development you don't see all the little details until you try to do it for real. But the situation is still what it is, and the cost of porting even an already internationalised code base to support some new location still isn't necessarily trivial.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that what happens in the US? Less content because it has to be licensed for every state?

No, because content isn't licensed per state in the US.

SuperKendall is likely correct for the near future. If services have a license to distribute content for countries A, B, C, but not D, E or F, and the EU makes it so all content must be equal, then that content won't be offered in countries A, B, and C anymore until such time that the licensing scheme is changed and new contracts written up, or the service obtains licenses to distribute to D, E, and F.

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is that what happens in the US? Less content because it has to be licensed for every state?"

Every state belongs to the same country so one license fits all. Some people live in one state and work in another one. The states are not separate entities. Maybe someday Europe will be the same way.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Maritz]

You realise this is talking about other countries within in the EU, don't you? Because it seems as if you don't.

Re: Expect to see more content disappear

[dunkelfalke]

The Czech republic is a really bad example here, because, from my personal experience (visited the country often in the past, had a Czech girlfriend) the Czech generally aren't that good with foreign languages. My (not so good) Czech was often more helpful than my (quite good) English or (native) German.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[dunkelfalke]

Why do they call it a civil war then?

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[dunkelfalke]

Not really. EU is a confederation with some federal structures but still a long way from becoming an actual federation, USA is clearly a federation and has been one longer than EU has existed.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[TheConway]

The American civil war proved that an American State is not a country.

Calling it a civil war implies that it IS a country. A civil war being a war within a single country; which you knew, of course.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the Civil War because the North won. It would have been called something else entirely if the South had somehow been victorious instead.

Re:Expect to see more content disappear

[WallyL]

It would have been called the Secessionary War, like the Revolutionary war was a 'revolution' theoretically (eh, it wasn't really a revolution, but we call it the Revolutionary War). The people of the southern states were trying to separate politically, not overthrow the federal government. Secessionary War makes more sense than Revolutionary War, for the wars in question.

How would EU law apply?

[eneville]

If the UK has begun the brexit process, how would EU law apply to license fee paying iPlayer users?

Re: How would EU law apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

We need a comment on geofencing a rule denouncing geofencing

Re:How would EU law apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK is still part of the EU until the Article 50 procedure has finished.

Re:How would EU law apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

UK citizens should stock up on lube while they can.

Re:How would EU law apply?

[raburton]

Unlikely to become law before the UK leaves the EU, so probably irrelevant. However, I suspect iPlayer wouldn't be affected anyway as you're not paying for the service, you're paying a TV license to receive broadcast TV in the UK. While you may not be allowed to use iPlayer without a TV license, that's not the service you're paying for. If you look at the briefing (linked in the article) it mentions the BBC specifically: "The draft regulation would apply to content services ... which are:
(e) free-of-charge online services offered by providers (e.g. public broadcasters such as the BBC) who choose to introduce portable services and agree to verify their subscribers' Member State of residence." So it applies to them if they agree to verify a subscriber's member state of residence, but presumably if they don't agree to do it then it doesn't apply to them. It's also worth noting that the BBC doesn't have subscribers anyway. Of course the text of the law is probably a long way off and who knows what it will actually say (not that it will matter to the BBC by then).

Re: How would EU law apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're used to being shafted by the free market. That won't change.

Re: How would EU law apply?

[Dutch Gun]

We're used to being shafted by the free market. That won't change.

It sounds like you're about to be shafted by your government, not the free market, .

Re: How would EU law apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at your market and economy state - and development - prior to being in the EEC/EU and after, "shafted" is be the absolute opposite of what I would call it... I would say it was rather boosted and by a huge amount.
You were already lagging behind in the 60's and as soon as the post-WWII economic boom ended you fell on your asses (went from 7th GNP in 1950 to 20th by 1975).

This should give a clear picture (click "History"): https://www.assetmacro.com/united-kingdom/gnp/

Notice UK economy taking flight after joining EEC?

Re: How would EU law apply?

[Hognoxious]

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. No control group to compare against.

But with Thatcher Mk2 at the helm things can only get better!

Re: How would EU law apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

And me thinking reality and the rest of the western world was itself control group enough for that... go figure.

How's Toblerone for Q.E.D.?

Re: How would EU law apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well Thatcher saved us from having an internet similar to Japan or South Korea. Thank the Queen we now have competition between BT, BT and BT.

Re:How would EU law apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

Brexit has no effect, the UK signed certain agreements that can't be annulled even after the brexit (sorry britain, the brexit is a brexlie)

Re:How would EU law apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically. But what's the incentive for UK to enforce EU laws if it knows they are going to go to the shredder anyway?

Re:How would EU law apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry EU, we don't care about those agreements - you can maybe make toilet paper for all your refugees out of them. hey - take a look at how much money in aid is given yearly by the UK to EU states. Sorry, the brexit is more like "I'd like to cash out my bank account and close it." But you call it whatever you want. We don't care about what you say or think. Enjoy your Romania/Bulgaria/Poland/Other_Shithole, and of course, your new influx of the dirty unskilled religious freaks who will soon get to vote. I know we'll enjoy the show.

EU...what's that smell!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, decaying globalist congame!

Licensing content just got much more expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

The government hates streaming video since they can't control it like broadcast TV so they're doing everything they can to hurt it.

Re:Licensing content just got much more expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Government can't control broadcast TV either.

Of course, many European nation has a government-operated broadcaster. They have full control over that one, obviously. But not the 3-4 competing privately owned sports/movie channels. Or any of the neighbour country channels that they're capable of receiving.

Perhaps taxing broadcasters it easier than taxing streamers - but that's about it.

Solves one problem.

[Mal-2]

This makes the whole bit of Cannes not considering streaming-only films a tempest in a teapot. France won't be able to retain its "can't stream for three years" laws in place and remain in alignment with the content portability rules (which I honestly thought already existed).

Re:Solves one problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck France.

Re:Solves one problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is French, so, yeah, I do...

Re:Solves one problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you cope with the smell?

Re:Solves one problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

One gets used to Chanel No. 5.

Well refund the cash, then.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to stop someone using what they bought for, then you should refund the payments.

Which do you prefer? Geoblocking or keeping the cash?

Good, but also bad

[Gabest]

Since nothing prevents subscribing to a service from Western Europe in Eastern Europe, the prices have to be the same across the whole region. Major games on Steam are already too expensive for the poorer half of Europe.

Re:Good, but also bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I was looking from the other perspective. Licensing Premier League (or some other high but variably priced content) and then driving home from Eastern Europe to view it.

Re: Good, but also bad

[thundercattt]

It was like that for years with NHL GameCenter streaming package. As a CDN it was like $200. American $120 (CDN ) or if you proxy'd through Russia it was $50 (CDN)

Re:Good, but also bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet TPB is cheap enough for everyone.

BTW, I live in the poorer half of Europe.

Re:Good, but also bad

[gnasher719]

Since nothing prevents subscribing to a service from Western Europe in Eastern Europe, the prices have to be the same across the whole region. Major games on Steam are already too expensive for the poorer half of Europe.

You are misunderstanding that completely. The principle that this rule is derived from is that EU citizens are allowed to move freely within the EU. That implies that they can bring their property from one country to another. That implies that they can bring their Netflix with them. If you paid while you were an EU citizen in Latvia, and then you move to the UK, you can use Netflix in the UK (until March 2019). If you are a US citizen living in Latvia then you have no such right. If you are a Latvian citizen living in the UK and not having Netflix, then you have no right to buy Latvian netflix.

This rule only applies to EU citizens moving to another country.

Depends

[JBMcB]

For sports, at least, it's licensed by *market* - to watch local sports teams costs more for a carrier. You can get a major league baseball streaming package that lets you watch any game in the country *except* for the team nearest you. To watch your home game you have to subscribe to whichever cable channel holds the broadcast rights, usually Fox Sports or ESPN.

What about control of cigarrettes in EU?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying me that the cigarrettes can be decomised from one to another country?

Re:What about control of cigarrettes in EU?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget cigarettes, what about property. Imagine how much money you could make by relocating 100 hectares from Bulgaria to the south of France.

Fuckheads at it again!

[Anonymous Coward]

The headline should read: Inventors of the fucked up "our website is using cookies" nag screen strike again. A bunch of stupid assholes making rules for shit they don't undetrstand. How about fixing the fucking EU first, dumb fucks.

Ashamed

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, the EU is kicking America's ass in terms of digital rights. Cookie laws, the right to be forgotten, now mandating that people can use what they buy anywhere. You guys got any room for a junior programmer?

Re: Ashamed

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be doing pretty good there in america if such inane things matter to you.

Re: Ashamed

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably just wants to leave a backward looking cultural shithole, which just elected a stupid, nasty bigoted asshole, for a civillised place. No more worries about health care, or being shot by an insane person either.

Wouldn't there be censorship issues involved?

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

For instance, Germany censors media heavily when it contains Nazi imagery... ...does that mean it is now legal for you to access it in Germany if you acquired the access somewhere else in the EU?

Re:Wouldn't there be censorship issues involved?

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany also censors media because of violence, which is more common at least when it comes to video games.

There'll probably be special exceptions for stuff like that. The usual: "for the children" when it comes to media censored because of violence and "Germany's special, perpetual responsibility" for WW2 related stuff.

Re:Wouldn't there be censorship issues involved?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can just photoshop crescent moons and other islamic symbols over nazi symbols and everything will be ok

Re:Wouldn't there be censorship issues involved?

[Gryle]

If I'm reading the article correctly, the portability rules affect streaming services, but not governments. A government can still legally censor content. To go back to your Germany example, you would still have access to your movies or games with Nazi imagery but further purchases of similar material would be heavily scrutinized.

I'm not sure how this would work with the BBC though. Can someone from the UK shed some light?

Re:Wouldn't there be censorship issues involved?

[gnasher719]

For instance, Germany censors media heavily when it contains Nazi imagery... ...does that mean it is now legal for you to access it in Germany if you acquired the access somewhere else in the EU?

What makes you think that? The stuff isn't just censored, it's also illegal. (And saying 'Heil Hitler' in a pub in Germany means you will be thrown out, with your teeth following you a few seconds later).

This Just In

[Anonymous Coward]

The Donald thinks about portability while he poops and thinks of his next crazed tweet.

You misunderstand the rule

[aepervius]

France can very well keep that rule. Because the portability rule , the one spoken in the article, is only about people coming from , say , UK, and in France, could not use the BBC player because it checked for your rough location, so people coming in France and using their own streaming in a private setting. Business in France cannot import content. That is the second part about geofencing is, and will be lobbied against far more harder than the geo portability issue.

good

[Anonymous Coward]

It maybe a crap idea,but it gets my vote just because it will piss the morons at the BBC right off..
Anyone like to explain why I should pay a TV tax/licence to use only their iPlayer radio service,radio licences in the UK died in the 1950's I think.
It's not yet a private firm,it's still "owned" by the UK public,I'm a member of the UK public so why should I have to pay anything at all for radio iPlayer..
Not that there is anything new to listen to,almost everything is a repeat and mostly available from else where anyway..

Premiership Football

[bernywork]

Oh, this'll be fun.

So people from Spain that have set top boxes and pay peanuts for rights to watch the English Premier League will be able to take their boxes with them to the UK and watch skipping the huge mark up that BT and Sky put on their services to watch the games.

Previously, this was against the law and people were fined for it, now it seems, that's fine.

The English Football League is going to be glad for Brexit now.

Re:Premiership Football

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll be glad for Brexit because they'll be forced to offer reasonable prices instead of gouging the British public? Sounds about right for Brexiteers, just as the one-sided rant does (disregarding the many more British people using pirate streams to access Premier League matches to get English commentary since the Astra signal left the area - who will be more likely to pay for a legal service if available).

British people accesing content that's currently georestricted from the EU is probably the biggest driver of losses for the Premier League and its broadcasters, not those dirty foreigners being allowed to keep whatever they subscribe to abroad. Same with soaps, etc. - people who used to keep a Sky subscription open in the UK to access from abroad now pirate because they're restricted. They didn't mind both paying and breaking the law when the Astra signal was around.

The undemocratic EU...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is once again on the side of the consumer. It's as if the citizens of the EU actually had a say.

Not the BBC iPlayer

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoting the entry:
> Under the new rules, someone who pays for Netflix or BBC iPlayer [..]

Not the BBC iPlayer. Brexiting UK will most likely not be ratifying this EU Law. Small damage, since BBC UK users will not have freedom of movement to the EU anyway, as much as no more EU citizens will be allowed freely into the UK, right?