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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.
Is that what happens in the US? Less content because it has to be licensed for every state?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The UK is still part of the EU until the Article 50 procedure has finished.
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).
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
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?
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.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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.
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?
It's a perfectly valid comparison to anyone who actually knows the history of the United States from colonial times through ~1800.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
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The American civil war proved that an American State is not a country.
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.
Why do you think contracts trump laws? Netflix will either suck it up, or pull out and have to refund any subscriptions paid.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"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.
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.
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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".
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.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
...is once again on the side of the consumer. It's as if the citizens of the EU actually had a say.