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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.

7 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Expect to see more content disappear by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
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    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Re:How would EU law apply? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

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

  3. Solves one problem. by Mal-2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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).

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  4. Re:Expect to see more content disappear by DRJlaw · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Expect to see more content disappear by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  6. Re:Expect to see more content disappear by Kjella · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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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    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  7. Re:Expect to see more content disappear by DRJlaw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.