European Commission Proposes "Digital Single Market" and End To Geoblocking 137
An anonymous reader writes A new initiative from the European Commission proposes a reformed "single digital market", addressing a number of issues that it sees as obstructions to EU growth, including geoblocking — where services such as BBC's iPlayer are only available to IP addresses within the host country — and the high cost of parcel delivery and administration of disparate VAT rates across the member states. The ramifications of many of the proposals within the Digital Single Market project extend to non-EU corporations which have built their business model on the current isolationism of member state markets.
Never going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
So many european special interests are invested in protectionist strategies that they're not going to let it go away. They are just going to do the same thing by different names.
And if they actually did do it, they'd open europe up to competition not just internationally but even within europe. There are a lot of countries in europe that are not able to export their gods to other countries in europe for basically no reason. And that has been getting worse with the EU... not better.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Informative)
> And that has been getting worse with the EU... not better.
Can you give me some examples? Our family business has been importing and exporting goods (motor vehicles) from all over Europe for over 40 years, and I can tell you that things have improved GREATLY because of the European union. Just to give you an idea, when the business just started a motor vehicle imported from for example Italy could not be registered in other European countries without making alterations because regulations were so different. In addition all the paperwork that was required would easily take up several hours per vehicle im/exported.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Informative)
The italian olive oil situation is a good example.
There are olive groves there that have been supplying oil to local villages as well as exporting for time out of mind. And new EU regulations are requiring that the oil go through all sorts of additional regulatory steps as well as package it in specific EU approved bottles.
The people in the area would typically just come by with a jug and fill it up with fresh oil as needed. But that is being made illegal.
The result is that the small growers must sell not directly to customers but to a big business bottling plants that are ultimately going to be the only legal way to sell the oil. Importing and exporting the oil previously was also not a big deal... but again, regulations.
Can I ask what country you are based in? Because the worst effects of this stuff hit the poorer and less developed countries the hardest. The richer and more developed countries if anything benefit from it. The trade controls have consequences for segments of the economy less capable of dealing with the red tape.
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Olive oil is a special case, it's no longer the pure product of old, it's being tampered with and may be up to 10% something else. That's what you get when you try to deceive customers, backlash and additional regulations. If the producers remained honest, legislation would not have turned to look at the industry.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
In this specific case, I would rather think that the northern countries, especially Germany, wanted that their food safety regulations to also apply to the southern countries. "Somebody think of our poor consumers?" (They don't make olive oil in mid and northern Europe.)
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Cheap European exports are shit. Caveat emptor!
http://www.hospitalitymagazine... [hospitalit...ine.com.au]
http://www.theglobalmail.org/f... [theglobalmail.org]
http://ausfoodnews.com.au/2010... [ausfoodnews.com.au]
That's not to say quality olive oil isn't produced in Mediterranean countries but if the price is too good to be true, beware.
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They were the primary lobbyists for the legislation so... that's pretty much exactly what happened.
Re:Never going to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the thing about harmonisation of disperse markets, for every simple example of a drawback someone will come up with an example of an improvement. Regulations typically don't just magically appear, but are rather a reaction (often a knee jerk reaction) to a specific problem. Your example is good because it highlights some serious issues at both sides. For instance the increased overhead now placed on farmers, but at the same time the increased assurance placed on the customers and the government that everything is done as it should be. I.e. you know the bottle was cleaned properly before you used it, the government knows the measured quantity of goods changing hands for taxation purposes. The poor may be hard done, but they are also the ones reasonably protected.
Now this may or may not be the case here, but in a general sense this is where these ideas often come from.
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A consentual system of standards would suit both situations.
That is... if you obey these rules you can put this symbol on your package. If you don't then you can't.
Then the consumer decides whether they care or not.
Everyone gets what they want.
Those that want those standards will look for that symbol and only buy products that meet it.
Customers that do not will choose indifferent to whether it is there or not.
And neither big companies nor small companies can complain or gain any advantage.
That is the power
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Actually the EU has done that, for example with the eco label.
However, it turned out that typical white goods with an eco label below A would not sell in Germany, so they are no longer available. No consumer choice there. In other countries, consumer standards are different, and therefore it may be very difficult to sell or to find a highly efficient device. Again, little consumer choice.
So the result was that different countries would informally set different standard - exactly what the common market was t
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And since none of them chose B-E graded white goods, there was no demand for them and they weren't produced.
YOUR way ensures that no matter what happens, "regulation was bad!". You claim that regulation should not decide what standards you use and forbid any other because the informed consumer will decide. And if they inform the user and they decide to buy only goods that obey the standard, either they stop producing anything and "the regulation removed the choice!". If the government forced producers to continue to supply all choices, you'd whine about that enforcement too.
I should be allowed to use fake money to pay for goods, otherwise the choice of who will do business with me and sell be stuff in return for a proffer of "cash" will be removed! BAN REGULATION ON CURRENCIES!!!
Not necessarily. It's not necessarily that "none of them chose B-E graded white goods". It's that there was not enough chosing the "B-E graded white goods" that the distributors decided it was not worth it, and thereby cut off the supply of B-E graded white goods. May be the A graded white goods high a higher margin or something else that caused the distributor to prefer the A grade over the B-E grades.
In other words, it could be a false consumer choice - one that was not really given to the consumer.
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Then the consumer decides whether they care or not.
That's the fundamental flaw in your argument. It assumes that consumers are informed and have enough money to make choices like this. Even if you are happy to blame people for not knowing enough about olive oil, you can't really deny that people with little money often can't afford to pay the premium for better quality products.
By raising the minimum level it ensures that there will be cheap but safe and reasonable quality olive oil available to everyone. Otherwise the market will do its usual thing of scre
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Okay... then go with my system, only condescendingly tell poor people that they're exclusively forbidden to make choices for themselves and that their betters, as represented by your noble self, will make those choices for them.
They are only filthy peasants after all... what do they know.
I will really be nice when this world view finally dies.
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How did you get from my suggestion to give them more choices to "take away all their choices"?
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You said that poor people don't have the "right" information and are so driven by economic factors that even if they do know they'll buy the wrong product because it is cheaper. So you want to force them to only buy the product you think is correct.
Is that inaccurate?
Re:Never going to happen (Score:4, Interesting)
Because the worst effects of this stuff hit the poorer and less developed countries the hardest. The richer and more developed countries if anything benefit from it.
Although I understand the sentiment; the "richer" countries, e.g. Germany, already works with these "food safety" measures in place. They have had this drag on the marked already in place, so they did not need to adapt. The problem is when a new EU directive actually kills traditional products; like in France where the requirement to make cheese with pasteurized milk made something like 3/4 of the French cheeses impossible to make. (They resolved the issue with local exemptions.)
But once you comply with "improved" food and product safety requirements, the EU did help trade.
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Many of the regulations are only contextually relevant. The best example would be comparing very small farms with very large farms. The health and safety requirements for a large farm are needed. However in smaller operations they don't have the same contamination issues and so they're not relevant.
You can also look at small cattle ranches and dairy operations. A small dairy farm for example can generally produce completely safe milk without pasteurization. It became a health issue when they started making
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Many of the regulations are only contextually relevant. The best example would be comparing very small farms with very large farms. The health and safety requirements for a large farm are needed. However in smaller operations they don't have the same contamination issues and so they're not relevant.
That depends on the regulation, the cause, etc. Yes there may not be as much potential for contamination, but there is still a possibility. The regulations therefore should be progressive in nature much like many other things - if you exceed X then Y applies.
You can also look at small cattle ranches and dairy operations. A small dairy farm for example can generally produce completely safe milk without pasteurization.
Actually that is a very bad example. A small dairy farm is actually more like to have certain issues than a large one. For instance, if the cattle are range fed then the propability of "bad feed" (e.g a cow eating a plant that when passed through in the
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They do not and will not account for such situations because there isn't enough political power to slap the politicians in the mouth, make them look in your eye, and tell them how it is...
The powerful interests have that power which is why they get exemptions built into the system and the laws are generally tailored for their operation.
Anyone that can't do that tends to get fucked.
And as the system gets larger you have to hit the politicians in the face progressively harder to get them to pay attention.
As t
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They do not and will not account for such situations because there isn't enough political power to slap the politicians in the mouth, make them look in your eye, and tell them how it is...
The powerful interests have that power which is why they get exemptions built into the system and the laws are generally tailored for their operation.
Anyone that can't do that tends to get fucked.
And as the system gets larger you have to hit the politicians in the face progressively harder to get them to pay attention.
As the system gets larger only the very largest interest get any attention at all. Which means all the less powerful interests are ignored. Outright irrelevant.
And that is a problem when entire countries or states in your government fall into that category.
No government or state can be irrelevant. And if they are then your system was poorly designed or you've grown too large for your existing system.
Not saying that is not a problem; and I don't know the comparison in EU but it's probably not much different than in the US in that SMBs (Small-Medium Businesses) make up the vast majority of businesses in the US, while no one single business has a lot of clout, there are organizations that tend to represent a majority of them and are big enough to be able to combat the larger (Large Businesses and Enterprise) organizations. In some cases, the SMBs get represented several times - between the various SMB org
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The US is the exception to many rules... usually in our favor.
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"The people in the area would typically just come by with a jug and fill it up with fresh oil as needed. But that is being made illegal."
That's just because a lot of them gave the people oil from the year before last, or mixed that one with fresh oil.
It's their own fault this had to come.
Not to mention the unsanitary oil bottles on the restaurant tables that got filled with the same crap. Also the bottles were never cleaned in years!
That's why those practices got illegal. You can still put bottles on the ta
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I did some research and this appears to be a classic Euro Myth.
There is some information about the regulations here: http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/o... [oliveoiltimes.com]
The Italian parliament seems keen on them. The rules don't mandate "specific EU approved bottles", they simply require minimum standards for bottling like a security seal that lets the consumer know that the bottle was not opened prior to purchase. Apparently adulterated olive oil is a big problem, which is why the Italians were so quick to bring their impleme
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What is that supposed to mean? The rules on dairy products are almost entirely in place to counter issues with factory scale dairy operations. Smaller operations have rarely had a problem.
that said, we need large operations.
I think you missed all the subtly in my comment. I addressed all these things.
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I think you missed all the subtly in my comment.
subtly... This is slashdot, we don't do subtly here.
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It has more to do with the richer countries enjoying stronger lobbying positions on the system.
You see this in any large government. The powerful portions of the system subordinate and dominate the less powerful portions.
You can see other examples of this in Australia and California. In Australia farmers are literally committing suicide due to having their water stolen by cities that failed to do proper urban planning or failed to act on urban planning that required them to build water infrustructure.
They r
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Hmm... I see no evidence of that in europe.
If anything, the areas simply have more water so running out is less likely... and your communities are quite a bit older so things have fixed in place a bit more firmly.
Name a place in Europe that is having such problems with water that the aquifers are being drained and the earth itself is heaving inward... dipping in because all the water has been sucked out of the ground?
There are only a few places in Europe that you could really call a desert and they're all v
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I've seen no evidence that if powerful interests want something in europe they won't just take it.
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So long as you allow local producers to sell to local consumers internally within the country without all the regulation... then fine.
I can understand someone in a different country wanting some checks on the product before import. However, don't tell me that I can't use produce from a local farmer that I've known since I was a small child because the food hasn't gone through some stupid health inspection check that only large farms will have done in the first place.
Because then that local farm has to sell
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I addressed this issue already.
Holy Wars (Score:5, Funny)
There are a lot of countries in europe that are not able to export their gods to other countries in europe for basically no reason.
Actually there is a very good reason for this. God exports between countries within Europe tended to involve lots of men with very pointy sticks and were usually rather unpleasant for anyone involved. This seems to have rather killed of the business in recent years.
Re: Never going to happen (Score:1)
Not being able to find a particular German wine here in the UK, I ordered it online from a German company. It arrived 3 days later. Carriage cost £6, and no duty to pay as the price included German taxes. European Union in action.
Try doing that in the USA. In many States it's illegal to import wine across state boundaries, never mind international ones.
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What? I've never had that problem. I do shipping all over the country all the time and while I am assuming you're referring to some weird ATF thing... it has never effected me once.
Ironically, things are often easier if I cross lines with something rather than not... sales taxes for example often vanish which is convenient.
I recently bought a laptop that I bounced between three different states and the result was... no sales tax.
Really, suggesting that internal US shipping is more complicated and expensive
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Yea, that interstate commerce -> no sales tax thing in the US never made sense to either.
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That isn't a governmental issue, that is an industry issue. The industries themselves can decide how they want to license their products. They don't need the EU to tell them what terms can be on it.
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You're in charge of your keyboard. What does that say about you?
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The most expensive digital media market wants the prices found in the markets in regions that have totally different income brackets and standards of living?
The general idea of EU is to unify these "totally different income brackets and standards of living". There are special huge help programs for poorer member states.
Greece just called... (Score:2)
The most expensive digital media market wants the prices found in the markets in regions that have totally different income brackets and standards of living?
The general idea of EU is to unify these "totally different income brackets and standards of living". There are special huge help programs for poorer member states.
Greece just called... they say they're waiting for their credit approval to go through...
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Do you pay taxes?
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Geoblocking is highway robbery (Score:2)
It's good to see that the bandits and bridge trolls trying desperately to maintain artificial scarcity and artificial economic friction may soon be disarmed.
Now let's just make that global.
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It's good to see that the bandits and bridge trolls trying desperately to maintain artificial scarcity and artificial economic friction may soon be disarmed.
Now let's just make that global.
That way *all* the factories can go to China and *all* the call centers can go to India! Yay!
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Where is this digital goods factory you speak of? I would like to visit it...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]
I don't know of a location for music specifically, and software is all over the place, but this one fits the summary.
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What I want to know is, is this going to apply to just the EU, or will it affect the EFTA too?
Seems that everyone blocks access to bloody everything here in Iceland.
First principle - who pays? (Score:4, Interesting)
While as an ex-pat, I would doubtless appreciate the opportunity to view BBC iPlayer content free of charge, without use of proxies, etc. - however, those *resident* in the UK are paying for this service, and not through choice either (mandatory TV licence)
I am not sure if my ability to view free content would be fair on those who have no choice but to pay for it - and when you get started on sports broadcasts (football, etc.) - you will be coming up against some very well-funded and powerful interest groups.
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or they could just force you to create an account on iPlayer that's tied to your TV license.
You only need a TV licence to watch programs that are being broadcast in real time on iPlayer. (ie if you are watching a show on iPlayer that you could also watch simultanuously on a TV.
"If you only ever watch ‘on demand’ programmes, you don’t need a TV Licence. On demand includes catch-up TV, streaming or downloading programmes after they’ve been shown on live TV, or programmes available online before being shown on TV." [tvlicensing.co.uk]
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There are many non geo blocked tax funded European radio and TV channels. Each of them likely has a percentage of their audience not paying fees. However there may be German/French/etd expats in England (or vice versa) who don't care much about the Beeb and who still have to pay the fee. It probably all levels out.
The other question is, is there a potential loss of income? And if so, how much do a few expats cause?
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There are many non geo blocked tax funded European radio and TV channels. Each of them likely has a percentage of their audience not paying fees.
Yep, then one where I live flags the content as viable globally or limited depending on the license they have on the content.
What this regulation does is that they now have to require that they can broadcast the content in all of EU when they purchase licenses in the future.
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It's a matter of mission statement. In Germany the public TV and radio is also payed by a "tax" (it's not called a tax, but it's mandatory). But they broadcast many things, especially the news world wide without restrictions. Up until last year they operated lang wave radio to reach the entire globe. They see it as a service to ex-pat Germans and other people interested in Germany.
The BBC has a long track record of selling their stuff (which is quite good). They have a vested interest to not make it availab
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But technically you could argue that they are double dipping, since it should be payed though UK TV licenses.
Why should it?
If I produce something for a customer, and can then also sell it to another, does my second customer have an expectation that it should be free for them? Or would my first customer not expect that profit from subsequent sales be factored into the price they pay?
The BBC is public funded by UK residents. Those who fund it have every right to demand that the BBC squeeze every penny they can out of foreign sales. This money goes back into the BBC and supplements the public funding.
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After the tax-payers have already paid for a program, it doesn't hurt them if that program also benefits the rest of the world. In fact, if I paid for some television program I would want it to reach as large an audience as possible.
The problem is with all the stuff the BBC doesn't produce itself, but instead licenses from others. Those license agreements are usually much more restrictive than they were when television was simply broadcast to whoever could pick it up. Those radio waves didn't care about nat
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I would also point out that selling the content in other territories around the world has been an importance source of revenue for the BBC for many decades. Without it the license fee would have to be much higher to support the content that is produced.
In effect the license fee payers in the United Kingdom only pay for part of the production of a program. As such giving the program away for free to those that did not contribute to it does in fact hurt.
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I would also point out that selling the content in other territories around the world has been an importance source of revenue for the BBC for many decades.
I just checked this, and I'm surprised by how much money they get from this: One quarter of their income is from commercial BBC Worldwide sales [bbc.co.uk].
Without it the license fee would have to be much higher to support the content that is produced.
I wouldn't say "much higher". It would be 36% higher. Definitely noticable, but not dramatic. Or they would have to produce or buy somewhat less expensive programs. Still, it's much higher than the handfull of % that I had imagined.
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Lots of people in the UK watch iPlayer without paying. You only need a TV licence to watch live broadcasts. If you stick to recorded programmes on iPlayer it's perfectly okay to use it without a license.
You mention fairness... Currently people in Europe have no ability to pay for most BBC content even if they wanted to. Chances are it wouldn't stream very well to them anyway, due to all the servers being located in the UK. If they get it for free it doesn't take anything away from the people who have to pay
What was yours is now ours. (Score:2)
A new initiative from the European Commission proposes a reformed "single digital market", addressing a number of issues that it sees as obstructions to EU growth, including geoblocking --- where services such as BBC's iPlayer are only available to IP addresses within the host country.
Federalism fails when it ignores cultural distinctions between its member states, igniting controversies that are needlessly provocative and could easily have been avoided.
The iPlayer provides publically funded news and entertainment services targeting a domestic not a European or global audience --- on the face of it, a benign and legitimate purpose.
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Federalism fails when it ignores cultural distinctions between its member states, igniting controversies that are needlessly provocative and could easily have been avoided.
The iPlayer provides publically funded news and entertainment services targeting a domestic not a European or global audience --- on the face of it, a benign and legitimate purpose.
Dumb reason...
Being a foreigner in Japan, I'd like to access contents payed with my taxes from overseas.
No, I can't. So, I have to download or find another to stream contents.
Absolutely crucial (Score:5, Informative)
The situation since new-year is absolutely horrendous. At January 1st, the VAT rules changed [euvataction.org] so that digital goods have to be taxed using the VAT rate of the buyer's location, and using the tax law of the buyer's home country. That is: a web shop of any size have to keep track of up to 80 different VAT rates, and the disparate tax law regarding VAT of 28 different EU countries in order to deduce which VAT rate and goods classification is applicable on each single transaction.
As a telling example: In several countries an e-book is only an e-book if it has an ISBN number (usually with a lower than standard VAT rate). Otherwise it's a digital service (with a higher VAT rate). In other countries it's a e-book as long it's a digital text. Or humorously enough, in the case of France: It's only taxed as an e-book if it doesn't have pornographic content, otherwise it's taxed as a digital service.
A good start would be what is proposed in the press release: Harmonized VAT rates and rules for digital goods.
Re: Absolutely crucial (Score:2)
And that's exactly what Amazon and other online retailers have been complaining about in the U.S. cross-border sales tax collection attempts. 80 varitations? Try thousandsn with every state, county, and city having their own arbitrary sales tax rules and rates.
Re:Absolutely crucial (Score:4, Informative)
The reason behind it was to stop companies (e.g. amazon, apple and google) setting up shop in the lowest tax countries in the EU (luxembourg and ireland), and thus by only charging a low rate of VAT when exporting to the rest of the EU. This enables them to beat smaller domestic companies on final price, pay less tax overall, and funnels what little tax is collected into these tax havens. So the bigger EU countries were seeing a hefty fall in their direct VAT receipts, and loss of business from domestic companies to these giants that can relocate where they like, thus employment costs and indirect tax losses.
Fixing it by harmonizing VAT rates would require treaty changes and be politically hard to hand one of the big financial levers to the european central bank, especially given not all countries are in the eurozone - imagine the US forcing all state sales taxes to the same rate, set by the fed, and you get the idea.
Thus making companies pay VAT in the buyer's country, not the seller's. What they should have done though is put in a threshold, so companies/sole traders below a certain size were exempt, but that was opposed by some so it was dropped, and well, here we are where a mechanism intended to help small traders against the multinationals is a lot easier for the big boys to follow, particularly the requirements to keep id information about buyer location. Once they roll it out for physical goods too, it's going to be such a cluster f**k.
Hopefully though, the rise of MOSS compliant payment processors should make the system easier to follow - you just put a disclaimer up that final price will be based on the buyers VAT rate, and let the payment processor calculate the right rate and store the records.
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Yep I understand the reason and mostly support it for that reason, but I think it could have been handled a *lot* better. For example, there could have been some sort of threshold, such as the first EUR1,000,000 of annual sales (net before tax) may be charged at the local VAT rate, regardless of the destination. Any sales above EUR1,000,000 must be charged at the destination rate. Companies may opt to charge all sales at the destination rate.
I think a threshold of 1,000,000 is fairly reasonable: you're big
Local rates = OK, everything else with them = bad (Score:2)
Hopefully though, the rise of MOSS compliant payment processors should make the system easier to follow - you just put a disclaimer up that final price will be based on the buyers VAT rate, and let the payment processor calculate the right rate and store the records.
Which is, of course, contrary to consumer protection laws in much of Europe. Merchants are often required by law to show tax-inclusive prices for B2C sales. (For anyone interested: I have now received conflicting advice on this from official sources in my own government, indicating that X+VAT pricing is now magically acceptable for this purpose again, despite it largely defeating the point of the previous consumer protection rule by hiding the bottom-line price in early advertising.)
The big problem with the
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VAT in Ireland is 23%, I'm not sure I'd call that low.
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The U.S. is even worse off. There are nearly 10,000 sales tax jurisdictions [washingtonpost.com] in the U.S.
The solution is to reverse who is responsible for updating the tax rates. There are a lot more retailers
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Which is why companies provide tax engines, that take on the complex calculations and that can be updated by the company providing the engine rather than the many thousands of retailers that use it.
It's not a single central database, it's one per vendor, and the tax jurisdictions don't update them, the vendors do, but otherwise it's the solution you're suggesting.
The downside of course is that those vendors want paying for this service...
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Ok, could you list the tax rates and rules across a range of goods in each country within the European Economic Area please?
Oh, and provide an update ahead of any changes, so that I can assure I stay current?
Incidentally, while you're at it, could you build the business logic and rules into my website so that it correctly calculates that tax, and reports it in a compliant fashion to each relevant jurisdiction?
Would it be too much to ask that you make this a robust repeatable process, that it's invisible to
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A good start would be what is proposed in the press release: Harmonized VAT rates and rules for digital goods.
The problem is that unifying VAT and classifications basically regulating half a tax system without regulating the other half. You can tax income and you can tax consumption and there's pros and cons to both. If we're forced to lower our VAT, the other taxes would probably increase to compensate or the other way around. In addition many of the VAT brackets are made for a specific purpose because the goods are either particularly good or bad for society, like taxing books less (knowledge is good) and tobacco
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The situation since new-year is absolutely horrendous. At January 1st, the VAT rules changed [euvataction.org] so that digital goods have to be taxed using the VAT rate of the buyer's location, and using the tax law of the buyer's home country. That is: a web shop of any size have to keep track of up to 80 different VAT rates, and the disparate tax law regarding VAT of 28 different EU countries in order to deduce which VAT rate and goods classification is applicable on each single transaction.
As a telling example: In several countries an e-book is only an e-book if it has an ISBN number (usually with a lower than standard VAT rate). Otherwise it's a digital service (with a higher VAT rate). In other countries it's a e-book as long it's a digital text. Or humorously enough, in the case of France: It's only taxed as an e-book if it doesn't have pornographic content, otherwise it's taxed as a digital service.
A good start would be what is proposed in the press release: Harmonized VAT rates and rules for digital goods.
And it is a real pain for the customers when web shops keep raping them on shipping costs and for some reason, even though they are supposed to refund their own countries VAT, they don't do that but pocket the money instead. The poor bloody customer ends up having to pay local VAT on: the product list price + Host country VAT + inflated shipping cost. Just as an example I wanted to buy a few A/D converters on Amazon recently because my local electronics monger went under a while ago (and keep in mind these
Digital Single Market ?!? (Score:4, Funny)
Digital Single Market ?!?
Tell me: why do they want to build a dating site again?
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TindEUR.
Ed to geoblocking (Score:4, Insightful)
...or geodiscrimination as I've always called it must be global and it should have happened 20 years ago.
It is one of the leading causes of piracy (unavailability of products locally) and a serious anachronism in a world long ago gone global communication-wise.
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So, do you have a global solution that will allow us to establish a unified world order and cooperate together harmoniously across borders, cultures, and languages, or would it be better if I stopped asking questions and just joined you in your idealistic but unrealistic daydream?
I think I'll do the latter.
states rights (Score:1)
When the USA started the states had a lot of power and federal government had little. Slowly power was concentrated in DC and now practically all power is centrally concentrated there. Seems like EU is slowly headed in the same direction. There's only one thing people with power want and that's more power.
Geoblocking is utterly stupid (Score:2)
BBC is a payed for service (Score:2)
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>If I pay a license fee to have BBC content, then I don't want others receiving it for free.
Why not? That sounds pretty petty. It's already been paid for, and others viewing it doesn't take away its value. If I paid to have something produced, I would want as many people enjoy it as possible. It's people enjoying it that makes it worth paying for social services, and the more people watch the BBC, the more worthwhile it is paying for it. If something you pay for has a large international audience, then t
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Dear amaurea,
This is the BBC. Our hearts are warmed by your love for our broadcasts, and your wish to gift it to the rest of the world. You are both gracious and generous.
Now that we no longer sell it abroad, but provide it for free, you will have two options next year;
- Pay a 20% increase in your licence fee to replace this lost revenue.
- Not get another series.
Thanking you.
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In addition to loosing the revenue the BBC would also have to massively beef up the iPlayer service at great expense to cope with the extra demand that would be placed on it. So a double wammy as they say.
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BBC should fix this by requiring people to authenticate their TV license to use the site.
That would be great except you don't actually need a licence to watch programs on iPlayer..
If you only ever watch ‘on demand’ programmes, you don’t need a TV Licence. On demand includes catch-up TV, streaming or downloading programmes after they’ve been shown on live TV, or programmes available online before being shown on TV." [tvlicensing.co.uk]
Good luck on the geoblocking (Score:2)
As long as the media companies can sell the rights to their product to individual companies in other nations, you will never see an end to geoblocking. It's part of the business model of making profit from as many opportunities as possible.
Why would CTV here in Canada pay for the rights to broadcast "Gotham" if Canadians could just watch the internet streams from the US directly? Why would the BBC pay for the rights to broadcast CTV's "Orphan Black" if British citizens could just watch the CTV streams
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Well in the case of the BBC that'd surely be a good thing. Paying for American content is just a waste of license payer money if it is available elsewhere. They should be using that money to produce original content.
Sorry, not available in Canada (Score:1)
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You mean chaos, right?
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The US has been exporting that for quite some time.
And we could really use a Digital Single Market to resell all the music that we no longer want to listen to.
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can't order a baguette with my groceries unless it was made within a 1 mile radius of some random French town.
You are probably talking about AOP (Appellation d'origine protégée), which is different.
AOP only protects the name of the product, not the product itself. For example it totally possible to make Roquefort-like cheese outside the area of Roquefort (town) but you won't be allowed to call it Roquefort. Think of it as a trademark.
Baguette, by the way, is not protected.
The problem is, in fact, the opposite. France, for example, has a lot of raw milk cheeses that may be incompatible with European food s