
End Geoblocking - laktak
https://endgeoblocking.eu/
======
buro9
The example given is the BBC.

A service funded by licence fee payers who are resident in the UK.

Why should a service, that is advert free and wholly paid for by the UK
licence payers, be free to people elsewhere?

You may react that it need not be free... i.e. on different terms. And it is,
BBC Worldwide exists and material is available for licencing by other
television networks, one may watch Top Gear globally.

I'm not even sure that I agree that geoblocking should be removed for
commercial copyright holders.

Is it being proposed that all copyrighted material be subjected to compulsory
universal licensing? Actually, let's change the question: What _is_ being
proposed?

It's fine to say "end geoblocking", yes... down with that, we can all agree
it's a pain. But there doesn't seem to be a solution being proposed to say
what replaces the existing legal enforcement of copyrights and the resulting
contracts which today have led to geoblocking.

Edit: I mentioned the BBC because that was the example given. The general gist
of this comment isn't solely about the BBC. What _is_ being proposed?

~~~
terryf
Ok, but then let me pay for it. Because I _can not_ pay for it a lot of the
time.

Instead of the blocked screen show me "enter credit card for $.99 and watch
all you want"

 _that_ would be hard to argue with.

Seriously, dragging the entertainment industry along until they realise that
the internet actually is global is such a pain.

~~~
c3o
Rightholders usually _don 't allow_ services to let you pay for it if you're
from another country.

At least implicitly, their estimation is that accepting your money would
damage their ability to exclusively license content 28 times in the EU, and
that eroding that system would do more harm to the bottom line than the extra
money they might make.

In practice, the vast majority of content is of course not successfully
licensed 28 times, so they end up turning away/not even aiming for the
majority of their potential customers for the majority of their works.

Whether the current model is really best for rightholders' (maybe just
publishers') bottom lines is up for debate -- in their calculation, they are
probably biased towards prolonging the established business models that come
from the times of terrestrial TV broadcasting/physical media sales.

What is clear, from an EU point of view, is that the geoblocking that is
required to enforce this model artificially limits the audience of a lot of
European cultural products, forces people to seek out copyright-infringing
channels, reinforces digital borders between EU member states, harms lingustic
minorities etc -- and is just in fundamental conflict with both the idea of
the common EU market and the internet as a global medium.

(Disclosure: I made the campaign site.)

~~~
PeterisP
Right, so if legislators and voters feel that the current use of the law-
granted rights results in undesirable results, they can alter the conditions
so that the publishers are not allowed to region-lock or do exclusive
licencing limited to a particular part of the EU.

Just as they do with many other industries to facilitate the goal of a single
EU market.

------
kozak
I have to pirate some intellectual properly simply because it's impossible for
me to legally obtain it for any price. That's the reality of living in a
"wrong" country.

~~~
wfunction
If it was made available to you for 1000x its local price would you then stop
pirating it?

If not, then is the lack of "any" price the problem? Or do you have higher
expectations than you've stated here?

~~~
izacus
How about being made available under the same price people in other countries
pay and not being treated like a second class human?

~~~
ucaetano
Different countries have different costs, taxes, wealth and willingness to
pay.

~~~
marcosdumay
What difference does it make when the people on those countries send you money
through an international credit card?

------
tobltobs
Please do not make another law. Most of the laws produced by the EU in regards
to the internet do usually not help anything, but just place another burden on
the shoulders of small to midsized companies. Look at the VATmess or the
stupid cookie law.

Some possible outcome could be that you are forced to offer your service in
the whole EU, even if you are just a small, online fan shop for a second liga
soccer club.

All those EU laws usually just help the big multinational companies to keep
startups out of the market.

The EU should stop producing any laws at all and concentrate on harmonising
the endless supply of inconsistent laws in their member states.

~~~
djsumdog
> EU in regards to the internet do usually not help anything

"We use cookies to blah blah..."

Has that peace of legislation actually improved privacy or just make websites
more annoying?

~~~
tobltobs
It didn't improve privacy a bit, but it produced costs and enabled lawyers (at
least in Germany) to earn some easy money with a new breed of "Abmahnungen".

~~~
elcapitan
I would say it worsens the situation because it trains people to just click on
every banner that says something like that. People are lazy and I would argue
that once you have to do that a dozen times a day you are probably more likely
to also give up on even base-checking EULAs, new service conditions etc.

------
matthewmacleod
I can't agree more. I appreciate that there are complex reasons for it to
exist regarding legacy content licensing deals, but as a single market the EU
absolutely should not permit artificial trading barriers between member
states. The sooner the better.

------
magicfractal
Geoblocking is economic segregation of knowledge and culture based on luck (if
you had the luck of being born on a country with high material standards and
strong currency).

Free flow of information is one of the easiest ways we can reduce the global
wealth inequality gap and have a more stable society.

------
sandworm101
Geoblocking isn't the problem. It's just the symptom. The real issue is
restrictive copyright BS. Often when a show is block from a country (ie
Canada) it isn't because the producer doesn't want to let Canadians watch.
It's because some tiny bit of music in the show required a license, which the
producer purchased from a clearing house, which in turn was only authorized to
sell licenses within some tiny area. I believe this is part of the reason so
many American Netflix shows are blocked in canada.

~~~
PeterisP
The proposed changes exactly address this cause - any the geoblocking
provisions in contracts (including previous contracts) would be null and void,
so the producer would be legally able to distribute the content across the
whole EU under the same conditions as for the EU part (e.g. UK) they
originally had, while ignoring any geographical restrictions.

It's just as in other industries where you can't legally limit your
wholesalers/distributors to sell within a particular area only, that's a
violation of anti-trust laws.

------
guelo
American companies in Hollywood sign business contracts with American
companies in Silicon Valley and these Europeans think they can tell them what
they can do. People are under the strange impression that multi-million dollar
entertainment products are some kind of human right. If a shoe company decided
they weren't going to sell in Europe people wouldn't get all indignant like
this.

~~~
xanderstrike
I agree with you 100%. I think the reason people get huffy about online
content vs. shoes for example, is there's no _technical_ reason why a video I
have hosted in US shouldn't be watchable in the UK, and people intuitively
understand that. There are only regulatory and political reasons which are
difficult to understand and therefore get boiled down to "bullshit."

~~~
izacus
Being able to carry (or buy online) a bought DVD/BluRay from USA and watch it
EU and then being denied the ability to buy and stream of that exact same
content is the definition of "bullshit".

~~~
tobias3
That DVD/Blu-Ray would be region locked to the Americas...

~~~
izacus
Replace "USA" with "Germany" and "EU" with "Netherlands" if that makes your
nickpick gremlin happy -_-

------
ivanstame
I agree totally. Coming form Serbia a lot of things are blocked for me...it's
not fair.

------
amq
Recently I had to unsubscribe from Netflix, because it started to block VPNs
properly (geoblocking). Sorry guys, but I'm not going to give up privacy just
for you. And I can't switch it off on app basis, because VPN is done for my
whole home network on router.

------
elcapitan
Although I find geoblocking super annoying as well (personally), I don't see a
compelling argument why site owners should not have the right to decide freely
who can access their page and who not? It's they who provide the service, so
it should be their call.

~~~
DasIch
This isn't about private people it's about businesses. Those haven't been
allowed to discriminate based on many things for a long time. This proposal
merely pushes that further.

This isn't the huge change you want to make it out to be.

~~~
elcapitan
I'd be happy to get rid of other overregulation as well. Laws are man-made,
and therefore they can be changed by man.

~~~
PeterisP
Why yes, laws can be changed by man, and that's why they have made these
customer protection laws and will likely change them to be even stricter in
future. At least in the EU, there is strong support for that.

~~~
elcapitan
Unless they do the opposite and people get all whiny about "neoliberalism" and
so on.

------
bruceb
One of the most interesting arguments is: "Linguistic minorities, long-term
migrants, exchange students, etc. – 1 in 10 Europeans[ELEN] – are denied
access to their culture online."

Of course no geo blocking means English and American content is even more
available which could lead to even less linguistic and cultural diversity.
This could be a classic case of be careful what you wish for.

~~~
c3o
US content is already pretty widely available. Currently, the Danish minority
in Germany can watch the 80%-non-EU-made content in the German Netflix
repertoire just fine -- but they are blocked from watching the Danish public
broadcasters' content online, which is a significant chunk of the content that
exists in their language/from their culture.

Remember that US-only services could continue to geoblock all Europeans even
if geoblocking was eliminated in the EU. In practice it might give these
German Danes access to, I dunno, twice the US content they can watch today,
and maybe 5 or 10 times more Danish content. Plus 100 times more Estonian,
Portuguese, Maltese, and so on.

I can't follow the argument that this would lead to less cultural diversity,
not more.

------
studentrob
Wait.. Could this law have a side effect of hurting potential YouTube
competitors?

Right now we are only concerned about major players, like YouTube, Netflix,
etc.

With the proposed law, a smaller video service might not be able to focus on a
smaller region. Focusing on a smaller group could give a competitor the chance
to build up notoriety among that group.

For example, in 2050, each town has its own website capable of hosting videos.
The town videos have ads specific to the local population. The pricing of ads
could be controlled by that town. For this to work, it might be desirable to
be able to limit consummation of the videos to the townspeople. Bandwidth is
also used to serve content.

If you're fine with YouTube/Google and Facebook being in charge of ad-pricing
from now until the end of time, then this law would not disrupt that vision.
But if you expect YouTube to pay different rates, or have any competition,
this law might create unreasonable restrictions for new competition.

------
Unibod
The BBC makes great content and it costs money to do so. It is a large
organisation and suffers from lack of agility so changing the funding model is
very difficult. Great programmes are made [as well as the usual dross] but to
maintain their brand they must continue to do this and need a guaranteed
revenue stream

Overlaid is the reality that the BBC is a political issue in the same way that
the NHS is. Changes are not enacted by the BBC alone, it requires government
approval of the direction of travel. The pillars of the UK [or maybe just
England] are the NHS and the BBC. This may be a broken model in the current
World and many people may understand this, but changing it will take a
generation of persuading a nation that the delivery method should change.
Murdoch has been trying for at least 25 years.

------
ericdykstra
This seems like a worthy cause, but wouldn't it be easier to just make a
browser that spoofs location in an undetectable way?

I've recently run into some sites that I can't trick even with a VPN and using
Chrome dev tools to spoof location. (As a side note, if anyone knows of ways
to get around more sophisticated geoblocking, please let me know)

------
tangue
Android is useless where I live because all paid apps (or with an in app
purchase) are impossible to install. I'm still wondering why Google doesn't
want my money, it's just another Visa card afger all. (Apple store works
perfectly)

~~~
dublinben
There are very many good Android apps that do not cost anything, nor do they
have any in-app purchases. You shouldn't write off the entire platform just
because they won't let you buy apps.

~~~
tangue
There are really cool free apps but they're drowned into scams and poor
clones. And most games are impossible to install. Feels like having Windows
and being stuck with minesweeper and sharewares floppys.

------
JulianMorrison
If you're in the UK, vote "remain" or expect to be ten times as geoblocked.

~~~
maffydub
Can you provide a reference for the "ten times as geoblocked" please?

I support "remain", but hyperbole from both the leave and remain sides has
made the referendum a bit of a farce.

~~~
JulianMorrison
I don't need to provide a reference because it's obvious that negotiations of
rights are currently on an EU basis (because that's the big legal bloc) and
they would suddenly have to be UK-specific, and what big company can be
bothered to prioritize that?

~~~
c3o
Unfortunately negotiations of rights are on a country by country basis.
Copyright is not unified nor properly harmonized across the EU (...yet?). To
show copyrighted content to all of Europe you need licenses for 28
territories.

This might change, or at least gain some new exceptions ("roaming" for your
Netflix account will come for sure; the other measures this campaign demands
are up in the air at this point). These improvements of course would not apply
if the UK leaves.

------
tobltobs
Before the EU could forbid geoblocking they would have to introduce a common
level for IPP.

And I am pretty sure nobody (apart of the copyright holders) would be pleased
with that.

------
ibn-alfatal
Good guy EU: sensors the internet for its citizens, gets upset when sensored
by third parties.

------
thejosh
Australians also know this pain..

~~~
Cub3
And get called out as Pirates for trying to circumvent Geo Blocks

------
eggman
geoblocking is better than some other types of blocking i can think of

------
794CD01
Also, end locks on doors.

------
gst
This site looks geoblocked to me - getting a 503 error:
[https://imgur.com/9AYpo5N](https://imgur.com/9AYpo5N)

~~~
jzymbaluk
I'm seeing the same, I'm assume it's being hugged to death instead of actively
blocked

