Movie, Music and Sports Industries Urge EU to Keep Geo-Blocking in Place * TorrentFreak
torrentfreak.com
Threatened by potential EU regulatory changes, the movie, music, and sports industries are vehemently defending the practice of geo-blocking.

Threatened by potential EU regulatory changes, the movie, music, and sports industries are vehemently defending the practice of geo-blocking, as an essential part of their business models. Rightsholders argue that eliminating geo-blockades would devalue content, force price hikes for consumers in some countries, and ultimately reduce investment in content and localized services.

  •  Viri4thus   ( @Viri4thus@feddit.org ) English
    34•27 days ago

    The industry can go fuck itself. Actors, Football players, CEOs et al, don’t need to earn 25M€ per year. Spend less in wages for those cunts and you’ll see profitability rise without geoblocking.

    •  Godort   ( @Godort@lemm.ee ) English
      10•27 days ago

      Usually yes. In some cases, companies will block access to known VPN IPs outright.

      But most of the time, the cost of policing that is way higher than the revenue they’d get from the handful of VPN users that decide to go through proper channels rather than decide not to engage, or worse, spread word of their anti-consumer practices and potentially lose legitimate business.

  •  Kissaki   ( @Kissaki@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
    1•26 days ago

    It’s kind of crazy that video content is exempt from the EU single market. What was the reasoning for that? The link to the previous article doesn’t even mention it - was written seemingly before it came into action or was defined.

    What it does mention is why it’s so critical.

    Due to complicated licensing agreements Netflix is only available in a few dozen countries, all of which have a different content library.

    And also

    This means that consumers will have the right to access content they purchased at home in other European countries.

    If you have a single market, and free travel (Schengen), being able to access and buy content in them is substantial, or would otherwise subvert them.

    If it’s only regional, I can at least see some reasoning; the purchasing power varies quite a bit between countries. But still, there’s the question of how that relates to and opposes the idea and conditions of a single market. And it certainly doesn’t warrant geo-blocking like what you have access to or can buy. Regional pricing could be implemented by a law-defined or -restricted simple factor based on purchasing power.

    Steam does different regional prices even within Europe too, right?