Movie, Music, and Sports Industries Urge EU to Maintain Geo-Blocking, Citing Critical Importance for Content Financing, Distribution, and Consumer Pricing Across Europe. (torrentfreak.com)

submitted 1 year ago by Tea@programming.dev to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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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.

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[-] Viri4thus@feddit.org 40 points 1 year 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.

[-] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 year ago

How are we going to pay a football player 50 million if you don't allow us to cheat everyone and squeeze every cent out of them?

Fuck them

[-] CobraChicken3000@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago

Does VPN help, in this case, to avoid geo-fencing?

[-] Godort@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year 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.

[-] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

We argue that we won't be able to buy a second gold plated swimming pool if these rules are gone!

Let it burn

[-] Kissaki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

From the linked website: Public consultation (feedback) will be open in the second quarter of 2025.

[-] Kissaki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year 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?