4 ms·

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

by terryf 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.)
- geodel 10y ago
  Right. Just to add for example HBO's content is way cheaper in India than US itself because they would have to figure what local population can afford there.
- PeterisP 10y ago
  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.
geodel 10y ago
How did you figure out $.99 should be sufficient to watch all the content you like?
- terryf 10y ago
  It's called an example. Please do take it very seriously.
ascorbic 10y ago
I'm sure the BBC would love to be able to sell subscriptions around the world. The trouble is its only worth doing that if they can make more money from it than they can from licensing their content to local broadcasters. They're probably not there now, but even if they were, there are years of deals in place everywhere.

by terryf 10y ago

c3o 10y ago

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.)

geodel 10y ago
Right. Just to add for example HBO's content is way cheaper in India than US itself because they would have to figure what local population can afford there.
PeterisP 10y ago
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.

geodel 10y ago

How did you figure out $.99 should be sufficient to watch all the content you like?

terryf 10y ago
It's called an example. Please do take it very seriously.

ascorbic 10y ago

I'm sure the BBC would love to be able to sell subscriptions around the world. The trouble is its only worth doing that if they can make more money from it than they can from licensing their content to local broadcasters. They're probably not there now, but even if they were, there are years of deals in place everywhere.