K7 Media

K7 Media

European Commission hopes to ban geo-blocking of digital content

The European Commission has shaken up the international digital market by suggesting a ban on the practice of geo-blocking content – making it impossible to access TV shows, films and other media hosted on servers in other countries.

The EC’s Digital Single Market proposal insists that it “no longer makes sense for each EU country to have its own rules for telecommunications services, copyright, data protection, or the management of radio spectrum”.

The European Commission has shaken up the international digital market by suggesting a ban on the practice of geo-blocking content

For the likes of Netflix, now rolling out in Australia and other countries, the goal is a welcome one. Many subscribers use virtual private networks and IP spoofing software to get around such restrictions, in order to view content available in other territories.

That Netflix has largely turned a blind eye to this has not gone unnoticed, and now CEO Reed Hastings has confirmed that a single global market is the company’s ambition. “The basic solution is for Netflix to get global and have its content be the same all around the world so there’s no incentive to [use a VPN],” he says. “Then we can work on the more important part which is piracy”.

Since it is clearly something consumers prefer, this may be a change that is inevitable, sooner or later.

For content creators and distributors, the issue is more problematic. Larger media companies are already pre-selling their hit shows across most markets before launch, but the ability to control sales of content on a country by country basis is at the heart of television distribution, and a rapid change to that system would surely leave many smaller entities – whose content is more likely to sell gradually from one territory to another – in an extremely vulnerable state.

Even so, since it is clearly something consumers prefer, this may be a change that is inevitable, sooner or later.