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Ars Technica is reporting on new regulations to limit region-based restrictions in the European Union:
At the heart of the European Union lies the Single Market—the possibility for people to buy and sell goods and services anywhere in the EU. So it is ironic that the European sector least constrained by geography—the digital market—is also the least unified. To remedy that situation, the European Commission has announced its Digital Single Market Strategy, which addresses three main areas.
The first is "Better access for consumers and businesses to digital goods and services" and includes two of the thorniest issues: geo-blocking and copyright. As the EU's strategy notes, "too many Europeans cannot use online services that are available in other EU countries, often without any justification; or they are re-routed to a local store with different prices. Such discrimination cannot exist in a Single Market."
There is strong resistance to removing geo-blocking, particularly from copyright companies that have traditionally sold rights on a national basis and which therefore want geo-blocking to enforce that fragmentation. The Pirate Party Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Julia Reda, quoted a fellow MEP justifying geo-blocking as follows: "I can’t buy Finnish bread in any German supermarket or bakery. Far too few people here would buy it, so the market doesn't offer it to me. And you don’t see me demanding that the European Commission bloody-well make that product available to me."
Julia Reda responded to those who defend geo-blocking by actually buying Finnish bread online without incident or issue.
The European Union's Digital Single Market Strategy covers several other areas, including Telecom/network investment and management, copyright reform, and future goals for a single EU digital market.
As an American, it's hard to believe government could possibly work on behalf of voters, so let's see if this initiative can make it into law. But it is an enticing idea.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday March 28 2015, @10:57PM
Now one might say that to buy from a Finnish bakery, I must physically go to Finland. But what if the bakery took mail orders? Would the bakery be allowed to deny sending me the Finnish bread just because I'm ordering from Germany?
Well from TFS, it looks like it's quite possible to order Finnish bread over the internet. This is one of the great things about the internet after all: it's easy for small sellers of weird niche products to set up a small website and sell their wares to people all over the world. There probably isn't much of a market for Finnish bread in Germany or Spain or the US, not nearly enough to get grocery stores to import it from Finland. However, there's probably enough people in those countries interested in Finnish bread (and willing to pay the shipping costs due to its uniqueness) that it's worth it for some Finnish bread sellers to put up a website and ship Finnish bread to those places. Now, replace "Finnish bread" with any other obscure product, and the same holds true.
And no, why would the bread seller care where his buyers are located, as long as it's not any extra trouble to sell to them? He doesn't care if they're in Germany or Zimbabwe, as long as the postal service will deliver there. I don't think there's anything wrong with the bakery refusing to ship to certain places; there's a fair number of sellers who refuse to ship to Italy, for instance, because Italian Post has a terrible reputation for "losing" packages. But if the seller doesn't mind, and the buyer is willing to pay the shipping charges, why not? However, some people would like to restrict this; not for bakers, but for things involving copyright.
(Score: 4, Informative) by NoMaster on Sunday March 29 2015, @01:10AM
Because he's making more from selling the exclusive right to manufacture & sell his "Finnish Bread" - which may in fact be an inferior "international" or "localised" version of the original product - elsewhere to various 3rd parties, than he would by direct sales?
Well, that's the thing - sometimes the seller does mind, for reasons that have nothing to do with practical reasons and everything to do with artificially restricting access.
In "digital markets", the Popular Science website is a good example. In many regions the publisher has licenced the name & only some of the content to local operators, and uses geoblocking / geo-redirection to protect that. More often than not, the local content is not the same as that on the 'parent' site - often it's simply heavily abbreviated, sometimes the abbreviated content is reduced even further to insert a paragraph or two of local colour/relevance while keeping the same length, frequently it's not available at all for a month or two after the original article on the parent site and/or expires within a month or two of local publication. And many times articles from the parent site - even in an abbreviated, butchered, time limited version - are never published at all.
Remember that the next time you post a link to popsci.com - chances are it's going to be useless to anyone outside of your own geographical region...
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Sunday March 29 2015, @05:39AM
"there's a fair number of sellers who refuse to ship to Italy, for instance, because Italian Post has a terrible reputation for "losing" packages."
I can see why I have sent one package to Italy in my life over two months getting to the buyer, the one sent at the same time to Thailand about three weeks.
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