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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: 4, Informative) by fritsd on Sunday March 29 2015, @10:09AM
In the summary, phoenix666 wrote: "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."
It's not that black and white, weren't there two US representatives that wanted to repeal the PATRIOT law this week, and I remember a mr. Kuchinich tried to impeach president George W. Bush for the Iraq War (I was surprised that it didn't actually succeed).
But the comment got me thinking to how and why things work a bit better in the EU. Now I'm no politician so take the following with a grain of salt please.
The Europarliament is democratically elected. It has a power equivalent to the European Commission and the Council of Europe (that's the collection of ministers of Foreign Affairs).
What does it mean that the Europarliament is democratically elected?
Ms. Julia Reda is from the Piraten Partei. That means only Germans were allowed to vote for her in the last europarl elections. And very few did (1 out of 96). Germany is the largest country of the EU and has the most seats (96 out of 751). So it would seem the German Piraten have 1 voice in 751. But I don't think that's how it works:
On a transnational level, most of the political parties have built connections with each other. This resulted in seven different transnational political groups, and a lot of far right parties that didn't want to join together with other far right parties because "they're bloody foreigners".
The Piraten Partei Deutschland has joined the political group of The Greens/EFA [greens-efa.eu] in the parliament, one of the smaller blocs, and one that itself is composed of two orthogonal groups: the Greens (environmentalists) and the EFA, European Free Alliance, who want more independence for regions (think Scotland, Catalunya etc.).
This means that their voice is "amplified" by the representation of the Greens/EFA in the influential committees, *as long as* Julia Reda doesn't say anything "piraty" that pisses off her anti-nuclear or Catalunyan-independence colleagues.
And the Greens/EFA has very interesting politicians like José Bové [greens-efa.eu] (yeah, THAT guy) and Ska Keller [greens-efa.eu] (TTIP watch out!).
Julia Reda may only be one single dot in the drawing of the seats [wikipedia.org] but with respect to copyright policy she has the support of the whole green slice (50 seats, 6.7%)
This was all a bit long and rambling, but the crux is: a group that represents 6.7% of the 500 million Europeans *has a voice*, as opposed to the US where your two-party system means I don't even know how to find out how many people voted for the Greens or Pirates in the Senate or House of Representatives (0?). Whereas surely problems like the clean-up of the Hanford site [wikipedia.org] should be at the top of the list in American politics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2015, @10:52PM
It's not that black and white, weren't there two US representatives that wanted to repeal the PATRIOT law this week
Go back to when the Unpatriotic Act was first being voted on. Look how many of them voted for it. Almost every single one of them, yes? Why is it that right after a disaster, nearly all of them will happily vote for laws which violate our fundamental liberties, but then as the general public stops being more unintelligent than usual (it's always unintelligent, but more so when emotions are high), you see more and more of them come out against it? Because all they care about is getting voted for. They don't care about the constitution. They don't care about our liberties. They have no principles at all. They'll happily violate the constitution and people's fundamental liberties if the voters let them.
And even now, there's almost zero chance that such a thing will succeed, as the Unpatriotic Act keeps being renewed. Don't let this blatant publicity act fool you. I support repealing the Unpatriotic Act, but I'm not naive enough to get my hopes up about this succeeding or about the intentions of these politicians.
and I remember a mr. Kuchinich tried to impeach president George W. Bush for the Iraq War (I was surprised that it didn't actually succeed).
If you were surprised by that result, you understood nothing.
But the comment got me thinking to how and why things work a bit better in the EU.
It works a bit better in certain areas.