EU Digital Single Market

Dave..M

Didn't know where to put this so relocate as required but finally something interesting from the EU's open digital market iniative. Hopefully more studios follow suit and this ultimately serves to increase choice here by eliminating geo blocking once and for all (for certain content at least). A long and winding road yet to get to that goal but positive first steps, who knows.


http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/25/paramount-agrees-to-offer-sky-uk-content-across-europe/

Johnboy1951

Interesting ...... I wonder what this might do to the cost to the customer.
Will there be different charges depending on the customer locale?

Dave..M

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Interesting ...... I wonder what this might do to the cost to the customer.
Will there be different charges depending on the customer locale?

On the face of it this alone will do little as it just seems to allow SKY to market those movies elsewhere which (other than Germany & Italy where they have a presence) they are highly unlikely to with just Paramount. Eventually if more studios follow suit other providers could market to us though of course there is a chance that a status quo occurs where these providers have the ability to market elsewhere but just don't bother although SKY are never one to shy away from revenue generation and are uniquely well situated to capitalise if the opportunity presents itself. Even if content isn't geo locked can a provider still refuse to sign up a person based on location?

icdg

As I understood it, the EU had backed down on plans for a true single market, and instead were looking at ways that citizens permanently resident in a particular country could access services from their home country while temporarily abroad. For example, a British citizen temporarily visiting Ireland could access BBC iPlayer but Irish residents wouldn't be able to. This wouldn't eliminate geoblocking but would change its nature.

However, if geoblocking (hypothetically) were to be completely removed within the EU a number of consequences might flow. Rights holders would inevitably have to change how they sell their rights. It might be that they would move to selling on a language by language basis, so that companies would have exclusive rights in a particular language rather than territory. It might also be that they'll move to pan-European sales. In the latter I would expect that only the likes of Sky, CanalPlus, Liberty Global and Discovery would be able to purchase rights from major US studios. It would probably mean the end of this type of programming, as well as sports, on PSBs, and I'd expect commercial stations to either move towards pan-European alliances and/or be taken over by pan-European companies as a result.

bk

icdg wrote: »

It might be that they would move to selling on a language by language basis, so that companies would have exclusive rights in a particular language rather than territory.

Well if you think about it, the market has already been largely moving that way over the last few years anyway.

Sky, C4 and Discovery have been dong it for years, buying Irish rights to all the UK content they buy and it looks like Netflix does the same and ITV will likely do the same now that they own UTV.

If the EU actually did this, then we could benefit from cheaper prices by buying UK services, rather then more expensive Irish ones.

icdg

Plans announced today, despite RTE's totally misleading headline there has been a complete exclusion for TV content from the EU's plans for a digital single market. There will be (later in the year) plans unveiled to allow users to temporarily access content from their home country while abroad, but no end to geoblocking in general.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36301660/eu-netflix-roaming-deal-means-you-can-watch-subscriptions-while-abroad

Dave..M

icdg wrote: »

Plans announced today, despite RTE's totally misleading headline there has been a complete exclusion for TV content from the EU's plans for a digital single market. There will be (later in the year) plans unveiled to allow users to temporarily access content from their home country while abroad, but no end to geoblocking in general.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36301660/eu-netflix-roaming-deal-means-you-can-watch-subscriptions-while-abroad

Yup, rather than confront the not inconsiderable complexities of the issue they completely side stepped it, a bit of a cop out if not unexpected.