YouTube Premium thread SEE OP

Umm is the reward not getting cheap youtube premium?

Getting free youtube premium and €48 euro per year is a different thing and as dulpit said the sort of thing that would get you called out as being against the whole ethos of boards and bargain alerts previously.

Managed to re-sign up under India using iTunes giftcards. €5 is a far cry from the €26 they charge us in Ireland!

But this is people paying Irish prices. So there is zero of that hassle.

Best browser out there.

Smart tube is great yeah, much better features than the (amazon fire) youtube app

I had accepted the price hike but still got booted.

Isn't the idea there more that if you are in the EU but outside your own country you can roam like at home? So if you have Irish Netflix and go to France, you'll still have Irish netflix, not French. Similarly, RTE player (should) work fine if you are in Spain on holiday. I don't think it's designed to allow people to use a service from a different country entirely in their own, especially when that service is also provided here too anyway.

Add a new currency account. Click Accounts > Add New >Currency Account > Polish.

Then select that currency in card settings.

I find this issue of accessing YT Premium through by-passing geo-restrictions in the EU interesting BUT I am not a legal expert and I am open to correction on anything below.

TLDR: While the EU's Geo-blocking Regulation generally promotes the acceptance of cross-border EU payment methods, its specific exclusion of services like YouTube Premium means that YouTube can legitimately refuse a payment if it indicates that the user is trying to bypass their geo-restrictions on content access, even if the payment method itself is from another EU country.

Heres the longer version for those who want the details. You may want to get a tea/coffee first.

Straight-up, to do so is a clear violation of YT T&Cs (through misrepresenting where one resides). This is clear and unambiguous.

But doing this entirely within the EU is interesting from a legal view point.

It would seem that the EU's Geo-blocking Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2018/302) generally prohibits unjustified geo-blocking and discrimination against consumers based on nationality or place of residence within the EU. This means a service provider cannot, for example, prevent you from buying a physical good from another EU country's website or re-route you without consent.

BUT there seems to be a significant exception to this.

The Geo-blocking Regulation doesn't apply to electronically supplied services whose primary feature is to provide access to copyrighted content, such as audiovisual services (streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, Spotify), e-books, and online games.

This is due to the complexities of copyright licensing, which is generally based on territories. Content providers and the platforms that license content from them acquire rights for specific territories. Forcing them to provide content across all EU countries regardless of their licenses would undermine their business models and the rights of content creators.

This means that YT is legally allowed to implement geo-restrictions for its YT Premium service in order to to comply with its licensing agreements.

So once again, circumventing these restrictions, even within the EU, places you in violation of their justifiable terms.

Google use the payment system to detect discrepancies between your subscription country and country of residence. This is where it gets a bit nuanced. The EU Geo-blocking Regulation aims to prevent unjustified geo-blocking and discrimination. A key part of this regulation is that traders cannot discriminate against consumers based on their payment method's country of origin if:

• The payment is made by electronic transaction (credit transfer, direct debit, or card-based payment).
• Authentication requirements are fulfilled.
• The payment is in a currency the trader accepts.

However, there are crucial exceptions and caveats in relation to services like YT Premium. As I mentioned before, YouTube is legally allowed to implement geo-restrictions for its content.

While the Regulation prohibits discrimination on payment methods for covered services, it doesn't force a service provider to allow access to a geo-restricted service itself. So if YT Premium is legitimately geo-blocked in Poland (due to licensing), they don't have to accept an Irish payment method if that payment method signals you're not genuinely in Poland.

My view would be that it appears that YT are not discriminating against the payment method itself, but rather enforcing the geo-restriction on the service.

The spirit of the Geo-blocking Regulation is to prevent traders from refusing a sale arbitrarily based on location or payment method for goods or non-copyrighted services. For example, an Polish e-commerce site can't refuse to sell a pair of shoes to an Irish customer using a Irish credit card. But for streaming services, the "justification" for blocking would seem to be the underlying copyright licence.

The legal problem for the consumer is primarily the breach of contract with YT, not a direct violation of broader EU laws related to payment discrimination, given the specific exemption for audiovisual content.

The potential consequences as a direct result of the breach of YTs T&Cs are account suspension and a loss of Premium features.