Re:EU Paramount/Sky ruling may end geoblocking within Europe
by skoczymroczny on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @09:28AM
(#12165418)
Unfortunately, ending geoblocking also means ending regional pricing :/
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Re:EU Paramount/Sky ruling may end geoblocking within Europe
by pjc50 on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @10:24AM
(#12165808)
Well, yes. That's what "single market" means. The EU has gone to great trouble to get rid of physical customs barriers and is not going to like people erecting virtual ones instead.
Re:EU Paramount/Sky ruling may end geoblocking within Europe
by lagadu on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @10:05AM
(#12165669)
Why? They can still charge different amounts based on the country of the card that's making a purchase. Spotify is an example of this.
Re:EU Paramount/Sky ruling may end geoblocking within Europe
by tankenmate on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @10:08AM
(#12165688)
Sure, but it also means that people can use a card from a different country to buy the much cheaper version to watch at home.
Re:EU Paramount/Sky ruling may end geoblocking within Europe
by lagadu on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @10:35AM
(#12165875)
Yes, in fact I do that myself. But a credit/debit card from a different country requires that you have or have had in the past residence there, generally speaking and once you have addresses in multiple countries there's very little that can be done to control that.
Re:EU Paramount/Sky ruling may end geoblocking within Europe
by robert_foss on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @09:39AM
(#12165497)
Which to me is a good thing.
Re:EU Paramount/Sky ruling may end geoblocking within Europe
by icebraining on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @10:09AM
(#12165693)
How so? Sounds irrelevant for rich countries and terrible for poorer ones.
Re:EU Paramount/Sky ruling may end geoblocking within Europe
by CaptSpify on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @11:05AM
(#12166137)
Your assuming pricing will be based on the rich-country market. I think that will be true at first, but people in poorer countries now have the option to pay if they value the content/platform. They can also continue to pirate until companies pull their head out of their asses.
I personally think it's a good thing, because it simplifies and moves it to a global-economy model. You are probably right that poorer countries will suffer in the short term.
Re:EU Paramount/Sky ruling may end geoblocking within Europe
by icebraining on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @12:07PM
(#12166597)
Frankly, I just don't see why would they ever charge a lower price. If they can get 25€/head from a population of 80M Germans, why lose more than half of that to get the 10M Portuguese?
A global economy sounds good, but the problem is that media content is not like most products in the sense that there's no real competition; each studio has a monopoly on its films. Coupled with high wage disparities inside the EU (e.g. minimum wage in Germany: 1470€, Bulgaria: 184€), it simply doesn't work like a regular market.
Re:EU Paramount/Sky ruling may end geoblocking within Europe
by CaptSpify on Tuesday July 26, 2016 @12:13PM
(#12166644)
Because people will eventually start to get it for the lower price. The global economy isn't some far off concept, it's already here, we just haven't adjusted our economic model to fit with that fact yet. Digital goods aren't like physical goods where you need to charge more because of local pricing, we've just arbitrarily made it that way. Eventually it will even out.