Wouldn't making EU single market and getting rid of geoblocking pretty much remove regional pricing? The piracy then would surge even more, because in Eastern Europe you can't expect people to spent 10% of their salary on a new videogame.

> Wouldn't making EU single market and getting rid of geoblocking pretty much remove regional pricing

Yes, it would. That's the whole point of the Euro currency and the long-term goal of the EU.

And that's the main reason a lot of people thought the quick expansion of the EU towards the east (or even the south) was a mistake - if you have a common market and a common travel area, but wildly differing economies, you create strife.

Well then they should just give everyone the cheap price. I don't see why Hollywood is entitled to x% of my salary. If it means they have to spend a few mllion dollars less on advertising Captain America 4 or Star Wars 8 or Fast and Furious 8 then so be it.

Or you could just not watch those movies. Hollywood is not entitled to your money in the same way that you are not entitled to free or or "cheap" access to their products.

Be that as it may, a consequence of piracy is that Hollywood is forced to the bargaining table. Protesting against that feeling of entitlement to better prices is a common theme on HN, but it ignores the (current) reality that if someone wants to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster for free, there is nothing to stop them from doing so.

I don't see why you are entitled to a cheap price.

> If it means they have to spend a few mllion dollars less on advertising Captain America 4 or Star Wars 8 or Fast and Furious 8 then so be it.

It's not like they have "spend money on advertising" as a terminal value. They spend money on advertising because advertising makes money.

If that were true, everyone would be using the cheaper spotify prices some countries have in Europe, which almost doesn't happen.

The problem is that they require a payment method from a country by having residence there, that alone prevents abuse in the overwhelming majority of situations.

For the record, I am one of those cases (technically I'm a resident in three countries, potentially 4 next year), so I'm pretty much aware of the details of it.

>The EU is working on it, it just moves at the speed of bureaucracy

I would guess the speed is more limited by 27 governments having to agree on everything.

While I think that's part of it, I also don't think that the movie and record studios are really pushing for a reform either.

The largest studios could, in theory, go to the EU with a proposal for how they would like a single market for movies and music to work. They won't because they like the ability to have differentiated prices. Having to sell a movie in Sweden for the same price as in Slovenia translates directly to lost profit. Selling in Slovenia at Swedish prices results in lower sales figures and more piracy. So I doubt the big players are all that interested in help the EU on this one.

Getting 27 countries to agree on something sounds like bureaucracy nightmare to me :)

So, I just looked up the word "bureaucracy" in a dictionary and it says "a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.". I always thought that was what a technocracy was.

The secondary definition is "excessively complicated administrative procedure, seen as characteristic of bureaucracy" which is the only usage I can remember seeing.

Technocracy is more about "experts make the décisions"

You seem to have a very bad dictionary.

Bureaucracy comes from the French word "bureau", that means office. It names the way things are organized in an office, and was created for private offices, only adopted for governments later.

I'll forward your opinion to the Oxford Dictionary of English

The French "bureaucratie" was coined in the 18th century by French economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay, from French "bureau" (office/desk) + Greek "-kratia" (power of), as a criticism of how government over-regulation can stunt commerce.

It came into English in the early 19th century, carrying a similarly negative connotation. The connotations have shifted back and forth somewhat since then.

Still, it seems that it's never been primarily used to talk about private offices in English or French; the primary use has always referred to governments.

The EU also has more languages than the US. Even if it was legally a single market, that wouldn't make it a single market culturally.

Agreed, but making things available and advertising them are different things. You can hold off advertising them until you have a dubbing or subtitle available, but people who want to watch it anyway can go ahead and find it with a direct search. In several EU countries, a majority of the population is already English-fluent (or can get by with English subtitles), and those realities aren't reflected by the market.

Yes, but that doesn't prevent you from just publishing it in english, initially at least.

Right, and the countries with the smallest populations are more likely to have a majority population not needing subtitles.