Yesterday, the traditionally highly conservative legal affairs committee voted to end geo-blocking of films and series in some limited contexts. It’s a tectonic shift from the previous position of the legal affairs committee, and comes ahead of today’s vote in the more progressive Internal Market & Consumer protection, where MEPs will call for a gradual abolition of geo-blocking.

  • @[email protected]English
    29•11 months ago

    Would be nice if they expanded it to all digital goods - to include music, for instance, and things like youtube videos (technically not films or series, as I’m sure somebody at google will point out).

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      8•11 months ago

      I tend to agree, what we (of course) hear from the industry is that this “would result in price hikes”.

      • @alvvaysonEnglish
        16•11 months ago

        Also agree.

        The price hikes happen anyway, so it’s not really a credible threat.

        Glad the EU seems to be mostly sane on these matters.

  • @[email protected]English
    23•11 months ago

    Does that mean we will finally get rid of that silly regional distributor nonsense left over from physical distribution that leads to different release dates and different versions being released in different countries?

    • @[email protected]English
      17•11 months ago

      But then people might be tempted to watch the original version instead of shitty dubs. Distributors might even start using subtitles in more countries! /s

  • Teon
    6•11 months ago

    [speaks in pirate voice] So they finally figured out that people can still watch/listen to geo-blocked media, but now they want money for it. LOL!

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      1•11 months ago

      So the crazy thing is the audiovisual lobbyists didn’t even want us to mention piracy. Like, we wanted to say that we need more legal avenues for access to content to reduce piracy, and they wouldn’t accept it.

  • KalashEnglish
    5•11 months ago

    Nice, that will save me a couple of clicks a day.

  • @[email protected]English
    3•11 months ago

    Great this is happening! Such an important and impactful resolution and the person from the xweet couldn’t stop herself from commenting everything with cringe gifs…