EU Commisioner Wants to Abolish Geoblocking

Geoblocking of content is still one of the biggest issues when it comes to obtaining your media legally. You want to pay for it, but you’re not allowed to and everyone loses out.

Europe’s Vice-President for the Digital Single Market, Andrus Ansip, thinks so too and calls it discrimination rather than an issue of marketing. If people want to pay for content, they should be able to regardless where they live.

“In the offline world, this would be called discrimination. In the online world, it happens every day,” Ansip said. “I want to pay – but I am not allowed to. I lose out, they lose out.”

Geblocking is used by almost all big streaming sites from the BBC iPlayer over Amazon Instant Video to YouTube and Netflix, a big problem for users and one of the most common reasons why people pirate software and media in the first place.

“How can this be a good thing? We put up with the situation because there is not much alternative. Now it is time to do something about it,” Ansip added. “There should be no exceptions. Everyone should be treated the same. This is a key principle that underpins everything we want to achieve.”

The EU is currently discussing how copyright legislation in Europe should be overhauled and Andrus Ansip hopes that measures against geoblocking will be part of the new rules, and so do I.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing us with this information

Image courtesy of cinecliq