EU Parliament Approves Cross-Border Online Paid Content

By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch

The European Parliament today adopted the Portability Regulation by a margin of 586 to 34 votes with 6 abstentions. The new EU regulation will allow the cross-border use of online paid content which so far was hampered by geoblocking. Users now can access their Netflix, Sky Go or similar subscription services when roaming in the EU. But the regulation will not really end geoblocking, warned the minority opposed to the regulation, as Pirate Party Member Julia Reda.

Reda and members from the Green and Left Party groups criticized the new regulation for focusing on paid services only. Non-commercial video streams or public broadcasting organisations content will remain geoblocked.

Broadcasters will need to distinguish between their own content and third party content in their programs and also between live-streams and archived content in order to decide what can be unblocked.

Smaller content providers will be deterred from allowing for the cross-border access as they have to ensure that the access will only be “temporary”, NGOs warned. For this they have to implement burdensome checks of a user‘s home address to ensure she or he does not take advantage of the cross-border access to save money due to price differences. The personal data check for cross-border access also is seen as problematic with regard to data protection standards. The limitation of geoblocking remains therefore rather limited.

An alliance of politicians and small industry representatives and organizations in a press release called on the parliament to take additional, bolder steps to end geoblocking. http://ots.de/IXOGI