EU Mulls Expansion of Geo-Blocking ‘Bans’ to Video Streaming Platforms

[Seccedonien]

The EU is looking at it's current laws about geo-blocking and might want to apply them to audiovisual material as well so consumers all over the EU have access to the same content on a Netflix or Disney+ subscription which sounds like a huge win for everyone. But of course the rights holders seem to think otherwise:

 

Quote

Geo-blocking is one of the foundations for Europe’s creative and cultural sectors, providing Europeans with the means to create, produce, showcase, publish, distribute and finance diverse, high-quality and affordable content, banning geo-blocking altogether would be a disaster that puts millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of euros in revenue at risk, CW warns. At the same time, it may result in more expensive subscriptions for many consumers.

 

This idea from the EU could absolutely work so consumers are not as tempted to pirate things (also making policing it less work lowing the costs for all parties involved since it doesn't have to be setup for every single country) and yet the rights holders are crying about it because they can't milk the consumer as much as they can currently and thus threaten to up the subscription prices for everyone if this gets passed. Am I getting this right?

 

https://torrentfreak.com/eu-mulls-expansion-of-geo-blocking-bans-to-video-streaming-platforms-231206/

[Niqesse]

Didn't read the article but the argument that geo-blocking "provid[es] Europeans with the means to create, produce, showcase, publish, distribute and finance diverse, high-quality and affordable content" sounds like bs. Wouldn't abolishing geo-blocking enable film-makers to broadcast to a broader audience?
And worrying about the diversity of productions seems like a straw-man. US-Media, especially Hollywood, have a huge influence on european media as well, and local TV Stations are still producing films and series appealing to local preferences.

Don't know a thing about setting up the IT-infastructure or copywriting for geo-blocking so idk if there are actually jobs at risk. But most of the quote sounds like bs. As a European myself I'd love to get around geo-blocking without a VPN

[Donut417]

27 minutes ago, Seccedonien said:

and yet the rights holders are crying about it because they can't milk the consumer as much as they can currently and thus threaten to up the subscription prices for everyone if this gets passed. Am I getting this right?

The rights holders will get their money by any means necessary. If that means jacking up the price of content they will do so. Thus streaming providers will have to jack up their prices. If they cant do that then Im sure some content might not be available in the EU going forward. 

[Seccedonien]

1 minute ago, Donut417 said:

The rights holders will get their money by any means necessary. If that means jacking up the price of content they will do so. Thus streaming providers will have to jack up their prices. If they cant do that then Im sure some content might not be available in the EU going forward. 

The thing is that many things already aren't available over here because every country has their own regulatory body they have to make a deal with for publishing it and also maintaining the copyright on those products. Especially in the smaller countries they can't really be bothered with it already. People are thus pirating it and to me making it easily available to everyone would result in a net positive. Ignoring a market with 450 million people sound like something they wouldn't do or else all those people will just go and pirate stuff and realize it is way easier and cheaper anyway.

[Donut417]

Just now, Seccedonien said:

The thing is that many things already aren't available over here because every country has their own regulatory body they have to make a deal with for publishing it and also maintaining the copyright on those products. Especially in the smaller countries they can't really be bothered with it already. People are thus pirating it and to me making it easily available to everyone would result in a net positive. Ignoring a market with 450 million people sound like something they wouldn't do or else all those people will just go and pirate stuff and realize it is way easier and cheaper anyway.

The issue is the streaming providers doesn't always own the content. If they have to license it the the rights holder holds all the cards. This has been an issue with broadcast TV and Cable companies in the US. The broadcasters will rake the cable companies over the coals for an increase. When these negotiations go back people loose channels and cry to their provider. Not understanding that they are going to be bent over the barrel later due to price increase they will have to pay. Streaming providers have to manage content they license with how much they can charge, or else bad shit happens.

[Sauron]

43 minutes ago, Seccedonien said:

At the same time, it may result in more expensive subscriptions for many consumers.

Don't fall for this. They're already charging you the maximum amount they feel they can get away with and will increase or decrease that amount based on sales figures, not on geofencing.

13 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

The rights holders will get their money by any means necessary. If that means jacking up the price of content they will do so. Thus streaming providers will have to jack up their prices. If they cant do that then Im sure some content might not be available in the EU going forward. 

See above.

[Kisai]

9 hours ago, Seccedonien said:

The EU is looking at it's current laws about geo-blocking and might want to apply them to audiovisual material as well so consumers all over the EU have access to the same content on a Netflix or Disney+ subscription which sounds like a huge win for everyone. But of course the rights holders seem to think otherwise:

 

I hope "geoblocking" as a means of price discrimination and burying content the country doesn't like goes away.

 

We saw movement against this as early as Australia banning parallel import restrictions. Because Australia is always a second or third tier market (US -> Canada -> UK -> Australia -> New Zealand -> South Africa) Things get released in the US, then they get released to Canada because otherwise Canadians will just import it anyway, then UK will get it, then Australia and New Zealand will get it, and then maybe South Africa, if at all.

 

Take a look at where your video game servers are, You know I'm right. US based games are all headquartered in Montreal (Ubisoft or Square Enix) or San Francisco/Los Angeles (Battle.net/WoW), or Seattle if it's Microsoft/Valve.

 

Which games have servers in Australia? Or Europe? At least at release? None, usually. Usually they will get an Europe server before Australia is even on the roadmap.

 

Anyway, game servers is just one example of geoblocking that's unfeasible in the long run. It's not that you can't play with your homies in Australia and Germany at the same time, it's that their ping time is insane to do so.

 

But Netflix, Youtube, Spotify, iTunes, etc, there has never been a legitimate excuse to prevent content from crossing borders. For every penny they fight about domestically they are leaving hundreds of dollars on the table from international audiences. But no, the rights holders would rather not lose their middle-man position to skim off the spread price between how much they licensed it from the copyright owner and how much they can shake down cable/television/youtube/netflix for.

 

This is why Netflix wants to own all it's own content, Disney owns all it's own content, etc. Basically everyone is re-inventing cable. Remember what the purpose of HBO, Cinemax, and AMC was? Cable channels that you paid a premium for. HBO just never was available out side the US, so if you wanted to watch HBO content, you had to pirate it, or acquire a grey-market satellite receiver.

 

HBO was the Netflix, on cable. Before Netflix was a thing.

 

Countries whine a fair amount (especially Canada) about wanting to protect their culture, but the reality is, you don't protect "Your culture" by subsidizing garbage content to fill up the space you're denying to foreign content. People will seek "good content" regardless of who made it, and where. So regardless if you want it to exist or not, the foreign content will get here, and having tariffs from the government, or middlemen rights-owner mandated markups on foreign content just drives people to pirate it.

 

Just look at Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. You'd think that HBO and AMC would have got it into their heads that they should simulcast it globally, because people are just gonna pirate it anyway. Again, leaving dollars on the table to chase pennies domestically.

 

[RejZoR]

I never understood geoblocking, particularly in streaming apps, but especially where you pay specifically for something. It really annoyed me when I wanted to BUY a song from some specific artist because I randomly heard it and liked it and wanted to support the artist and I got rejected from most major services, to a point where I was like "do you guys even want my money or not?". Then I went on Soulseek and downloaded the song "for free". In other instance I had to find some obscure music service that sold me same song that all others refused. Like, I unsubsrcribed from Netflix and resorted back to piracy literally because of this. I pay same prices as Americans, yet I get literally 1/4 of all content because I live in a "wrong" region.

 

I don't care what arrangements are behind the scenes, that isn't and never should be a consumer's problem. I'm waving around with a wallet, ready to pay for a product and they don't want my money. What am I as consumer suppose to believe at this point?

[Quackers101]

F*** the prices anyways, as they will increase the price no matter what.

See netflix and ad subscriptions? as netflix is not longer just shows/movies, but also want to waste your subscription on things you dont want like games. So if they dont want to be like cable TV, Streaming packs/selections or so, while encouraging piracy all around, having some common ground would be nice.

Looking at hulu in the US, while europe has 10's of places that might hold only 1/3rd of the show on various platforms and some is just blocked. Again encouraging piracy.

Also seen with the removal of shows on these streaming platforms or with Sony's removal of paid shows, in how the value is overpriced over the "ownership/license" to the users than what the good old CD/DVD's did.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Quackers101

[Kisai]

18 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

F*** the prices anyways, as they will increase the price no matter what.

See netflix and ad subscriptions? as netflix is not longer just shows/movies, but also want to waste your subscription on things you dont want like games. So if they dont want to be like cable TV, Streaming packs/selections or so, while encouraging piracy all around, having some common ground would be nice.

Looking at hulu in the US, while europe has 10's of places that might hold only 1/3rd of the show on various platforms and some is just blocked. Again encouraging piracy.

Also seen with the removal of shows on these streaming platforms or with Sony's removal of paid shows, in how the value is overpriced over the "ownership/license" to the users than what the good old CD/DVD's did.

Any time these content holders removes content from their platform, the pirates are more than happy to go "here you go!", in both cases the the people at the bottom here (the people who worked on the film/music) don't get paid, but who's to blame here? Yes, the content network because it would rather spend millions on licencing old overpriced television shows exclusively like Friends, than having a large choice of content to attract people to their network.

 

To Netflix's (and pretty much ONLY Netflix's) credit, at least they are bringing in foreign content, so there is plenty of cool stuff to see, if you're willing to fish for it. However I think of stupid channels like "Hallmark" who basically put all their eggs into one show, or Paramount who basically has just three shows people subscribe to watch, and then ejects one of them, and ends another. This is not how you do things. Look at the shows Hallmark has aired, pretty much everything is 20 years old. Nobody chooses to subscribe to watch old syndicated content.

 

Nobody wants to watch unscripted (reality) content on a streaming platform. It's filler. It's stuff you turn on, when you eat lunch or knit a sweater.

 

Basically if I were to put money on the "who wins the streaming wars" it's going to be Netflix, Disney+, and everyone else has to also put their stuff on Youtube if they want to be relevant. 

 

[darknessblade]

SOO those "rightholders" who want to milk every penny out of you, do not want to release content that they aren't releasing at all in the EU region?

 

This is nothing but good news for the consumer.

-------------

Why rightholders do not want to release certain content in EU/other regions still baffles me.

Like you know if people want to watch it they will just pirate it if they cannot get it legally.

 

Anime is a great example for this.

roughly 90% of all anime ever made, is something you cannot watch legally, 

Like the Original Astroboy. its almost nowhere online to watch legally, (Yes you can buy a old VHS for 100X the original msrp), but this is still not a full legal way to watch it. since that VHS could just as well be a RIP of a real one.

Meaning the only way to watch it in good quality would be trough Piracy sites.

Which is something rightholders do not like.

Yet they still do not want to release older shows for people to watch, even though they have all the Original negatives, and audio files stored in a warehouse.

 

The demand is there, but right-holders seem to not understand that people can't just jump into Episode 2134 from a show that has been on the air since 1978, because that is the earliest episode they have put online, with episode 1-2133 only being viewable trough Piracy sites or a 100+ VHS tapes you bought individually trough ebay.

 

 

Another great example would be Sony removing shows you legally bought from your account because the "Contract" with the right holders expired.

They cannot just take the show/series from you since you legally bought them.

Do they really think that people will pay for 10 different services just to watch every episode of a series because 
Platform_1 has season 1-3 & 7-9

 

But to watch season 4-6 you need platform_2

 

 

 

[HenrySalayne]

On 12/7/2023 at 1:19 PM, Seccedonien said:

Geo-blocking is one of the foundations for Europe’s creative and cultural sectors, providing Europeans with the means to create, produce, showcase, publish, distribute and finance diverse, high-quality and affordable content, banning geo-blocking altogether would be a disaster that puts millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of euros in revenue at risk, CW warns. At the same time, it may result in more expensive subscriptions for many consumers.

This is probably the most stupid thing I read all day. The first part is pretty much "waah, we wouldn't be able to extract as much money as before", while the second part is "consumers would have to pay more". What is it? It's either one or the other but not both.

 

[HenrySalayne]

1 hour ago, darknessblade said:

Like the Original Astroboy. its almost nowhere online to watch legally, (Yes you can buy a old VHS for 100X the original msrp), but this is still not a full legal way to watch it. since that VHS could just as well be a RIP of a real one.

Meaning the only way to watch it in good quality would be trough Piracy sites.

Which is something rightholders do not like.

Yet they still do not want to release older shows for people to watch, even though they have all the Original negatives, and audio files stored in a warehouse.

 

The demand is there, but right-holders seem to not understand that people can't just jump into Episode 2134 from a show that has been on the air since 1978, because that is the earliest episode they have put online, with episode 1-2133 only being viewable trough Piracy sites or a 100+ VHS tapes you bought individually trough ebay.

"The Mandalorian" became one of the most pirated titles, because Disney - in their infinite wisdom - launched a streaming service with an exclusive, highly anticipated TV show - but only in a few selected countries.

[Donut417]

11 hours ago, darknessblade said:

Do they really think that people will pay for 10 different services just to watch every episode of a series because 
Platform_1 has season 1-3 & 7-9

 

But to watch season 4-6 you need platform_2

To be honest, most wanted to have their own streaming service(s). But what they are figuring out is that assholes like me only sub when our shows are out. Once I run out of content on most streaming services I will cut that service until my shows come back. So maybe sub for a month or two for example. The issue is I think most of these services are not seeing the subscriber numbers they need to be successful, at least not enough at the price they charge which is why prices keep going up.

[Donut417]

10 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

"The Mandalorian" became one of the most pirated titles, because Disney - in their infinite wisdom - launched a streaming service with an exclusive, highly anticipated TV show - but only in a few selected countries.

I mean Id imagine there are regulations they have to follow to release services in different countries. Also not all countries have strict copy right protections. Nothing with teeth like the DMCA had back in the day. The reason I say back in the day is because for the most part you dont hear about any lawsuits. Very very very rarely does someone go to jail. I know several federal court cases have probably weaken the law.

 

The reason its an exclusive the Disney Plus is because they want you to subscribe. They dont distribute it thru other means because they dont want to get screw over for when the bring Disney Plus to a new region. I recall several movies Disney had to wait to put on their streaming service due to licensing issues.

[Seccedonien]

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

To be honest, most wanted to have their own streaming service(s). But what they are figuring out is that assholes like me only sub when our shows are out. Once I run out of content on most streaming services I will cut that service until my shows come back. So maybe sub for a month or two for example. The issue is I think most of these services are not seeing the subscriber numbers they need to be successful, at least not enough at the price they charge which is why prices keep going up.

 They wanted a bigger cut and because of the early success of Netflix they thought they could earn easy money by creating their own service instead of licensing it to 1 service everyone has a subscription for. Then they realized that running a service like that is not just expensive but also that users are not going to be subscribed to 6 different ones all year round something most of us did do when it was all on that single service. They got greedy and it didn't work out as they had hoped, that is all.

 

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

I mean Id imagine there are regulations they have to follow to release services in different countries. Also not all countries have strict copy right protections. Nothing with teeth like the DMCA had back in the day. The reason I say back in the day is because for the most part you dont hear about any lawsuits. Very very very rarely does someone go to jail. I know several federal court cases have probably weaken the law.

 

The reason its an exclusive the Disney Plus is because they want you to subscribe. They dont distribute it thru other means because they dont want to get screw over for when the bring Disney Plus to a new region. I recall several movies Disney had to wait to put on their streaming service due to licensing issues.

That is the thing tho, a rule change like the one the EU is looking at will open the way to even out the rules for all the countries in the EU making it easier to regulate and not have it so that every country has different rules. Also just fyi Germany has way stricter copyright laws then the US for example and people actually being taken to court (or the threat of that) was first done there. And you don't hear about many cases because they get settled before it ends up in court, it doesn't mean the laws don't do anything, quite the opposite.

 

Those licensing issues would never have existed if it wasn't for the current old system, they had deals with other parties for the distribution of their IP, that is their fault and none else as their own greed just backfired.

[HenrySalayne]

6 hours ago, Donut417 said:

I mean Id imagine there are regulations they have to follow to release services in different countries.

I fully understand why you wouldn't roll out a new streaming platform globally. But simply making it impossible for the majority of the world to watch it legally, doesn't help your business in any form. People could neither pay for Disney's own streaming service nor buy it on an 3rd party platform (like Amazon). What were they thinking? That millions of people just wait patiently for month or even years, dodging any spoiler until they finally roll Disney+ out in their country?

A major driving force for the illegal sharing of music in the 2000s was the lack of any legal way to aquire music online. When the platforms finally emerged, the file sharing problem solved itself.

[Beskamir]

Geoblocking is beyond stupid. Thankfully the internet has multiple solutions for that. Just by making those solutions legally okay, geoblocking would cease to exist. Companies have a choice to either directly encourage customers to not use their services at all, or to actively convince them that doing so is worth it.

 

Currently companies can hide behind their tos to claim that using a vpn or alternative means to bypass geoblocking is bad. Making it impossible for companies to hide behind their tos or government laws, would be the most effective way of killing off geoblocking overnight without there needing to be an actual ban on geoblocking content.

[Donut417]

5 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

What were they thinking? That millions of people just wait patiently for month or even years,

It has to deal with how licensing is done. They might loose out on being able to offer it on their platform when they roll it out to new regions. Like I said in a previous post they had several films they couldn't bring to the platform in the US due to agreements they have made, they had to wait for those agreements to expire. These kind of deals are for years and years.  

 

Also some countries do have piss poor copyright protections, so Id imagine that also goes in to where and how they distribute content. I cant say how many post I've seen on the forum of people asking to help them pirate to say "My country doesnt protect content". 

 

Dont get me wrong. I think the content owners are a bunch of douchebags. But it's their product and they have the only say in how it's sold. Their greed is what has killed cable TV. Their greed is likely what will kill many streaming services in up coming years. Piracy is reign forever. 

[Kisai]

8 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

 

A major driving force for the illegal sharing of music in the 2000s was the lack of any legal way to aquire music online. When the platforms finally emerged, the file sharing problem *mostly* solved itself.

Fixed for you.

 

In the pre-napster/pre-kazaa era people were just ripping their on cd's to 128kbit mp3's  or if they are -THAT- old, 64kbit MP2's (this is why "mp3 is associated with music, it's MPEG 1, Layer 3, not MPEG 3, because MP2 was Mpeg 1, Layer 2 audio. Somehow MP4 became "Quicktime but not called quicktime.")

 

Anyway, point I'm making there is that I knew a guy, who literately went to the local radio station, borrowed their for-radio-station-use-only licensed music collection, ripped everything and then gave the rips to them on a hard drive (if I'm remembering it correctly.) You know what else happened to those mp3's?  Yes. Napster. I'm not sure if he did it himself, but I know they did somehow get on napster. 

 

I think back on my life and I think finding someone who wasn't into some kind of piracy stuff, is the needle in a haystack. Everyone has either pirated with malice or pirated out of convenience something.  I've known software pirates, music pirates, movie pirates, console game pirates, satellite (big and little) pirates, (heck most of these are the same people.)

 

It's always ever boiled down to "can I?" or "I hate (company), I feel nothing but spite and no remorse for what I'm doing, and they won't notice." I've never known someone (other than the satellite pirates) to actually try and make money off of piracy.

 

To which the piracy of streaming networks content, is literately the latter, because these companies make it easy to just point at and go "So you make no money from me because you don't show it here, and you make no money because you don't sell it here, so therefor you will still make no money from me if Import it or steal it, either way." Which is not that different from the satellite piracy justification of "I didn't give you permission to send me your television shows, so if I descramble them myself, you won't notice anyway."

 

File sharing basically took ALL the big money out of piracy. The only pirates that "make money" still are those selling modified game consoles.

 

Streaming network piracy has been around since they started, and the networks probably underestimate how many people are willing to watch a crappy 480p quality version of a video on their second screen device (eg tablet/phone) just to avoid paying for the show, or the hassle of logging into something. 

 

[RejZoR]

13 hours ago, Donut417 said:

I mean Id imagine there are regulations they have to follow to release services in different countries. Also not all countries have strict copy right protections. Nothing with teeth like the DMCA had back in the day. The reason I say back in the day is because for the most part you dont hear about any lawsuits. Very very very rarely does someone go to jail. I know several federal court cases have probably weaken the law.

 

The reason its an exclusive the Disney Plus is because they want you to subscribe. They dont distribute it thru other means because they dont want to get screw over for when the bring Disney Plus to a new region. I recall several movies Disney had to wait to put on their streaming service due to licensing issues.

Then again, how is this our (customers) problem? It's a multibillion industry, if they can't lobby the right people and make means to distribute movies easier (and thus reach more customers), then just straight f**k them. It's been over 20 years since internet has existed in wider adoption and behaving like it's a new concept in 2023 is just beyond lame. Then again, music and movie industry has hardly changed over the decades. Beyond just adopting new delivery methods (mediums), they've done next to nothing and keep strubbornly insisting on archaic business models that just plain don't work. Like for example whole "cinemas and whole experience around it" nonsense. I haven't been to cinema for over 15 years because I just can't be bothered to go there for the "experience". I just want to watch a blockbuster of my choice when I chose to do so, preferably at home. Can't do it. All the streaming services are some half baked crap they shoved into the market just so they can tick the checkbox and please shareholders. Now they are all competing how to make them more overpriced and more crap. I'm just waiting when the bubble will burst as this just isn't sustainable. If they expect users to be subscribed to 10 services each with 10+ € monthly cost, they are hugely mistaken. I've tried them all and I'm not using any because they all stink.

[RejZoR]

27 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Fixed for you.

 

In the pre-napster/pre-kazaa era people were just ripping their on cd's to 128kbit mp3's  or if they are -THAT- old, 64kbit MP2's (this is why "mp3 is associated with music, it's MPEG 1, Layer 3, not MPEG 3, because MP2 was Mpeg 1, Layer 2 audio. Somehow MP4 became "Quicktime but not called quicktime.")

 

Anyway, point I'm making there is that I knew a guy, who literately went to the local radio station, borrowed their for-radio-station-use-only licensed music collection, ripped everything and then gave the rips to them on a hard drive (if I'm remembering it correctly.) You know what else happened to those mp3's?  Yes. Napster. I'm not sure if he did it himself, but I know they did somehow get on napster. 

 

I think back on my life and I think finding someone who wasn't into some kind of piracy stuff, is the needle in a haystack. Everyone has either pirated with malice or pirated out of convenience something.  I've known software pirates, music pirates, movie pirates, console game pirates, satellite (big and little) pirates, (heck most of these are the same people.)

 

It's always ever boiled down to "can I?" or "I hate (company), I feel nothing but spite and no remorse for what I'm doing, and they won't notice." I've never known someone (other than the satellite pirates) to actually try and make money off of piracy.

 

To which the piracy of streaming networks content, is literately the latter, because these companies make it easy to just point at and go "So you make no money from me because you don't show it here, and you make no money because you don't sell it here, so therefor you will still make no money from me if Import it or steal it, either way." Which is not that different from the satellite piracy justification of "I didn't give you permission to send me your television shows, so if I descramble them myself, you won't notice anyway."

 

File sharing basically took ALL the big money out of piracy. The only pirates that "make money" still are those selling modified game consoles.

 

Streaming network piracy has been around since they started, and the networks probably underestimate how many people are willing to watch a crappy 480p quality version of a video on their second screen device (eg tablet/phone) just to avoid paying for the show, or the hassle of logging into something. 

 

It's all about convenience/cost ratio. Streaming services were mostly so convenient people stopped pirating. Now that everything is so fragmented across streaming services because everyone wants stupid exclusivity of their own content, the convenience is disappearing. On top of that, ever raising prices are ruining that further. If this continues, eventually people will return to piracy. I can guarantee you that.

[Kisai]

39 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

It's all about convenience/cost ratio. Streaming services were mostly so convenient people stopped pirating. Now that everything is so fragmented across streaming services because everyone wants stupid exclusivity of their own content, the convenience is disappearing. On top of that, ever raising prices are ruining that further. If this continues, eventually people will return to piracy. I can guarantee you that.

Yep.

 

The only think holding "streaming piracy" in check right now is that systems like Discord, and various webcam model/porn sites have no contentID systems , so the piracy is literately going on in Discord and on adult sites, because they are gated from content holders visibility for the most part.  And that is STILL mostly music piracy. Every streamer I know seems to have a "watchparty" night where they watch something that someone else is streaming from their Netflix/crunchyroll/disney+/Amazon/Apple/etc account. People aren't subscribing to these streamers to watch TV, they just want to hang out like at a slumber party... with 10,000 friends.

 

Anyway, streamers know how to bypass the DRM on the streaming sites, and they were doing so long before discord started getting into it.

 

edit: for clarification, I'm talking about youtuber/twitch/kick/etc streamers streaming stuff from a "streaming platform" you have to pay for, on discord. Many aren't shy about just watching youtube on youtube/twitch if it's free to watch already.

[williamcll]

If everyone's charged the same everywhere then why is there a need for geoblocking? It's not like this is done for political reasons.

[Seccedonien]

14 hours ago, williamcll said:

If everyone's charged the same everywhere then why is there a need for geoblocking? It's not like this is done for political reasons.

Not every region is created equally so adjusting pricing to reflect what the general public can afford is fair I would say. But we are not talking about region based pricing in this case.