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

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Seccedonien said:

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.

But "why"

 

You'd think if everyone was offered the cheapest price they sell the service or product (software and digital downloads cost exactly ZERO, there's no localization or adaption going on, they are the exact same product and service) at, and if they can't make money on that, then they should just set it at the level they do, and if countries like China, India and most of the African continent can't afford it, that is not the service providers problem, that is the country's poverty and/or corruption that is the problem.

 

If all prices were equal, there would upward pressure on wages in impoverished countries to reach the same quality of life. Streaming Netflix is not a necessity. It's a Luxury. Thus if they are subsidizing it for an impoverished country, that is doing nothing to encourage those countries to raise their standard of living, since people outside the country will be incentivized to buy "their service" in that country anyway.

 

And if you want to see an egregious version of this, in both Canada and the United States often hide prices for things behind zip/postal codes. These offerings are not materially different in any part of the country except perhaps Hawaii and Alaska, and even then that is due to geographical exceptions to the rule (eg streaming to/from Hawaii logically involves internet routes on par with streaming to Asia, rather than continental US) the actual service is identical.

 

On the EU, I can't speak for people who live there, but if you have a netflix subscription in ... I don't know, Lithuania and you then decide to go live in Italy for 9 months, the price you paid should not change just because you crossed the border. What are they going to do when you go back? credit you back if you paid a year in advance? No. They're just going to say "oh you already paid for 9 months, too bad."

 

Realistically, there are maybe 3 or 4 different price tiers that should exist, and they should reflect the service offering, rather than where.

 

All services, 4Kp60 HDR, any number of screens and devices*

Basic offering: Only domestically produced content, so for every country other than the US, this would be a discount to the US version since most content on Netflix is US-produced. For US content this would include captions/subtitles in all languages that Netflix distributes it to (eg English, Spanish, French for North America.) The logical reason being that Basic service includes content that was licensed to netflix at local price offerings.

Basic+: Includes all content from all regions, so if this means non-US countries go from playing 6.99 to 16.99, I guess that's just gonna be it.

Travel: Same as Basic, but enables watching outside your home

Travel+: Enables watching the content outside your home (eg while you're on the bus/train, in any country)

 

Most people will not need Travel/Travel+. It would be there to discourage sharing* the account primarily.

 

*If google can do this, anyone can. Just paying to release the IP address lock.

 

Pretty much it's hard to justify distinguishing the service by quality, number of screens because what you're in effect saying is "pay for the lowest tier offering and then go pirate the highest quality version when you watch it on something other than a smartphone.

[HenrySalayne]

On 12/13/2023 at 2:27 AM, Kisai said:

But "why"

 

You'd think if everyone was offered the cheapest price they sell the service or product (software and digital downloads cost exactly ZERO, there's no localization or adaption going on, they are the exact same product and service) at, and if they can't make money on that, then they should just set it at the level they do, and if countries like China, India and most of the African continent can't afford it, that is not the service providers problem, that is the country's poverty and/or corruption that is the problem.

 

If all prices were equal, there would upward pressure on wages in impoverished countries to reach the same quality of life. Streaming Netflix is not a necessity. It's a Luxury. Thus if they are subsidizing it for an impoverished country, that is doing nothing to encourage those countries to raise their standard of living, since people outside the country will be incentivized to buy "their service" in that country anyway.

 

And if you want to see an egregious version of this, in both Canada and the United States often hide prices for things behind zip/postal codes. These offerings are not materially different in any part of the country except perhaps Hawaii and Alaska, and even then that is due to geographical exceptions to the rule (eg streaming to/from Hawaii logically involves internet routes on par with streaming to Asia, rather than continental US) the actual service is identical.

 

On the EU, I can't speak for people who live there, but if you have a netflix subscription in ... I don't know, Lithuania and you then decide to go live in Italy for 9 months, the price you paid should not change just because you crossed the border. What are they going to do when you go back? credit you back if you paid a year in advance? No. They're just going to say "oh you already paid for 9 months, too bad."

I think there is some misconception here. The EU doesn't want to remove regional "catalogues" but access limitations. A German Netflix subscriber won't have the same catalogue as a Spanish Netflix subscriber. However, a Spanish person living / working / traveling to Germany would be finally able to access the Spanish catalogue from Germany.

It is immensely frustrating that you can lose access to your paid subscription just because you crossed a border.

Different prices for different regions still make sense since the catalogue and the licensing costs are different.

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Different prices for different regions still make sense since the catalogue and the licensing costs are different.

But they shouldn't. There shouldn't be a different middleman for the same content in every country. Those middlemen are legacy media "content rights owners" who don't actually own that media, they serve no purpose except to protect the money they skim off the true copyright owner. 

 

[HenrySalayne]

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

But they shouldn't. There shouldn't be a different middleman for the same content in every country. Those middlemen are legacy media "content rights owners" who don't actually own that media, they serve no purpose except to protect the money they skim off the true copyright owner.

You may find the catalogue of country A contains 2600 titles while the catalogue of country B only contains 700 titles. This is mostly related to language differences. The German (90 million) speaking community has fewer localized or native titles available than the English speaking community (380 million) but more than the Czech language community (10 million).

 

[Stahlmann]

Even if that would mean the cost of licensing is reduced I don't really think this would be handed down to the consumer. They'll make more money keeping the difference than they would make by "doing the right thing" even if that would probably bring in some more subscriptions and a bit of good will.

 

Streaming really is going down the drain. Netflix has gotten too expensive to justify the cost without account sharing, which isn't allowed anymore. Amazon Prime Video forces ads down your throat even though you're on a paid service. All the other services are as expensive as Netflix while offering less content i'm interested in. That leaves me with exactly zero good options. And i'm not gonna pay for 3-5 different services to cover all the different shows i'd like to watch.

 

The only content streaming platform i still pay for is YT Premium. The fact that YT music is included makes it well worth it for me. I don't need Spotify for music streaming anymore and that makes YT Premium just 3 € a month more expensive while offering an ad-free experience on my most used video streaming service and a "good enough" music streaming platform.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

On 12/15/2023 at 8:18 AM, HenrySalayne said:

It is immensely frustrating that you can lose access to your paid subscription just because you crossed a border.

This shit still frustrates the crap out of me. In the past couple of years I moved continents twice and live in different country than most of my subscriptions are from.

Like 50% of the time I have to fiddle with VPNs to watch either German or US amazon Prime, gave up on Netflix because of this BS and had to fight Disney to accept the fact that I moved continents when my credit card information expired: couldn't change my credit card to a local one because US account bla bla, couldn't use my new US one because I was in the wrong "location" bla bla. Just wanted them to shut up and take my money, but no... this shite.

[Seccedonien]

There was an update on this matter.

Quote

More assessment is needed, MEPs say, on the potential impact extending the rules would have on the audio-visual sector. They also advocate for a realistic timeframe so the audio-visual sector can adapt and ensure the preservation of cultural diversity and content quality.

The report was adopted with 376 votes in favour, 111 against and 107 abstentions.

It basically seems to come down to they want to modernize the system but the MEP's also seem to have listened to the rights holders FUD and thus decided this needs to be looked in to more (and most likely will wait till the next report in 2025) as they still want to do the right thing for the consumers.