geo-blocking
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Valve fails to get out of paying its EU geo-blocking fine
Valve has failed to convince a court that it didn't infringe EU law by geo-blocking activation keys, according to a new ruling.
EU charges Valve and five publishers with geo-blocking games
Two years after the EU began investigating whether Valve uses regional pricing and geo-blocking practices in its Steam store, the European Commission has formally charged the distributor and five game publishers. The Commission released its "preliminary view" that Valve, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax prevented consumers from purchasing videogames cross-border from some Member States. That's considered geo-blocking, and it violates EU competition rules.
Europeans will get 'portable' streaming libraries next year
The European Union is supposed to be a big, borderless family of member states, but this concept is far from true in the online world. For several years, EU regulators have been working towards a "Digital Single Market" with the aim of breaking down some of the regional barriers. One success story is free mobile roaming across the EU, which comes into force this summer, and now various European bodies have agreed upon new rules that'll put an end to the geo-blocking of various online services like Netflix.
EU aims to remove regional restrictions on digital goods by 2017
Being an EU citizen means you can grab your passport, head to the airport and travel freely among the 28 EU member states. When you arrive at your final destination, however, and fire up Netflix in your hotel room, you'll find a local content catalog that may not include your favorite show. The same level of localization is true for many digital goods and services, which is why the European Commission wants to create a "Digital Single Market" to rid the EU of geo-blocking and encourage a more connected Europe online. The Commission gave a vague outline of its Digital Single Market strategy back in March, but today its released a detailed proposal of what it intends to do by the end of next year to make it happen.
Australians urged to 'lawfully evade' unfair prices on digital goods
After going through a year-long rigmarole of summonses and interrogations to find out why Australians are being overcharged by as much as 66 percent on digitally-distributed Apple, Microsoft and Adobe products, and how the practice of "geo-blocking" prevents customers from seeking fairer prices elsewhere, an Australian parliamentary committee has finally hit on a solution. In the words of committee chairman Nick Champion, speaking to ABC News: "What we want to do is make sure that consumers are aware of the extent to which geo-blocking applies to them and the extent to which they can lawfully evade [it]." Now, if you were hoping that the Australian government would somehow force these companies to drop their prices down to US-equivalent levels, then this quote may admittedly sound a bit weak. It might also seem impractical, since geo-blocking is designed to be difficult to evade, by binding a customer's IP address, credit card or other details to their home market. Then again, things start to make more sense when we factor in the committee's other suggestions. In particular, it proposes that the country's Copyright Act be amended to make it clear that an Australian won't be prosecuted just because they annoyed a multinational tech company by circumventing its geographic restrictions -- and, indeed, the population as a whole should be taught "tools and techniques" to achieve this wherever possible. The committee even recommends that Australians should have a "right of resale," such that they could legally remove locks on digital content that limits it to one user or one ecosystem. We have no idea how seriously the government will take these ideas, or how quickly it may implement them, but the committee's defiant tone makes for some good reading at the source link.
