Search
Search
Published: April 2, 2018 | Source: Europa.eu | Author: Mark Campbell

The EU’s Digital Single Market is now in place

The EU's Digital Single Market is now in place

The EU’s Digital Single Market is now in place

Services like Netflix and Twitch Prime present problems for those who travel the world, offering services which vastly differ from nation to nation. Geo-restrictions exist because licences for the distribution of digital content are often limited to specific countries, making companies like Netflix unable to create a unified global service. 

To tackle the issue of “Geo-Blocking” within the EU, the European Union has created their “Regulation on the portability of online content services”. These rules will allow premium content providers to offer users the films, sports broadcasts and music that are available from their home nation while they travel or temporarily stay in other EU countries.  

The European Digital Single Market will allow users of services like Netflix and Amazon Prime to view the content that is available from their home nation to watch everything that is available in their home state and the country they are visiting, allowing them to finish watching shows and movies that are only available in their home country. Combine this with the abolition of roaming charges within the EU and travellers/holidaymakers should be extremely happy. 
 

    The aim of the Regulation on the portability of online content services that enters into force on 1 April, in all EU Member States, is to ensure that Europeans who buy or subscribe to films, sports broadcasts, music, e-books and games in their home Member State are able to access this content when they travel or stay temporarily in another EU country.

Providers of online content services will also benefit from the new rules. They will be able to provide cross-border portability of online content to their subscribers without having to acquire licences for other territories where the subscribers stay temporarily.

  

The EU's Digital Single Market is now in place

 
The EU has stated that 29 million consumers will make use of this service in 2018, with an estimated 72 million making use of it by 2020. The UK will not be benefitting from these changes after Brexit since these rules/regulation will only apply to EU member states. 

While these rules are far from creating a unified European Region for digital content distribution, the European Digital Single Market will allow users of digital services to access the same content as they can at home while travelling across the continent. This will be a very useful feature moving forward. 

You can join the discussion on the EU’s Digital Single Market on the OC3D Forums. 

Latest News