“The EU’s internal market and geo-blocking cannot coexist,” said Andrus Ansip, the commissioner for a digital single market. Such a practice contradicts the EU’s objective of creating a modern single digital market without any borders, he added.

Geo-blocking is the practice of preventing users from accessing given websites, or media services including OTT TV, from certain locations, typically specified countries, but sometimes regions within countries. The EU will have a tough fight outlawing the practice, since it will have to overcome powerful vested interests, not least from broadcasters and content owners, which currently tend to negotiate rights on a country by country basis. The traditional pay TV model depends on geoblocking for its existence, in restricting access to paying subscribers in each country.

Ansip did concede that geoblocking was acceptable in upholding the law over certain forms of restricted content, such as gaming. “When for example in one country online gambling is prohibited, then geoblocking is absolutely acceptable,” said Ansip. But he said such restrictions should not be allowed for general content services including TV.

A similar line is taken by Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society Günther Oettinger, who said, “Europe cannot be at the forefront of the digital revolution with a patchwork of 28 different rules for telecommunications services, copyright, IT security and data protection.” Günther called for a single European market for online services just as there is for physical goods, allowing “new business models to flourish, start-ups to grow and the industry to take advantage of the internet of things.”

It is debatable though rather geoblocking does really restrict business models and start-ups and it could even be argued that the opposite is the case. The point is that, while Europe is a single market, it is culturally and linguistically far more diverse than say North America. Opponents of EU geoblocking point out that it generally does not happen within the USA, but then that is a single nation. Geoblocking most definitely does exist between the USA and Canada, exploited by Netflix among others, and yet both are in the North American Free Trade Area, which is somewhat comparable to the EU, albeit subject to far less regulation. There has not been much suggestion that geoblocking has restricted innovation and business growth across the two countries.

It actually makes sense in Europe to partition rights between countries in order to serve its cultural diversity and make it economically feasible for local content creators to address their own audiences without the cost of having to negotiate rights for the whole EU.

The EU proposals fail to acknowledge the workings of the audiovisual content industry, which is very regional and diverse. The single digital market proposals as currently framed threaten not just some larger vested interests but also the diversity of Europe’s local content industries. The EU has either not consulted properly with its content creators or has failed to listen in calling for a blanket ban on geoblocking. Unlike other parts of the world, the film and audiovisual industries in Europe rely on various complex mechanisms to finance production and optimize revenue. These mechanisms include release windows, tax incentives, public subsidies, co-production agreements, and not least the very territorial licensing that the EU seeks to outlaw.

It is true that users should be able to access content they subscribe to wherever they are, but that is not prohibited by geoblocking. What is required is the ability for users to carry their rights with them across Europe, but these rights should not be open to who have not paid for them. User mobility is already enabled under the EU’s IP legal framework, which permits cross-border licensing and access. So there is no need for immediate change and the EU should not rush headlong into measures that will merely serve to homogenize Europe’s diverse content market and work in favor of the big players.

Some argue that since geoblocking can often be circumvented, it is pointless. It is true that geoblocking can be bypassed by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). This can create a secure connection between a user’s device in a country where a service is geoblocked and a server located in another country where it is not. The user can then browse the internet from the remote server.

But VPN access is not that widespread. Opposing geoblocking on those grounds is like saying that because pay TV piracy is rife in say Latin America you might as well give all content away free there. What Europe actually needs is not false analogies but a sensitive approach to digital market evolution, which might end up removing geoblocking, just not for a while. The EU should remember that if you use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, there may not be much nut left.