Portability of digital content services. Christ that sounds like the most boring thing ever. Let me sexy that up a little bit. Going to be out of the country for the All Ireland Hurling final? No problem, you’ll be able to watch RTÉ Player in every European country from now on. I think that’s sexied it up a bit, right?
The EU Digital Single Market
The EU is all over online right now. Simply put, the EU has recognised that there’s a massive hunger for the people of Ireland to shop online in Germany, the people of Italy to shop online in Spain etc. Unfortunately, there are massive barriers to cross-border trade which the EU hopes to stamp out with the creation and encouragement of a Digital Single Market. Recently, PSD2 was announced which will go some way towards driving progress in this project along with more transparent international shipping charges.
Portability of Online Content Services
The next stage of the EU Digital Single Market is making your subscriptions from home work when you’re on the road. This portability of digital services initiative focus on Europeans subscribing to the likes of Netflix and SkyGo and making these more available when travelling. Providers of free services like RTÉ Player will have to option of opting into the agreement, but the mandatory inclusion would appear to be premium services only. So yeah, fingers crossed my All Ireland final example rings true. The important thing is that if you’re going on summer holidays in the EU this year you’ll be able to ignore your family just like you do at home; buried into an episode of Designated Survivor.
Any Setbacks?
Ok, so let’s take Netflix. Netflix Ireland and Netflix Germany have different catalogues of movies and TV shows. I’ll actually be in Germany when this new regulation lands but I’ll still only be able to access the content that’s available to me when I’m in Ireland. I don’t necessarily get access to the local catalogue of the area I’m visiting.
The regulation does only provide international access to your home subscriptions for a temporary period of time, but they don’t specify what a temporary period of time is.
The regulation comes into force on April 1st and the EU has stated it seems that all service providers are on track to deliver access to there platforms when travelling from launch day.