New rules to allow TV and digital services to travel with you in EU

Plans to let you use your Netflix, Sky or TV subscription when travelling abroad to watch your favourite programmes have been unveiled by the European Commission.

However, it will not create the digital single market many consumers hoped for because there are no proposals to let you shop around the EU for the cheapest subscriptions.

The proposals met with differing reactions. Sky and Netflix welcomed them but said they were studying the details, while independent film producers fear they will be squeezed out.

But the commission said this is a major step in opening up a huge EU market that will become a reality in 2017 and they expect it will have the same success as the ban on mobile phone roaming charges that ends in 2017.

Andrus Ansip, vice-president for the digital single market, said: “People who legally buy content — films, books, football matches, TV series — must be able to carry it with them anywhere in Europe. This is a real change, similar to what we did to end roaming charges.”

About 40% of Irish people pay to view films and series by subscribing to an online service or purchasing and renting them one by one while more than half consider that being able to travel with the films, music or e-books they pay for is very important.

The package also includes better protection for consumers buying goods online anywhere in the EU that is also aimed at helping increase internet sales for business.

Copyright, especially who should receive royalties when content is online has been a complex and vexed issue for years and the Commission proposes updating the rules to take account of a new digital age.

Researchers using “text data and mining technologies” as well as teachers who give classes online should find their lives easier while the current situation that bans people from uploading photos of buildings and public art works is to be changed.

The commission is also to see how creators of online work can benefit from a copyright payment, but say this will not include taxing anybody who simply shares a hyperlink. However, they intend to follow the money to prevent illegal downloading and fight piracy.

The European Parliament’s Green Party found the proposals lacking ambition and failing to do what is required. It said people such as migrants with minority languages or cultures will not be able to access TV from their original countries.

On copyright they point out the proposals will not allow libraries the right to lend ebooks or protect content that belongs to the public to falling under copyright again when it is digitised.

MEP Julia Reda, who drew up the Euroepan Parliament’s report on copyright reform, warned that the proposals on data mining might make the matter worse.

“The right to datamine content should follow automatically from the right to access such content, not be an additional privilege restricted to ‘public interest research organisations’.”