Geo-Blocking of Online Audiovisual Content Services

Abstract

Geo-blocking, which basically refers to the practice of preventing customers from accessing websites or content of the website, has become widespread in the European Union. More particularly, the most affected sector by it is the audiovisual sector. Against this background, EU consumers have not been sitting idly by. They have expressed their dissatisfaction with geoblocking by contending that it erects virtual barriers where there should be none. Others have eased their frustrations by falling back on VPNs to circumvent these obstacles. By contrast, the stakeholders of the audiovisual industry – especially European players in the audiovisual market – have intensively lobbied against a geo-blocking ban. Their main argument is that artificially partitioning the Internet landscape through geo-blocking is indispensable to preserve the principle of copyright territoriality upon which their current business model is founded. Elimination of geo-blocking would adversely affect content production and subsequently decrease consumer’s welfare. Hence, the redline of this Master’s thesis is this war of words on the geo-blocking issue. Put it differently, it investigates how cross-border access to online audiovisual content services could be secured without harming the incentives of the audiovisual industry to produce and distribute content. To answer this question, this research has been conducted as following. Firstly, it outlined the inadequacy of the legal framework prior to the adoption of the 2015 Digital Single Market Strategy to deal with the issue. Indeed, the legal framework does little to nothing to address geo-blocking per se and/or to tackle the underlying reasons for the use of it. Secondly, it observed that the Geo-blocking Regulation which entered into force in 2018 does not alter the status quo since audiovisual services are expressly left outside the scope of it. Lastly, out of the presumption that the traditional copyright-territorialitybased business model of the audiovisual industry will inevitably have to adapt to the new paradigm in the way audiovisual content is consumed and distributed, this Master’s thesis answers the research question by advocating for a threefold approach towards the geo-blocking issue. In other words, this contribution defends that an elimination of geo-blocking in the EU (and thus allowing cross-border access to online audiovisual content services) without harming the incentives of the audiovisual industry to produce and distribute content will only be feasible if the European Union adopts an incremental, cross-sectoral and proactive approach.