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Comment by GeekyBear | Hacker News Reader

I am reminded of the EU push against DRM encumbered music nearly two decades ago.

> Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

https://macdailynews.com/2007/02/06/apple_ceo_steve_jobs_pos...

My question is, "where does the requirement that content be licensed in only one country" contractually originate?

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> My question is, "where does the requirement that content be licensed in only one country" contractually originate?

From the Vivendis and EMIs who want to sell the same song to Britons at a higher price than the Romanians will pay.

It's not like countries aren't in on the action, too. Mandatory notices, censorship laws, et cetera vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

I guess the solution is the same as it was two decades ago for music.

Force the rights holders to only sell their digital content DRM-free.

> Force the rights holders to only sell their digital content DRM-free

You'd also have to convince the EU governments to normalise their content regulations. Good luck with that.

Isn't regulatory harmonization (one of) the points of the EU?

That won’t be an issue once the law has been adopted by the EU parliament.

That's not how the EU works. If whatever is passed is an EU regulation, it will be immediately harmonized across all member states the date it goes into effect, as the regulation is law by itself. If it is a directive, each member state will have to pass their own law that follows what is laid out in that directive, but it is not optional, so there is no convincing involved.

The only convincing that needs to happen is for all the EU Council members (head of government of each member state) to vote for the regulation/directive, and the majority of the EU parliament members to vote for it.

> My question is, "where does the requirement that content be licensed in only one country" contractually originate?

Typically between the original rightsholder and distributors.

Let's say you're an american film maker and you make a film. You'll need a distribution company, and that company will want exclusive rights to distribute. But, the best US distributors might not do a good job overseas, so maybe you can give them US/CA rights and find a different distributor in Europe. Now, in Europe, you probably need a different distributor for UK/IE vs contintental Europe where they'll need to handle subtitling and whatnots.

This is needed to get films into cinemas. But the distributors are also involved with films on disc and films on streaming services. And the territorialism follows there too.

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