The European Union debates removal of regional limits on digital goods
The European Union debates removal of regional limits on digital goods
It seems the European Commission is outlining a new strategy to better cross-border e-commerce so that consumers and businesses within the European Union (EU) have better access to digital goods and services.
Their new strategy – the Digital Single Market – looks to tackle geo-blocking, modernize copyright laws, and simplify VAT arrangements between countries to make it easier for businesses to engage in cross-border activities. Essentially, you should be able to access the same items from whichever seller wherever you are in the EU under the Digital Single Market, and to just pay the one price.
By pushing forth with the Digital Single Market, EU officials hope to encourage investment in infrastructure and improve co-operation between member states. This would help deal with spectrum management issues which would in turn increase the speed of rolling out technologies like 4G across the EU.
The Commission also hopes to implement standards across the EU to ensure interoperability of new technologies between countries, and to allow them to make full use of Big data that is becoming more and more available thanks to the growing data economy.
As Ars Technica notes, many of these directives will be fiercely lobbied against, as companies seek to retain the regulations that favor their interests and business models. And, as much as an open digital economy would make a lot more sense in terms of sharing of information, the regulations and policing of all this data will definitely take a lot more time to work out.
We certainly think it would make a logical progression for the digital market of the EU to follow their physical one in being open within the union, but the question will be whether individual businesses and organizations can look past current business models and adapt to embrace a large target market while still being able to retain their profits.
Sources: European Commision, Engadget, Ars Technica