Arbitrary barriers to accessing hardware media content are nothing new. DVD and video game aficionados are well-aware of region lockouts, which are software or hardware “safeguards” that prevent media outside the player’s region from being enjoyed by the consumer. In short, you can’t play North American PS2 games on a European PS2, and if you plan on importing foreign DVDs to play on your North American player, you’ll likely encounter problems.
Naturally, issues with artificial region compatibility have extended to the Internet. For example, the online radio service Pandora is available in the United States, but not Canada or most other countries on Earth. Likewise with Hulu and even a wide variety of YouTube videos. Of interest to this blog is the inability of some countries, even in Europe, to access the iTunes store.
Why does this happen? The answer is more complex than you might think. In virtually any music industry deal, geography is always a factor; more often than not, this favors the artist (content creator) as it enables them to work with an American entity to market and distribute their music in that territory, and, for example, a Japanese entity for business operations there. Of course, the consumer can sometimes be hurt from this simply because an artist in one country might not necessarily work with any entity in another country, leaving a gaping hole in distribution for that area.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the only issue. While most countries have signed on to international agreements and treaties with regards to intellectual property (such as the Berne Convention), copyright laws and royalty systems for each country can vary wildly. Apple and the contributing labels to the iTunes store might reach an agreement with the United Kingdom, but they must deal with an entirely separate set of entities and laws in, say, Spain.
A new mandate by the European Commission is set to cut through some of these barriers through sheer legal force:
“The two clauses that the EU has struck down are a membership requirement that prevents music authors from moving to another collection society, and territorial restrictions that prevent a collecting society from offering licenses to commercial users outside of their domestic territories. Under the current system, music stores must establish individual storefronts for each individual country due to licensing restrictions, a policy that recently brought Apple and the Big Four labels under fire from the EU due to country-specific song pricing and the lack of EU-wide offerings.”
A collection society, in case you’re unfamiliar, is a government-created or government-endorsed entity with the highly exclusive ability to collect and distribute money on behalf of composers and performers in a given country. In the United States, there are three collection societies, better known as performing rights organizations: ASCAP, BMI and SESAC.
Unfortunately, collection societies in Europe have made international licensing difficult, mainly because of their monopolistic position. Hopefully, the dissolution of two major artificial restrictions will help the situation and push the world a little closer to an internationally-available library of music.
iTunes still not available in some EU countries. Here’s why [Ars Technica]
