Speaking at a music industry event, Andrus Ansip, the European Commission's Vice President for the Digital Single Market, said European copyright law is "pushing people to steal." Geo-blocking of media makes it more difficult for people to access movies and music legally, which leaves piracy as a simpler, more direct method of obtaining these items.
Mr. Ansip pointed to Spotify as an example of providing a needed legal service for accessing music. He says, "if somebody is able to provide services with better quality, with higher speed, people prefer to act as honest people; they are ready to pay, they don't want to steal."
There have been some success stories in Europe regarding the reduction of piracy. Norway has gone from 80% of music downloaders using "free" sources, to only 4% today. But the primary cause for this reduction was easier legal access, not stronger copyright or draconian measures dealt to individuals who download from free sources. A similar result can be had for movie downloads according to Ansip, when legal access to those movies becomes more widely available. At the moment, 68% of film viewers download from questionable sources, and "to put 68% of people in jail is not really a good idea."
One of the problems facing the European Commission's efforts to create a single market across the region is the inability of people to have access to purchased media from different countries within Europe. Ansip stated, "I'm not against territoriality, I'm against absolute territorial exclusivity. We have to allow portability of the content. There are 100 million Europeans sitting at home who would like to get access to digital content in some other EU member states but they cannot, because of geo-blocking."
You can read more on the story at TorrentFreak.
