14 DAY TRIAL // Good news for Europeans who are utterly annoyed for not being able to watch various videos that have been geographically blocked. The new European commissioner for Digital Single Market, Andrus Ansip, says he’ll work to abolish geo-blocking of media in Europe.
“We shouldn’t have to put up with it. I don’t think it is fair,” Ansip said about the fact that people are blocked from watching or listening to things based on their location.
He also touched a few other important topics, such as mobile Internet speeds. More specifically, Ansip urged telcos to start pushing out high speed mobile broadband. “In some countries almost 90 per cent of the territory is covered by 4G LTE, in some other countries it is zero! They haven’t even started allocating that spectrum. Once again I think we have to talk about vested interests,” the Commissioner said.
Ansip talked about net neutrality, something that the European Union has already ordered throughout Europe. While nations may have a few more years before they’ll have to actually abide by the new rules, the order has been issued and voting should commence in the months to come.
“All the traffic in the Internet has to be treated equally. Nobody has the right to abuse a dominant or gatekeeper position. For some SMEs, it is impossible to gain visibility on search engines. Higher speed for higher price is acceptable but not at the expense of those whose speed is already low,” the Commissioner said.
The Right to Be Forgotten was also on the table
Another issue discussed by Ansip was the controversial “right to be forgotten,” which he considers to be good for democracy. He did mention, however, that this has to stay as an exception, without going into details about what he meant exactly by that.
Up until now, Google has been buried in requests made under this new European rule and has been arguing that while it respects some people’s right to keep their privacy and to have the Internet forget about various things in their life, it affects other’s right to know.
Since the European ruling only covers localized versions of Google, people accessing Google.com can find the uncensored search results, something that has irked many. The company refuses to force the measure on all its sites as well as to block people from accessing versions of its site from other countries than their own.
Google has been holding meetings across Europe regarding the right to be forgotten and hopes to get European authorities to hand out a more acceptable ruling.