Hildegard Schneider and Saskia Marks - European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation Euregio Meuse-Rhine EGTC, BE-NL-DE
In the course of the II call for proposals of the initiative b-solutions, the Euregio Meuse-Rhine EGTC submitted the Advice Case “Stop geo-blocking! Overcoming discrimination and developing intercultural competences by providing access to online content across borders” showing how the practice of blocking audio-visual contents upon geographical location poses limits to the acquisition of language skills and prevents bi/multilingualism in the territory of the German-Speaking Community of Belgium.
After an in-depth analysis of the case, Hildegard Schneider and Saskia Marks - the experts contracted by the Association of the European Border Regions - consider the geo-blocking a direct consequence of the existence of territorial copyright licenses which are still strictly connected to the national boundaries.
Their proposals to overcome the issue are:
- drawing the attention of German competent authorities in order to obtain a transpositions of a new European Directive regulating copyrights that would take into account the position of the German-Speaking Community of Belgium, allowing them to access online audio-visual contents of North Rhine-Westphalia,
- the purchase by the German-speaking Community of Belgium of a copyright license allowing the online retransmissions of relevant content of the North Rhine-Westphalian television on the other side of the border.
To know more about the full analysis carried out by Hildegard Schneider and Saskia Marks access the final report here.
The information here provided have been developed in the framework of b-solutions, an initiative of the European Comission’s DG REGIO managed by the Association of the European Border Regions (AEBR).
The reports here included are the result of a consultation provided by legal/cross-border cooperation experts on obstacles of a legal or administrative nature– referred to as Advice Cases - selected in the framework of the II Call for Porposal of the initiative b-solutions.