The European Union has ordered Apple to cease geo-blocking practices on its services, including the App Store, Apple Arcade, Music, iTunes Store, Books, and Podcasts. The EU Commission identified several instances where Apple restricted content based on a user’s location, which is considered a violation of EU consumer protection laws.
The EU has given Apple a one-month deadline to propose solutions to address the identified geo-blocking practices. Failure to comply could result in enforcement actions by national regulators.
Reuters:
“We are stepping up the fight against geo-blocking. No company, big or small, should unjustly discriminate customers based on their nationality, place of residence or place of establishment,” said European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
The EU said Apple had one month to propose commitments on it would address the geo-blocking it had identified.
MacDailyNews Take: And what about contracts and content usage rights?
Apple needs to play a bit harder ball with the EU. Start pulling content and features and, this time, follow through – clearly identifying the Eurocrats as the issue (run some ads, even) – until the people the EU bureaucrats purport to represent begin to exert pressure on these red tape-spewing politicians to get a clue.
The European Union arose because the Europeans couldn’t compete on their own with the rest of the world, so they each lined up to surrender their national sovereignty, unique cultures, and dignity for an undemocratic, opaque, wasteful, bloated, bureaucratic quasi-governmental blob – and, even with the EU’s thumbs all over the scale, they still can’t compete. — MacDailyNews, March 4, 2024
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
Screw the EU.
IF Apple can justify geoblocking (think national or regional laws, or a phased roll out due to slowly rolling out native language implementations) then it should push back very hard against the EU trying to force zero geoblocking. (Note: some countries and regions require implementations in the native/regional language to be done by state recognized, licensed translators, which can add months to any implementation.)
However, if Apple cannot properly justify geoblocking, and it’s done purely for business purposes and for no other reason, then Apple needs to stop geoblocking within the EU.
Movies used to have regions that would only play in the correct hardware, US and European BluRay players for example.
EU doesn’t complain about that for some reason.
Plus, state funded programming can’t be played in other countries, such as some BBC shows. The EU never complained about that, either.
Geo blocking because Apple bows to authoritarian regimes should never be allowed. Let Apple pull out of China, etc. if they keep censoring their citizens. Instead of weighing money vs the right thing to do, Apple should always choose the latter. In the long run, it’ll last longer.
I mostly agree with MacDailyNews about the EU forcing Apple to change things. But here I agree with the EU’s point of view.
You see, I’ve lived and worked in France for many years, but I mostly work in English. I also speak and read in a third EU language privately. But Apple doesn’t let me use their own Book Store or App Store in another EU country. I can only move to another country if everything moves with me (like my credit card, address, and subscriptions).
In Apple’s French Book Store, there are non-French books available, but only a very limited selection. So, I’d be thrilled if Apple allowed me to spend my money in their own non-French EU stores.