Europe needs to come together
I was just reading a news article about the (already ridiculous) ban of liquids on board aircrafts. Today that ban is five years old and the European Commission is now relaxing that ban. Say you fly from San Francisco to Belgium. If you’re like me and fly Star Alliance chances are that you fly to either Frankfurt or Munich first. With the current ban I could not buy any liquids in San Francisco because I would not be allowed to take it on the connecting flight to Belgium. By relaxing this ban this would now be possible.
That’s great, right? Well.. Yes… If it weren’t for the fact that some European countries have already decided to maintain the existing rules. If you have a connecting flight in France, the UK or yes… Belgium you won’t be allowed to take the liquids you bought abroad on board. If you fly to Germany or The Netherlands it won’t be a problem.
It saddens me that Europe can’t seem to agree on the simplest things and can’t seem to agree on one European wide set of rules.
Now let’s apply this to technology. Some of my US colleagues were actually surprised when they heard that Europe doesn’t have something like Netflix or Hulu. Heck… the majority of Europe doesn’t even have movie purchases/rentals on iTunes. Why is that? Simple… Because there is no one European copyright law. If someone like Netflix would like to start operations in Europe they’d have to negotiate copyrights in every single country. You already see this happening with Spotify for instance. Spotify is only available in 7 European countries. iTunes movies are only available in 2 or 3 countries. And we only have copyright laws to blame.
Europe needs to come together in order to not get left behind…
Update: And yes… (Thanks Cyril for reminding me) we’re not even talking about things like European roaming rates, VAT, etc…
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Totally agree – there is a lot to be done but few efforts are made in fact :-(
What about European flat rate for mobile? Access to any European TV channel anywhere in Europe? VAT? etc…
Absolutely agree. Though it is getting a little better. My new mobile contract with Telekom for example includes 120 minutes to any european number. Osts a fortune, but at least there is light at the end of the tunnel. Especially in Germany the big names such as Telekom always keep the better stuff hidden from the public as long as possible, to charge money for the old crap. I remember the timex when I was on C64 and my dutch friends already used cable modem where I was on 2400 baud (but only because I had a RS232 interface for connecting a better modem). And still nothing changed. I am happy that I already can use a 16.000 DSL connection where I live. But where is the high speed connections? Where is the european phone flatrates (at least for the “old”, wired phones)?
So: Yes, Erope has to get together and change A LOT, to compete. And to grow.
Europe is ok. It is slow in some issues. But to be slow is not always bad. Not to buy movies from ITunes, to take alcohol in your plane or to recieve american tv channels is something I pesonally have no problems with. The diversity of Europe adds to its character. To have the whole world the same would be flat and frustrating. Sorry guys, but live is and should be complex.
I in agreement with martin. Lets embrace diversity. Homogenizing Europe would make it a much duller place.
I think this there is also a language problem behind this. You can’t have something like Hulu working well in Europe because a lot of people prefer to watch movies in a language different than English. Dubbing films is expensive so you end up with smaller, unefficient markets. In a way that’s the price of diversity.
Sorry Serge,
totally disagree. You wrote ‘Because there is no one European copyright law.’ , meaning there should be ONE copyright law for all European coutries, right? Like America hat it (for the USA, Canada, Mexiko, Costa Rica, …). Wooow, you compare ONE single country (USA) with a continent including countries like France, Italy, Germany, Spain, … each of them quite big, and each of them well developed.
I really understand how much you hate it that some things don’t work as in the USA. But hey, why can’t I pay with Euro in New York? Or speak French in L.A.? Or count distances in kilometers?
Come and visit Europe (not only the airports and the Brussels office), and see why Europe is so unique…there must be a reason ;-)
Regarding hulu.com: if you have 30 channels on TV, and 28 of them are free-TV channels with excellent films, you don’t need something like hulu.com…
@ Marc: I do have a flatrate, since years. I do have a flatrate for my cell phone (quite cheap). Where exactly in Europe are you living?
@Jorg: The US is also a continent… And the comparison between Europe and the US is a valid one. The US has states like California, Texas, New York… That’s very much like our European “states” or countries. You talk about big countries like France and Germany while France is almost just as big as Texas and Germany almost as big as California.
You may have a flatrate but what happens when you cross the border?
Oh… And just for the record: I was born, raised and still live in Belgium. I know very well how Europe works.