Day: 16 November 2015

Removing Restrictions to e-Commerce. Territorial restrictions and geo-blocking: goods and services (official)

There are two common types of market practices and territorial restrictions which differentiate between consumers within the Internal Market: geo-blocking, i.e. simple refusal to sell or automatic re-routing and geo-filtering, i.e. unjustified diversifying of sale conditions. These practices are commonly based on the location of the consumer, which is for instance determined by means of the IP address used by the consumer, the country which is registered for the customer’s means of payment or the postal or delivery address indicated by the consumer. Companies tend to apply geo-blocking for three reasons: (a) compliance with legislation, (b) contractual arrangements, and (c) unilateral commercial decisions.

The essence of private copying levy is compensation to right holders for copies made by private persons. As long as it is impossible to prohibit copying (reproduction) of phonograms and audiovisual works by private persons and in practice there is no opportunity to collect private levy personally from each natural person. Therefore such remuneration is to be paid by manufacturers and importers of equipment and mediums capable of copying (players, personal computers, phones, compact disks, tape recorders). In its turn, in order to reimburse paid remuneration, importers and manufacturers include paid levy in selling price and eventually customers, when buy equipment and mediums capable of copying, pay indirectly this private copying levy and compensate harm incurred by right holders from private copying.