"Ever try to change your account's registered country? It's nigh impossible"

Rubbish. It's easy to change the registered country; I've done it several times moving across various European countries over the last 15 years.

The issue is not that it's difficult to re-register, it's that you can't take your content with you. That's a problem and potentially in conflict with EU rules, but it's a completely separate issue.

One could argue that it's easy to be in two places at once, it's just hard to be alive whilst doing so...

One could indeed. Or from Apple's perspective, you die in one country and are reincarnated in another - with all your memories intact, but no earthly possessions.

Sidenote: downvoted by 6 people (so far) who either:

(a) have no experience of re-registering IDs and believe it's some kind of mystical art;

(b) are somehow confused with creating a new account vs re-registering, or;

(c) believe I'm somehow defending Apple.

I'm not defending Apple here; in fact their dodgy practices have cost me quite a lot of money over the years rebuying content, so I think they're thoroughly in the wrong. I'm criticizing a poorly researched and inaccurate headline. By all means bash Apple, but do it for the right reasons.

Additional side note

A: re-buying content you've already bought just makes you a gullible fool.

This is the entire reason, no one should ever buy 'digital' content, it can be taken away from you at any point and some fools will simply buy it again.

"in fact their dodgy practices have cost me quite a lot of money over the years rebuying content, so I think they're thoroughly in the wrong"

And yet you keep rewarding their efforts by a direct monetary contribution every time it affects you to the world's most profitable company.

In a way, that is an Apple defense, whether you can see that or not.

Not if your name is Schrödinger's Cat

That's deleting the old account and making a new one.

No it's not.

If you can't take your content with you, what's the functional difference between delete/reregister, and move-country?

To me, the only real benefits are that you keep your Apple Family intact, and any smart functionality you have still works e.g. Apple Home. In my last transfer I somehow ended up keeping music credits on the account as well, but I don't think this is standard practice.

Last time I tried it, a couple of years ago admittedly, it wouldn't let me do it because I had an open subscription to Apple TV.

> the EC noted in its press release, prohibits discrimination based on nationality, residence, or place of establishment when a citizen of a member state wants to buy goods or services from a vendor located in a different member state.

Every bloody industry in the EU does this. It's endemic.

Ever had the 'Sorry we don't ship to [insert country X here]' message when trying to buy something?

It is common with US based sites (like this one perhaps??????)

As for CRAPPLE not wanting to transfer stuff from country A to country B, there is a danger of breaking local laws if the transfer something that is illegal in the destination. Then there is the issue of copyright and all that crap.

The whole thing is a minefield and we the users are trying to cross it in the dark. How the hell are we supposed to know what set of digital bits is illegal where we go travelling? Aren't there recommendations that travellers to the USofA take a clean phone/tablet/laptop with them just in case you fall foul of local laws, like Florida banning certain books and if they think (mistakenly) that you are trying to import an uncensored copy of 1984, Women in Love, Lady Chatterly etc etc etc, then they will throw you in jail and toss the key to the local alligator.

Personally, I hope Apple asks the EC for a clear guideline (aka lawyer proof) of what can be moved and what can't.

Because of copyright (out of Apple's control, in the majority of cases, they only have the rights to broadcast that movie/TV series in certain countries) not moving an Apple TV subscription, seems reasonable.

Come on EC, use this case to clarify the law. Then... throw the book at Apple (and the rest, like Netflix etc) and we will cheer.

Google seems only allows you to alter your country of account registration once per year, but you can have multiple accounts in different countries on one phone, which rapidly gets rather convoluted if you move around a bit but sort of works.

Apart from the need to establish a jurisdiction for your agreement - and the convenience of filtering out of your view all of the region-specific apps you're never going to want - the main reason for geographic specificity is enforcing the boundaries of rights-licensing territories. This is something the EU keeps blowing hot and cold about - they can't seem to decide if geoblocking is anti-competitive or vital to protect minority cultures. A more consistent view about where the single market rules apply might be easier to implement and enforce.

Personal pet peeve with Google accounts (ignoring all the other godawful stuff) is that you can't change your email address and keep it linked to the same account.

Now, I know a lot of people go through their life keeping the same name they were born with, but many people (with a preponderance towards women) do change their name, potentially multiple times, and being trans - I'd rather not have to jump into a deadname account to access purchased content.

Odd, I distinctly remember changing my e-mail address some years ago from one at Yahoo ! to one at Protonmail, and keeping the same Google account.

Perhaps it's due to some subsequent change? Or -my guess- maybe a benefit of NOT using Gmail when registering (yes, it's actually possible to create a Google account without using a @gmail address, it's just that 99% of users never bother to)...

What would be the pros and cons of turning the EU into an indivisible entity when it comes to rights management?

Obvious pro is that your eu country of residence, purchase or citizenship is irrelevant.

Would it make licensing more expensive? Dunno but there’s seems to be no obvious reason why licensing a highly-localised piece of content for the EU should be more expensive compared to a local licence, any interest overseas will mostly be limited to the diaspora.

And maybe content of international interest should be more expensive, why not.

My particular (Apple) beef is that my family all have various/multiple national affiliations, requiring various awkward workarounds to make things possible. Yet all members of a “family” must have accounts belonging to the same country.

> What would be the pros and cons of turning the EU into an indivisible entity when it comes to rights management.

Welcome to the Single Market, DVD region blocking already operates like this.

This, Apple’s geo-locking on nation state rather than economic block, nicely shows that it wasn’t necessarily “the EU” that was being slow etc., but the businesses that want to trade in the EU.

The EU, like China, are showing that they are big enough to kick multi-nationals were it hurts. We can expect other major markets eg. India, to also start getting more assertive.

It will be interesting to see if the EU will fully support grey imports, so you could purchase a Japanese market device (so get a full Japanese UI) and register it in the EU with full access to both EU and Japanese app and music stores/services.

DVD region blocking is extremely annoying and should be illegal.

I live in France. If I go to the UK and buy a physical DVD, what right do companies have to refuse me the right to play it in France ?

I BOUGHT THE FUCKING DVD.

Let me play it where I want, or I'll just find a pirate copy and play that.

This is already the case for many things, for example paid streaming services: subscribe to Sky in one country and you can watch still watch it in another (EU) country. Though it did take a court case to establish this.

Apple, as usual, seems to mix arrogange with technical incompetence – there is a degree of inviolability with accounts that mean that you can't change the e-mail address, so I have at least two ghost accounts that I can neither access nor delete, even though I still have the e-mail address. And the various stores still seem to have the same antiquated code base that they had twenty years ago; it rivals that of airline companies for inflexibility. But, as long as they keep selling gadgets they don't think they need to care.

That’s not quite the same thing. Currently, a French Sky subscription will not give you access to German Sky content.

A film purchased in one country may not work if the user account is transferred to another country.

For true freedom of movement/services/goods, the EU would have to be treated in the same way as a single country is treated today. A British subscription doesn’t care what county you are in, and an EU subscription shouldn’t care what EU country you are in.

(It would also be nicer if the UK were part of the EU but I think that has been discussed elsewhere.)

Would it make licensing more expensive?

It would tend to unify prices - they'd fall in the likes of France and Germany and rise in some others. The alternative is that they don't licence it in the EU at all, and burying media for tax breaks only works if you don't licence it anywhere.

There's already case law about this, people could use French subscription satellite TV in the UK. (Don't know if Brexit changed that)

There was a lot of screaming, but nothing really changed.

Location by IP is evil & immoral.

It's also easy to work around, which makes it pretty stupid.

However, a simple Geo-IP block covering Russia and China massively reduces the amount of attack traffic hitting your servers.

Yes, it’s not 100% effective, but it does either stop some traffic or disrupt some botnet attacks where part of the attack includes a “call home”.

You could compare it with NAT, not really a security solution, but an aid to sifting the wheat from the chaff.

I'll have you know that my £10 a month dedicated server in France is great for downloading content that I could have literally downloaded off my TV just minutes earlier but for some reason I'm not allowed to despite being in the UK, the creators being in the UK, it being broadcast for free in the UK, and the digital platform for all of that being in the UK, and me being licenced specifically to receive such programmes in the UK.

Not just iPlayer, etc. but the one I always found hilarious was downloading Channel 4 or BBC content on Youtube... it was so often blocked in the UK ("This content is not available in your country") that I bought a server to download what I'd literally missed by seconds recording off the airwaves (DVB-T / DVB-S) that had recently blown through my house unencrypted anyway.

Hey Google.

You hate people trying to use YouTube via a VPN. FSCK you.

Hey EC, please add Google to your hit list on this.

They are just as evil as Apple (and MS and.... [add list of evil US companies here]

There are a bunch of companies, typically in the business of copyright, who try as much as they can to charge a different price for the same thing depending on the country of the user, just so that they can extract the maximum amount from everybody. The EU has made this illegal, and it should now be possible to buy a movie or subscription anywhere in the EU and watch it anywhere else. The same should apply to Apple.