Estonian President Expresses Desire For More Digitally-Integrated Europe (arstechnica.com) 64
In a wide-ranging interview with Ars Technica, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik talked about European Digital Single Market (DSM), an ambitious goal that seeks to make commerce flow as smoothly across the 28-member block as it does in the United States. He cites the example of iTunes. From the report: What Estonia and Finland are doing is a step towards the DSM -- but there remain all kinds of national-level laws that stop Europe from being truly unified. "Take iTunes," President Ilves continued. "iTunes are based on credit cards. Credit cards are national. I cannot buy an iTunes record for my wife who has a Latvian credit card. I cannot buy her an iTunes record because I have an Estonian iTunes. This is true of virtually everything that is connected to digital services. And certainly this is why Estonia is at the forefront of the European Digital Single Market. As I like to say, it's easier to ship a bottle of Portuguese wine from southern Portugal in the Algarve and sell it in northern Lapland, than it is for me to buy an iTunes record across the Estonian-Latvian border."The report is worth a read in its entirety.
Re:i don't want iTunes here (Score:4, Insightful)
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For what it's worth, some within the west don't like any cultures other than their own taking over:
https://entertainment.slashdot... [slashdot.org]
That said, I really doubt they'll be able to pull off "one digital europe". Why? Because France will complain if they can't regionally ban any service that doesn't have a certain percentage of Frenchmen in it (assuming, of course, that anybody besides France would care to watch that to begin with.)
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Actually, you got this backwards. American culture is taking over the world, in part, because America is digitally unified. America has a huge internal market for software, movies, music, etc. That gives American media and tech companies a huge headstart. Nearly all technology and media giants are American. The only other country that comes close is China, but Chinese companies like Alibaba, Baidu, and Xaiomi, have difficulty competing outside China.
If other countries, including EU members, become more
Re: Europe is for Cows (Score:1)
I thought we settled that nonsense 70 years ago.
Re:Why have any of these restrictions? (Score:4, Insightful)
The US has a protection on its market on cotton, because otherwise African countries would be competitive.
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Not sure if...
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https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Eliminating barriers for labor crossing borders is what the EU does, it is one of the four freedoms.
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Why do we need restrictions on moving physical and digital goods across borders?
To respect freedom of contract. A lot of works of authorship are subject to decades-long exclusive territorial distribution contracts that date to before the EU common market. The model was supposed to be that a publisher would enter into a contract with a publisher that understands the Estonian market under the condition that no other distributor would be allowed to distribute the same work in Estonia. Break these contracts, and the work goes out of print everywhere.
Restricting trade and commerce at international borders results in a suboptimal economy
Prisoner's dilemma.
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* Czechoslovakia (1993)
* East Germany (1990)
* Yugoslavia (1992)
And when a country enters the EU, and all contracts are now subject to new, overriding law which may negate these contracts?
Successor states after a breakup (Score:2)
Contracts that granted exclusivity in Czechoslovakia would probably be interpreted as granting exclusivity in both of its successor states, namely the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Likewise with the successor states of Yugoslavia. Cases of unification, such as absorption of the DDR (East Germany) into the BRD (West Germany), pose a more interesting legal challenge. Have you read about any cases where different companies ended up with exclusivity in BRD and DDR at the time of unification?
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The EU's Brussels I regulation provides for cross-border civil litigation (English PDF) [europa.eu]:
Under this rule, a Slovak distributor with exclusive rights to distribute a work in Czechoslovakia since before the breakup could sue an unfairly compe
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Why do we need restrictions on moving physical and digital goods across borders? For that matter, eliminate barriers to labor crossing borders, too......[this] results in a suboptimal economy
How about : money isn't everything.
Instead of making it easier... (Score:2)
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1. Quit using the DEC logo for DRM stuff.
Apparently they're using it for items tagged "digital", because it has the word "digital" in it (the "D" in "DEC" being "Digital"), and if DRM stuff is tagged "digital" it's presumably because the "D" in "DRM" also stands for "digital".
Not that this means it makes sense. I suppose a better icon might be something with 1's and 0's in it, but maybe they decided that wasn't an obvious icon, so they used the logo of a computer company because it had the word "digital" in it.
Bottle of wine to Lapland analogy is wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
At least if we are talking Swedish Lapland, customs will intercept the shipment of wine, an hold it for weeks, and tax it so it is more expensive than locally bought (very expensive) wine, and also force you to pay for the joy of being taxed, a taxation fee of around €13 last time I got taxed.
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The choice of Algarve for portuguese wine isn't terribly inspired either. I didn't even know we made wine down there.
Bury the lede (Score:1)
The biggest surprise from this story is that it turns out Estonia is a real place. Who knew?
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The biggest surprise from this story is that it turns out Estonia is a real place. Who knew?
Educated people? Or were you thinking of Elbonia [wikipedia.org]?
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Maybe I'm thinking of Freedonia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I'm an Elbonian^W Estonian and I find this offensive. Actually, no, I really don't care. I like both Elbonia and Estonia.
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What are you talking about? We are sacrificing red tape on the altar of the people. The national ID card is tremendously helpful. It cuts the latency of most of your government interaction down to mere minutes, the time it takes you to click through the user interface of a service. This is unheard of In most of the civilized world, where it can take months to get your random papers done. The crypto on this is open source, and anybody is free to implement their own. I cannot figure out what better 'clear goa
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Not really. What happens if some clerk gets a bug up the bum and... refuses to issue a new card?
I don't think this is even possible. It's mandatory by law.
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So he is the president of Estonia yet his wife does not have an Estonian credit card. What is her problem exactly? Her credit score too low? Husband has only temporary employment? Or what?
And so his solution to the problem of his wife not having an Estonian credit card, despite living in Estonia, is to re-organise the European economy.
Funny, I have the opposite problem. I have about 8 credit cards and keep getting letters and phone calls egging me on to have more. Perhaps unknowingly I am a bigger cel
Last name (Score:2)
Estonian President Toomas Hendrik talked
In other news, Barack Hussein is the way Slashdot editors refer to their president.
Re: Contradiction (Score:2)
"how will he create a single digital-services market, after the fact?"
By using examples like the one he gave: I want to buy this but because of these barriers, I can't (easily). Look at all the revenue you're losing. Join our European Digital Single Market and make more money.
I think he understands about the credit cards.
If it works well for public services (see korgitser's comment) the private sector will see the advantages and may have to join in anyway to gain government contracts. The key is to make
protectionist rules (Score:2)
a lot of their problems stem from protectionism of national economies and cultures. the protectionist rules in place are actually partitioning each country from one another which makes it impossible to have unified anything. to have a unified marketplace, you need a unified government.
I live in US, my parents in EU, ... (Score:2)
... and I would really like to buy them extended iCloud storage. Well, tough luck there. Even if I had a local credit card, their particular country does not even have iCloud. I ended up switching my mother to US iTunes Store and re-downloading all the apps that are in both stores and telling her she might never be able to update those that are in the EU store only. Why is this even a problem? WTF?
Not even mentioning the fact, as written in the article, that if my parents tell me about a new record by a loc
Forget digital (Score:3)
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No matter what happens in the UK, it won't fragment the EU any further. There are two possible outcomes to the vote:
Remain: Other countries see the lack of popular will to leave, and how the campaign has ripped the ruling party apart. Any thoughts of leaving themselves are abandoned.
Leave: The UK gets a terrible trade deal from the EU, which is more interested in discouraging others from wanting to leave than in preserving it's 8% trade with that country. Deals with the rest of the world turn out to suck to