EU confirms UK will lose Netflix ‘portability’ following Brexit
Thanks to Brexit, UK residents won’t be able to access Amazon Video or native Netflix programming when traveling around the EU. Rules just passed to let customers “carry” their copyrights with them while traveling, but that will end next year, as spotted by Politico. Currently, if you live in the UK and visit France, you can only access the French version of Netflix. New EU legislation, however, will allow you to access the library that you would normally find in your home market. Brexit, though, means Brits will lose out on these benefits starting March 29th, 2019.
Broadcast TV will be affected too. UK-based networks will have to “clear rights” with every member state of the EU where the signal lands, if they’re to serve viewers. That goes both ways, and will affect EU broadcasters as well. Music streaming will also be affected. That’s in addition to recent news that the UK will potentially be excluded from the Galileo GPS satellite program. For more info on what’s at stake when the UK exits the European Union, hit the source PDF below.
Update: A previous version of this article stated that BBC iPlayer would be affected. A BBC spokesperson offered the following clarification: “We are interested in being able to allow UK licence fee payers to access BBC iPlayer while they are on holiday, and welcome the EU regulation to help make this feasible. There are complex technical issues to resolve which we are investigating and it will be dependent on what legislation is in effect in the UK in the future.”
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