Geoblocking

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The geoblocking is in Internet technology used for regional blocking of Internet content by the provider. The technology is used in particular for copyright protection of works such as films and television broadcasts distributed over the Internet .

Origin of name

The term “geoblocking” is made up of the prefix geo- (dt. Earth) and the English word blocking (dt. Blocking, locking). What is meant is a blocking of Internet content due to the geographical origin, e.g. As belonging to a particular state of the earth.

technology

Connect to a will for the use of the Internet ISP ( provider ) created. During the connection process, each user is assigned a worldwide unique number by the provider, which is referred to as the IP address . The Internet user appears under this number in the network and uses this identifier to establish connections via the provider to the Internet server he has called and receives the desired content transmitted to this IP address. The IP address can therefore be understood as the postal address of an Internet user in the network.

The IP address comes from a range of IP addresses assigned to the provider. The address ranges of each provider are publicly known (see autonomous system ); they work in a similar way to postcodes. This shows which provider a user belongs to. This means that the location of the Internet user can be roughly identified using the address range of the IP address. If the internet user requests a certain resource, the respective site operator is always given his current IP address so that he can easily see which country the site user is from ( geotargeting ).

Areas of application

By knowing the origin of the internet user, the internet site provider can technically exclude the user from displaying or using certain internet content, for example because of a country-specific copyright law . This happens very often, especially with movies and television broadcasts on the Internet.

In Germany z. For example, the video portal YouTube uses geoblocking very strongly to block music videos that are copyrighted in Germany . Since German copyright law does not apply worldwide, these videos are generally freely accessible.

Geoblocking does not only affect audio-visual media on the Internet, which are blocked for commercial reasons. Internet sites are also censored by states. States such as North Korea, Cuba, China and Turkey are known for their strict internet censorship . The states block access to (mostly foreign) websites for their citizens to a greater or lesser extent. By assigning the user's IP address to a state, the provider then recognizes whether the content may be displayed to the user or not.

Workarounds

Geoblocking can be bypassed by using a proxy server located in a non-blocked country, virtual private networks (VPN) and anonymizers . However, whether this is a copyright infringement under German law in the form of an illegal circumvention of an effective technical protective measure within the meaning of Section 95a (2) sentence 1 UrhG is disputed. This is largely assumed in the literature. The question has not yet been clarified by a court. According to § 108b and § 111a UrhG, criminal liability or administrative offense is excluded in the case of exclusively private actions, which is why the problem is particularly important for civil law.

Legal situation in the EU

Regulation (EU) 2018/302 against unjustified geoblocking in the internal market (GB-VO) was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on March 2, 2018 and has been in force since December 3, 2018. [outdated] It prohibits website operators from geoblocking; however, audiovisual works from the film industry, television broadcasters and sports rights exploiters are excluded from this in order to maintain the principle of territoriality in the exploitation of audiovisual works (e.g. film exploitation ) even in times of the “digital single market” .

In Germany, these provisions were implemented with the law of November 29, 2018 as an amendment to the Telecommunications Act ( Federal Law Gazette I p. 2230 ).

Legislation on geoblocking is viewed critically in legal teaching.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Witold Pryjda: borders on the Internet: geoblocking prevents unlimited surfing experience. In: zeit.de . November 3, 2009, accessed June 21, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Prevent geoblocking to protect online privacy. In: SpyOFF. Retrieved March 17, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Hannes Federrath : Geoblocking and the possibilities of technology. In: Journal for Copyright and Media Law (ZUM). 2015, pp. 929-932.
  4. ^ Andreas Wiebe: Geoblocking in the light of European law and European jurisprudence. In: Journal for Copyright and Media Law. Vol. 59, No. 12, 2015, pp. 932-941, here p. 933.
  5. ↑ In this sense about Spindler in Spindler / Schuster: Law of the electronic media. 3rd edition, 2015, UrhG § 95a Rn. 12; Martin v. Albrecht, Annette Mutschler-Siebert, Tobias Bosch: The Murphy decision and its effects on sports and film licenses in the online area. The exclusive territorial allocation of rights is not a model of the past! In: Journal for Copyright and Media Law. Vol. 56, No. 2, 2012, pp. 93-100, here p. 97; Verena Hoene: Geoblocking: EU regulation for more transparency in electronic commerce. In: The IP law advisor. Vol. 8, No. 8, 2017, pp. 183-186, here p. 184; Ansgar Ohly : Geoblocking between economic, cultural, consumer and European policy. In: Journal for Copyright and Media Law. Vol. 59, No. 12, 2015, pp. 942-950, here p. 943; Andreas Wiebe: Geoblocking in the light of European law and European case law. In: Journal for Copyright and Media Law. Vol. 59, No. 12, 2015, pp. 932-941, here p. 933.
  6. ↑ Eric Hilgendorf, Brian Valerius: Computer and Internet criminal law: A floor plan . 2nd Edition. Springer, 2012, p. 215 .
  7. ↑ Regulation (EU) 2018/302 of the European Parliament and of the Council of February 28, 2018 on measures against unjustified geoblocking and other forms of discrimination based on nationality, place of residence or place of business of the customer within the internal market and amending the regulations (EC) No. 2006/2004 and (EU) 2017/2394 as well as Directive 2009/22 / EC
  8. ↑ EU regulation against unjustified geoblocking applies from December 3, 2018. Accessed on April 16, 2018 (German).
  9. ↑ No geoblocking ban for audiovisual services. In: mediabiz.de. May 12, 2016. Retrieved May 13, 2016 .
  10. ↑ Oliver Peschel: Is the geoblocking ban coming? In: GPR . Otto Schmidt, 2016, p. 194 .