The European Union has proposed a ruling that would allow its citizens to take their copyrighted online content with them as they travel around member states. This will mean that you'll have access to your online subscriptions, accessing everything from your movies to sport and, yes, even iPlayer.
The BBC has announced its backing of the EU proposals, adding that the UK government's own proposals to modernise the BBC license fee should make it so the corporation is able to verify a license payer's iPlayer access abroad.
"Being able to offer BBC iPlayer also depends on the UK Government implementing legislation to modernise the licence fee to include VOD as well as linear viewing, something the Government has committed to do next year," the BBC has said in a statement released in response to the EU proposals.
"That will mean users of BBC iPlayer could be verified as UK licence-fee payers while they are on holiday in the EU."
The BBC also added though that "there are complex technical issues to resolve" and that the full proposal needed proper clarification.
This new cross-border proposal is said to be introduced in 2017, the same year that it is planned for roaming charges to be abolished throughout the EU. The two could then go hand-in-hand, if you wanted to catch up The Apprentice of the future on the go, for example.
Netflix and chill?
The ruling is also likely to impact on Netflix too and is being designed so that a subscriber will no longer find themselves unable to access content available to them in their home country that is not on the service in another country when they travel.
Without resorting to VPNs...
Quite how that is going to impact upon Netflix's ability to license different content for different countries - yet still have it all accessible when a subscriber travels - we don't yet know. We've reached out to Netflix but have yet to get an official response.
