The European Commission is looking to modernise EU copyright rules as part of its Digital Single Market Strategy. The move aims to improve the portability of online content across country borders.
Eurobarometer has conducted EU-wide research to establish the challenges of accessing – and the desire for - truly portable e-content.
Key findings
- 69% of all respondents use the internet daily
- Music is the most popular online content accessed (by 60% of respondents)
- AV content, excluding sport, was a close second (59%)
- Games were accessed by 37%
- Sports by 35%
However, the figures change for respondents aged 15-24. For this age group, 87% have accessed music online and 80% have accessed AV content.
Fee or free?
Respondents are most likely to have paid for access to e-books (46%), video games (34%), music (29%) and sports (19%). Subscriptions are a more popular payment method than pay per view/item.
Cross border access
Approximately 20% of internet users reported they have paid for a subscription for at least one type of digital content and 17% of them had attempted to use this content in another EU member state. Younger respondents are the most likely to have tried this and expressed the most interest in doing this is the future.
3% of those who tried cross-border access found the content did not work at all. 10% reported it worked perfectly while 3% said the content they were able to access was different.
Interestingly the most popular countries in which people attempted to access their content were Cyprus, Luxembourg and Estonia!
Source: Eurobarometer.