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Comment by DrJokepu | Hacker News Reader

> Why should a service, that is advert free and wholly paid for by the UK licence payers, be free to people elsewhere?

Because UK residents would have access to the online streams of other EU public broadcasters for free as well.

Not much of a balanced trade. The UK is by far the biggest exporter of TV content in Europe. Nowhere else is even close.

Source?

According to http://www.digitaltveurope.net/527032/france-and-turkey-join..., worldwide, France ranks 3rd (but I've not been able to find the numbers, and the numbers just for Europe).

We're talking specifically about the BBC (and perhaps Channel 4) here, not the entire British television industry. Even though the BBC have a few internationally successful hit shows, the vast majority of Europeans simply don't speak English well enough to be able enjoy these programmes without some sort of localisation so the audience of these streams would be rather limited in practice.

That's just not true. Significant chunk (50%+) of other Europe speaks english and can easily watch those programs.

I think you're overestimating this. German-speakers, for example, are proficient in English above the EU average but culturally used to watching exclusively dubbed content (widely available because their market is big enough to make it profitable), so mainstream audiences surely won't suddenly switch to consuming English content. I would wager that the Nordic countries are probably the only where both high proficiency and high comfort with untranslated content are close to being mainstream.

What exactly are you arguing though? That there's "only" 25% english speakers and that they should still be forbidden from being able to BUY english content because not all their countrymen can speak it?!

Ah no, I was arguing that "this would destroy our licensing/localization business" arguments are overblown. It would get rid of discrimination and barriers to the single market and also generate some extra cross-border income, but it would not make established business models unworkable overnight.

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