Fuen:

It’s a nuisance for many: While one can move through Europe seemingly without borders when travelling (if there is not a pandemic) and in online shops, the country barrier often falls when accessing films and television offers – “no access”, it is then said, or the offer is not available for selection at all. This is what is known as geoblocking: multimedia content on the internet is only accessible regionally, usually within the borders of a country. If you want to stream the German “Tatort” in the media library in Denmark, you are left out in the cold. Even with paid platforms such as Netflix, the offer varies greatly from country to country: while viewers in Germany, for example, have access to 43.1% of the films available online in the EU, in Slovenia it is only 0.3%.

Technically, this works via the IP address, which assigns users to a country like a postal address. If you dial in from the “wrong” country, i.e. one that is not activated for the use of the content, the block takes effect.

This is problematic for all multilingual people who like to consume media in a language other than their mother tongue, but especially for members of national minorities and language communities: they often speak a language that is the majority language in another European country. Borders have shifted in Europe over the course of history, but languages have mostly remained – accordingly, today one finds many such language communities speaking a language other than the majority dominant national language. Many millions of people live in Europe who have a mother tongue that is recognised in their country but is a minority language. To cite just one of many examples: South Tyrol, which belongs to Italy, has 500,000 German-speaking inhabitants.