Last month, Ars reported on a leaked version of the European Commission's key Digital Single Market strategy document. Today, the final version was unveiled, along with an accompanying analysis and evidence report. Although the texts of the two main strategy documents differ in details, the broad outline remains the same. Altogether, there are 19 "actions" grouped under three main "pillars": better access for consumers and businesses to digital goods and services across Europe; creating the right conditions and a level playing field for digital networks and innovative services to flourish; and maximising the growth potential of the digital economy.

The first pillar contains two actions likely to be of particular interest to Ars readers: those dealing with geo-blocking and copyright reform. The strategy document that was leaked in April sent out contradictory signals about geo-blocking, and the same is true of the final version. Again, we read that the European Commission "will make legislative proposals in the first half of 2016 to end unjustified geo-blocking," but also that "sometimes these restrictions on supply and ensuing price differentiation can be justified."

Matters are clarified in comments made by Andrus Ansip, European Commission Vice President for the Digital Single Market, speaking in front of the European Parliament Internal Market Committee on 23 April. He explains that he does not intend to get rid of copyright territoriality by bringing in pan-EU licensing for online content, but does want to make sure that there is no geo-blocking when online content is offered for purchase. The German Pirate Party MEP, Julia Reda, aptly characterises this as "roaming for Netflix," pointing out that it will not end the discriminatory practice of geo-blocking:

When people are turned away on the internet today because "this video is not available in your country," the works they are trying to access are often not directly for sale but financed through advertising or public funding. Since the specific actions proposed in the Strategy apply only to "legally acquired/purchased content," this is set to remain a regular nuisance in the lives of Europeans. That the Commission has neglected to include public broadcasters in their plans especially harms linguistic minorities, who frequently find themselves barred from accessing cultural content across borders. Applied to tangible goods, this situation would be unthinkable. It is indefensible to artifically reconstruct national borders in a common market and on a borderless medium.

Reda is also critical of the final policy on copyright reform. She says it ignores the huge public response to the EU copyright consultation conducted last year, and warns that the failure to tackle the fragmented nature of copyright in the EU will be a problem for startups there, since "legal fragmentation presents a barrier to scaling up and competing with US internet giants." She is particularly concerned about Commission plans to consider "whether to require [Internet] intermediaries to exercise greater responsibility and due diligence in the way they manage their networks and systems—a duty of care." She reveals important details about what that might mean in practice:

According to Commission documents I have seen, plans for this duty of care include forcing internet platforms to actively scan user-uploaded content for illegal information. This would increase groundless mass surveillance, outsource law enforcement to private companies and introduce huge barriers to entry on the intermediaries market, preventing competition. Because there simply aren’t enough copyright lawyers in the world to check all the videos and pictures uploaded every day, platforms would have to increasingly rely on automatic detection algorithms that are known for their unreliability and would introduce huge barriers to market entry.

One of the other actions in the first pillar is "to identify potential competition concerns affecting European e-commerce markets." As part of that, the European Commission has today launched an inquiry into the e-commerce sector, something it announced it intended to do, back in March. The new inquiry will explore "potential barriers erected by companies to cross-border online trade in goods and services where e-commerce is most widespread such as electronics, clothing and shoes, as well as digital content." As with the European Commission's anti-trust action against Google, this seems aimed at the large US companies that dominate the e-commerce sector in Europe.