Geo-blocking under the ethical microscope: when does it protect culture and when does it merely restrict it? A new article by Pavel Zahrádka in the Journal of Media Ethics opens a major debate.

Debates over geo-blocking in the EU have long been shaped by a tension between efforts to ensure free access to cultural content and the defence of territorial licensing as a mechanism for financing audiovisual production. A new study by Pavel Zahrádka moves this discussion beyond legal and economic arguments toward a fundamental ethical question: when is restricting access to culture genuinely justified, and when does it merely sustain an artificial fragmentation of the market?

The European Union has been striving for years to remove geographical barriers to access to online cultural content. The Digital Single Market strategy aims to ensure that films, series, and other audiovisual works can reach audiences across Member States without unnecessary restrictions. However, the practice of so-called geo-blocking—territorial restrictions on digital content—remains one of the most controversial issues in EU digital policy. A newly published study by Pavel Zahrádka, Open Access and Territorial Licenses: Resolving Moral Conflicts in the Online Distribution of Audiovisual Works in the Journal of Media Ethics, brings a significant shift to this debate: instead of focusing on legal and economic arguments, it examines geo-blocking as a moral conflict.

On one side stands the right of consumers and authors to open access to culture. On the other side is the right of producers and distributors to fair compensation for creative labor and a return on investments that enable the production of audiovisual works. In his analysis, Pavel Zahrádka employs the method of so-called “wide reflective equilibrium” and arrives at a balanced yet critical conclusion: territorial restrictions can be ethically justified only when they genuinely protect fair remuneration and support investment in creative production. However, when they merely serve to artificially segment markets and maintain fragmentation, their moral legitimacy significantly weakens. The study thus shifts the debate on geo-blocking from the realm of technical regulation into the domain of fundamental ethical principles of digital culture. At the same time, it raises an uncomfortable question: does the current system protect European audiovisual production—or does it rather hinder its natural circulation?

The study was conducted within the project Ethics of Access to Audiovisual Online Content, supported by the Czech Science Foundation.