There is a campaign collecting signatures to end geoblocking within EU: <a href="https://endgeoblocking.eu/" rel="nofollow">https://endgeoblocking.eu/</a>
But this has nothing to do with credit cards and everything to do with the media industry. It's the exact same thing as those braindead DVD regions, or youtube restrictions in Germany, or netflix national catalogues.
I agree on further digitalization of public services and stuff - come on, ... here in Germany you must store every kind of receipt for tax declaration (I don't know how this works in other countries, I just find it ridiculous nowadays). However, what the president of Estonia is talking about is basically not applicable to most of the current European countries, where people/countries raise walls, other countries threaten to leave, or where national interests are way higher than European ones.<p>In addition, I would also like to say that it's important to keep in mind that Estonia is a smaller country compared to others in Europe (it has ~ 1.5 million people, more or less the amount of people living/working in Cologne/Amsterdam/Milan). This means that they can be more focused and can invest more selectively. If you want to digitalize a country like Germany you need to change how many cities and towns? And ... how many laws that require still "paper" proof? It's not impossible, it just takes more time. That's it.<p>I hope that the president will be able to convince European countries to improve their IT infrastructure. That's cool. However, bigger countries won't see that coming in the next 5-10 years at least.
Great push for use of latest technologies, especially for government sector.<p>I skimmed the article, and I do not see a mention of Estonia's e-voting. AFAIK, they are using (IMHO) flawed system, that they just believe it works (i.e. it was not breached). Estonia is very innovative in technological sector, but their e-voting system is a very risky play with their democracy.
That sounds like a wonderful idea in general but I wonder how the legal issues would play out? If a company offers music for cheaper than would be legal in France in Estonia then a French citizen buys it for themselves would the company be liable under French law? How about a video game that involves shooting Nazis and which has a swastika in it but some German citizen buys it? I'm not sure how this could work without integrating European legal systems more.
Hrm I'm struggling to see how it is/was any difference from years ago when games/movies were region locked. Protectionism has always been the name of the game.
One must remember that Estonia started from zero, as regards to bureaucracy. I wish had a picture of Estonian coast guard 1991, schoolkids in wooden WII soviet gasboat. But very serious and with AK-47, so I do not have the picture.
But the biggest problem is that iTunes itself is badly developed? Apple way is that each user has a Macbook which has an iTunes to which user can sync her/his iPhone. Syncing many mobile devices into one machine with one iTunes gets messy.