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EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services

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Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services

#131

Post by kodablah »

michaelt wrote: post #83
dantheman wrote: post #4

Protectionism is bad in all its forms. Content providers want to capture the local market and should include local productions -- if that's what the subscribers want. Mandating a quota is backwards. If a state wants to sponsor work and make it available at low costs I'm sure content services would jump to provide it. All this does is either increase cost or reduce available selection in the affected markets. If the s…

Protectionism is bad in all its forms. I read a book once that made an interesting point: 1. English-language films make more money than French-language films because there are more English speakers than French speakers. 2. Because of this, an English-language film can profitably have a bigger budget, allowing better production values. 3. Once a film has been produced, the rights will get sold in every foreign market…

> This makes it extremely hard for French language films to compete.

This assumes some zero-sum level of media the public can support and that money is enough to control it. I don't believe in either of those things wrt the arts and patronage can come in many forms, but restricting amounts of art in any direction by fiat is wrong.

Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services

#132

Post by jackconnor »

Question - how would this even work in small countries with limited local content? Is Netflix Latvia going to be just a small handful of movies/TV since they can only add 60% international content (aka a tiny part of their catalogue) to whatever few movies/TV get made locally?

Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services

#133

Post by adventured »

pluma wrote: post #112

I'd be fine with "30% from any country in the EU", but "30% from my country" is torture. I mean, have you even seen what movies Germany produces? If I could stand any of that rubbish, I'd be watching cable TV, not Netflix.

Out of curiosity as an American looking to learn more about European cinema, which countries in continental Europe would you say produce the best movies?

Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services

#135

Post by jackconnor »

jackconnor wrote: post #132

Question - how would this even work in small countries with limited local content? Is Netflix Latvia going to be just a small handful of movies/TV since they can only add 60% international content (aka a tiny part of their catalogue) to whatever few movies/TV get made locally?

Follow up question: Doesn't this just screw over Latvians by limiting their content over other European countries?

Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services

#136

Post by ucosty »

jimmaswell wrote: post #101
maeln wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever seen films from your own country? I, as a Dutchman have, and I can say that most of them suck and there's a very good reason you don't see them on stuff like Netflix. This also seems like a recursive problem. US/Hollywood have huge marketing power, thanks to this, they can ensure that the movie they produce should make a decent profit, they can then invest more money to make better production. On the…

India managed to overcome this allegedly insurmountable American influence and have "the world's largest film industry in terms of film production"[1]. European countries would just rather take the easier route and bully companies into trying to force the matter instead of creating conditions that would allow it to happen naturally. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollywood

With a population of 1.3 billion people, India has a greater population than the combined total of the European Union (500m), Russia (144m), the United States (320m), Mexico (127m), Australia (24m), Canada (36m), NZ (3.6m). No wonder it can sustain it's own independent thriving film and television industries.

Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services

#137

Post by maxsilver »

phobosdeimos wrote: post #109

Everyone here actively despises the local film industry. We do not need to inflict Dutch television on the world. Thats torture. Good shows should earn their ratings, not be force fed- if your culture is so great France and Germany you wouldn't need these subsidies. Netflix is not a public broadcaster.

> Everyone here actively despises the local film industry. We do not need to inflict Dutch television on the world. Thats torture.

I don't understand. Do the Dutch hate their own programmes? Why would they bother making shows they don't want to watch?

> if your culture is so great France and Germany you wouldn't need these subsidies.

I'm not sure they need them, just that it helps promote it. These shows might not necessarily be record-smashing-popular, but local film/TV from other countries routinely makes it's way to the US with sizable audiences (despite the US drowning in it's own media). Even childrens shows often have broad appeal. (as just a few examples, see 'Degrassi' from Canada, 'PJ Masks' and 'Miraculous' from France, 'Sarah and Duck' from Britain, 'Octonauts' from Ireland).

Some of those are funded in part from "cultural quotas" (various implementations of similar ideas) such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content . But it doesn't mean they aren't popular or good on their own.

Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services

#138

Post by kodablah »

harperlee wrote: post #125
sannee wrote: post #118

This is the side of the EU that foreigners usually don't see. This is the reason there are movements for quitting in every member state (with varying levels of success). The isolationism EU is beginning to display is starting to worry even me and the alternative is a bunch of UKIP-like nationalist which I am not really a big fan of.

This is not something that comes (only) from the EU; at least France and Spain have similar local "cultural protection" laws that were not imposed by EU. So it is more of a European, rather than Europeanunionean, way of thinking: local "culture" (as in, cultural product industry) is a public good and thus needs to be protected by the state. Not that I agree with it...

> So it is more of a European, rather than Europeanunionean, way of thinking

If one appears to beget the other they might as well be the same. I sympathize with countries desiring sovereignty on these issues that should remain at the country level.

Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services

#140

Post by subway »

Fnoord wrote: post #92
phyller wrote: post #7

> The proposals will require that streaming services give over at least 30% of their on-demand catalogues to original productions made in each EU country where a service is provided (individual EU Member States could choose to set the content bar even higher, at 40%) 30% for each country seems really high to me. As usual for regulation, there will likely be high unintended consequences. While in the US and elsewhere…

Its not as if Netflix is the creme de la creme of cinema. Netflix already sucks outside the US. Outside the US, there's far less content, and there is either way a lot of filler content anyway. What is going to happen is that Netflix will get the rights to stream (hopefully quality) local movies and series. That's gonna differ per country in EU. For example, some movies get broadcasted once or twice on public TV and…

I always find it weird when folks say Netflix sucks outside the US. Much of the library in the US feels like a mish-mash of old television and b-grade movies. When I'm in the UK, I have access to new episodes of television. Shows that you have to pay for on a per-episode, or per-studio basis in the US (Star Trek Discovery; The Good Place) were available in the UK on Netflix just after they aired in the US.
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