EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by geoalchimista » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

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…

> Right now, there's a bunch of quality EU series on Netflix already such as Casa De Papel and Dark.

Just wanna add to this. Babylon Berlin is also shockingly great. Wish Netflix could introduce more series like this to the US market.

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

#212

Post by Semaphor » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #133

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?

Not a direct answer, but for TV (serialized crime/police) shows it's the Scandinavian countries. Then the US comes and makes a usually far inferior copy of it.

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

#213

Post by kodablah » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #167

kodablah wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't have your cake and eat it too: either you want sovereignty, or you want to be part of a bigger system in which you cannot always get your way. I'm not sure that's true. I think the EU, as a non-political economic union gives you that cake. It's the political side keeping you from eating it. I think there are many financial policies that can be properly disentangled from political beliefs and the ones that…

There's no economics without politics, and vice versa. The EU as a single market has great potential. But that needs uniform and standardized access, which is politics. And no, it wouldn't work without the political overlay (or foundations), because member states are already each in a non pure market state, and it would take a very long time for those politically disjoint markets to standarize and uniformize. And the…

> There's no economics without politics, and vice versa.

It's not absolute and binary, and the inability to recognize that and delegate on issues which are more political than financial is what causes issues. Passing laws on streaming providers in England based on French ideals of cultural protection is exactly the issue. This should remain a nation-level issue yet the legislators would way rather use the leverage of the super-nation since they can as opposed to whether they should.

> The EU as a single market has great potential. But that needs uniform and standardized access, which is politics.

It doesn't need 100% uniform and standardized access. There are limits to standardization. If they really wanted to be uniform, they'd do so in the language, but clearly the goal is not absolute uniformity. It is uniformity within reason and delegate to nations for other aspects (such as language). It's what is chosen to be delegated that is the issue.

> And there is power in numbers. The EU is relevant. England will soon find out how irrelevant it is alone.

Meh, as relevant as before and many other nations. Self determinism is where real power lies as it is obvious that one's own house should be clean before projecting. The EU can increase its influence and delegate its cultural rulemaking at the same time but it seems that the approach of individual governments, such as those that believe culture should be enforced via legal restrictions, reign.

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

#214

Post by TangoTrotFox » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 7:01 PM UTC

I wish there was more regulation that was positive instead of negative. Here for instance imagine that if instead of punishing Netflix for not providing an arbitrarily determined sufficient amount of local content, why not provide positive incentives for other companies (or Netflix as well) to do just that.

For instance for each 10% of your catalog that is made up of region local content, you get an 8% tax deduction. As companies adjusted to the new incentives, these values could be gradually lowered over time. This would help spur on new competitors as well as give established players a great motivation to not only provide a sufficient amount of local content, but also heavily promote it, in efforts to try to drive demand make it commercially viable to make even larger chunks of their catalog local.

Instead we get this, which is going to do little except encourage the bare minimum under threat of penalty. Just doesn't seem very logical.

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

#215

Post by Fnoord » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 7:03 PM UTC

geoalchimista wrote: post #211

Fnoord wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Right now, there's a bunch of quality EU series on Netflix already such as Casa De Papel and Dark. Just wanna add to this. Babylon Berlin is also shockingly great. Wish Netflix could introduce more series like this to the US market.

Not available for me at Netflix in The Netherlands. And I believe you right away. Everything Tom Tykwer had a hand in which I've seen was ace.

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

#216

Post by krona » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #178

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…

"Protection is bad in all its forms" is an ideological statement of opinion, but you say it like it's a fact. It's not a fact. Marketplaces are amoral. They incentivize supply to satisfy demand. There's nothing that ensures that demand morally good or bad, and the intermediation effect of monetary transactions can disguise morally problematic inputs to goods that satisfy demand, so it can encourage immoral production…

The principle of comparative advantage is one of the few things in economics that is both interesting, and true.

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

#217

Post by kodablah » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

hangonhn wrote: post #157

antidesitter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But will you leave others the choice to watch what they want?

Yes. I think the local content should be available and accessible. But beyond that, it's up to the studios to fight for viewers.

>>> I'm not sure it's entirely wrong

>> But will you leave others the choice to watch what they want?

> Yes

Can't at one point say it's not wrong to restrict content and at another point say you support people watching any content they want. Either you're for laws on amount of content or you accept that there is no ceiling/limits which includes what you subjectively perceive as dumb.

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

#218

Post by dragandj » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 7:07 PM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #196

Fnoord wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Netflix can acquire them [reasonably] cheap Why would the seller sell cheap, knowing that the buyer is forced by law to buy?

The law cannot force Netflix to not buy the cheapest content offered in a country if the quality is irrelevant. All these countries have their own Hollywoods that takes all the money, and tons of small productions and artists living in poverty; there will always be someone to offer dirt cheap content needed to fill the quota. And Netflix can always make its own local production company, produce some crappy reality TV program and generate as much local content as they want.

It's a problem with TV or cinema, since there is limited space and time on it, but with streaming, Netflix can just put it in the catalog and let everyone not click on it...

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

#219

Post by subway » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #184

subway wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Good Place is just an NBC show in the US.

Right -- and Star Trek Discovery is just a CBS show in the US. When either show airs in the US, the new episodes are available immediately on Netflix in the UK.

If I want to watch them in the US, I either have to pay per-episode/season on Google/Amazon/iTunes. CBS offers access to their entire library, but at $10/mo, it's more than a Netflix subscription.

My point is just that comments about the Netflix library being better in the US vs elsewhere holds true less and less every day.

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

#220

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Sep 05, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

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 the side of the EU that foreigners usually don't see.

FWIW, this is the main side of the EU that I'm aware of: laughably bad lawmaking, based on complete unawareness of (or apathy towards?) the concept that the consequences of policies aren't based on wishing on a star that they be a certain way.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not sure I'd rather live (as I do) under the US's policy regime than I would under the EU's. But our pathologies of governance are different ones.