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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

#251

Post by GW150914 »

wutbrodo wrote: post #220
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 E…

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.

You know how the saying goes, you can live under US domestic policy or US foreign policy, but you can’t escape US policy. The idea of the EU was that by working together the member states could get their way in the face of that US foreign policy more often than they would on their own. In the absence of a strong EU, the US and China are pretty much unrestrained in Europe.

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

#252

Post by bhelkey »

xugo wrote: post #90

I'd rather EU forces stream providers to have one account valid for the whole of Europe. I'm French, lived 10 years in England and now in Spain, I want one iTunes account to give me access to the full EU library and not needing 3 seperate accounts. Same thing with Netflix and Digital TV. That would also help Europeans understand their neighbours better. These region-restricted distribution contracts should not exist…

It seems to me that this will make that problem significantly worse. If at least 30% of content in an EU country is local to that country then this local content cannot be available in every EU country. The percentages simply wouldn't add up.

I would bet that the majority of this local programming will only be available in the country where it is produced.

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

#253

Post by ZainRiz »

andrewla wrote: post #240
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…

To what degree is the regulation about restricting individual's choice vs. forcing corporate compliance? If a European user chooses to access Netflix through a VPN, are they in violation of the regulation, or is the VPN provider, or is Netflix, for not doing sufficient checking? Frankly, it's amazing that so many regional policies, both regulatory (like GDPR) and policy (region encoding) have survived in the modern i…

To take the EU's perspective, it's not about restricting individual's choice, but to encourage other local choices as well

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

#254

Post by ZainRiz »

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...

Internationally, there is a lot of concern over US cultural imperialism.

This appears to be an outgrowth of that.

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

#256

Post by jdavis703 »

xky wrote: post #255

Can this be easily gamed by just uploading a boat load of local, public domain content and burying it in the depths of the catalogue?

Sure, but then the regulators will be back with more stringent regulations, for example requiring a certain amount of spending or streaming time be spent on local content. I would expect the big players (Netflix, Hulu) will want to avoid angering the regulators. Smaller players may play games, but regulators probably aren't as concerned (for example how would a niche service like Crunchyroll that focuses on anime comply?).

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

#257

Post by jacquesm »

maxsilver wrote: post #137
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 ne…

> Do the Dutch hate their own programmes?

Yep.

> Why would they bother making shows they don't want to watch?

Subsidies.

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

#258

Post by [deleted] »

wutbrodo wrote: post #192
seszett wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference, IMDB shows 297 movies from Malta, and Netflix' catalogue in Malta offers 716 movies. So even assuming the current catalogue is completely devoid of Maltese movies, there is still some margin available to fulfil the strictest requirements. Although I think the actual requirements is to include 30% movies from the EU .

I don't think your interpretation of the requirements is correct. From upthread: > 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%)

[deleted]

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

#259

Post by jacquesm »

wutbrodo wrote: post #220
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 E…

The EU does a piss poor job of explaining to its constituents what its advantages are, that's for sure.

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

#260

Post by pjc50 »

krona wrote: post #216
barrkel wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Only if there's a single metric for "better".
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