Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 343 posts

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

#301

Post by true_religion »

threeseed wrote: post #286
setr wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite positive what will instead happen is psuedo-companies will prop up in each country, whose specific purpose is to produce a sufficient number of garbage but 'local' film, to license to each streaming provider, to meet the requirement. If netflix has a catalogue of 600, and belgium only has 90 films, then 210 pieces of shit will be produced to fluff it up (and likely explicitly ignored by the recommendation a…

Your entire premise is utter nonsense. Lots of countries have minimum local content provisions. And in none of those countries have their been companies whose sole job it is to produce garbage content. You know why ? Because (a) nobody wants to work or be involved with garbage, (b) the cost of producing garbage is often the same as producing something amazing, (c) its hard for writers to have the motivation to delibe…

Oh as a filmmaker, you might not think you are making garbage. But the studio giving you money to make a film for a quota knows you wont make anything of general appeal. Maybe a few people will like it, but the rest will see it as garbage.

There are dozens of French and German films made under this theory.

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

#302

Post by jimbobimbo »

subway wrote: post #140
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…

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.

Lack of quality streaming content in US is compensated by the huge DVD catalog though.

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

#303

Post by skissane »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #206
jrockway wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the law mandate that the movies be good? Because you can just set up a webcam, chunk it into 2 hour pieces, and call it a movie.

Um. That's already a part of the television culture in some places. Norway has slow tv. I don't watch it, but some folks out there do. https://www.visitnorway.com/media/news-from-norway/finally-t...

At one point when our son was four, almost five, he loved Slow TV, in particular the 7 hour train journey. (We are in Australia so watching it on Netflix.) We'd just put it on for him and he'd play with it on in the background. It is far less annoying than some of the other things he wants to watch (e.g. Commander Keen playthroughs on YouTube). (But, since then, he has kind of lost interest in trains, so it hasn't been on for a few months now.)

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

#304

Post by rbehrends »

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…

> 30% for each country seems really high to me.

The article misstates what the proposal actually says. It's a quota of 30% on "European works". The term is defined in Article 1 (1) (n) of Directive 2010/13/EU [1], which the proposal seeks to amend; it includes works originating in the member states, works originating in countries that are parties to the European Convention on Transfrontier Television, and works coproduced based on agreements between the EU and third countries. (There is an additional provision ensuring that the movies are actually produced mainly in these countries and not just through letterbox companies having a legal presence there.)

So, Netflix can definitely offer French movies to Belgian viewers in order to fulfill their quota or British movies (even after Brexit, the UK will remain a party to the European Convention on Transfrontier Television) to Irish viewers.

An overview on the state of the legislation can, as with most EU legislation, be found on the European Parliament's legislative train website [2].

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:...

[2] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-connec...

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

#305

Post by setr »

Bjartr wrote: post #299
setr wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite positive what will instead happen is psuedo-companies will prop up in each country, whose specific purpose is to produce a sufficient number of garbage but 'local' film, to license to each streaming provider, to meet the requirement. If netflix has a catalogue of 600, and belgium only has 90 films, then 210 pieces of shit will be produced to fluff it up (and likely explicitly ignored by the recommendation a…

For smaller countries, could a service small up exclusive rights to most feature length media, effectiy locking out competitors?

Its more about smaller industries, but in the scenario I described, probably not: there’s no reason that more psuedo-companies wouldn’t spring up, to service the other streaming services.

If you somehow blocked this garbage film industry as well as implemented a minimum requirement rule, such that only “good” films counted to the percentage, and given that “good” is relatively difficult to meet, so supply is severely constrained, then lockout is not unimaginable. But it’d probably still be difficult without additional regulation: prices would simply increase until the strangehold was broken (as a studio, what do I care about netflix’s monopoly if amazon is willing to pony up?). It would still be locked down to a handful of major services, but that’s a scenario that comes about with or without this law

Also an addendum example: chinese actors/directors/producers in film, whose primary value is allowing potential access to china distribution.

When you substitute merit for nationality (or most other things), its trivial to game, and it will be gamed.

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

#306

Post by nikanj »

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.

Growing up in the EU, pretty much all german content we saw was porn. And pretty much all the porn we saw was german.

Looking back, I’m morbidly curious what sort of weird chain of events lead to this.

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

#307

Post by smadge »

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…

Culture is not a commodity. Culture is also not simply entertainment. Stories are vehicles for a society's values and values between societies are different. So stories are not exchangeable in the way that you could exchange some steel for some textiles.

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

#308

Post by smadge »

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.

It is strange for you to think of culture as a commodity to be traded on the global marketplace. British steel and Chinese steel might be effectively indistinguishable, but the same can not be said of British media/values and Chinese media/values.

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

#309

Post by rapsey »

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.

If you live in a theoretical world with no basis in reality.

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

#310

Post by mrkstu »

AllegedAlec wrote: post #17

I've said this before, but the EU overstepped their intended mandate the very moment they decided that they were more than the ECSC. It is beyond me how those numbnuts in Brussels keep thinking up more stupid and useless plans each time. Not only is it completely up to streaming services what they do and do not offer in terms of content, now you force those services to split up what they show per country, decentralis…

Its also going to completely kill narrowcast specialized channels- trying to sell an Anime channel? Sorry, no can do. I assume BBC is going to be unable to sell their channel in European countries as a streaming service if the local to country restriction is real. No Canadian specific channel.

You HAVE to have a wide based supply and therefore you have to be a large international company, likely American, since they will be the only ones who can source the most desirable content.

This is going to be a disaster that will have consequences directly in opposition to the publicly intended ones.

Post reply on HN