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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

#61
How exactly is it going to be possible to make sure that 30% of the catalogue comes from the country the customer lives in?

If they provide service in more than 3 countries (and, they do) then it is a mathematical impossibility to meet that limit in every single country. I don't get it.

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

#62
An unintended consequence of this will be that streaming services will need to ring-fence European produced content from other European countries, as it would count towards the non-native quota. This has the potential to significantly reduce the viewership for European-produced content that might otherwise be watched elsewhere.

For example: a German film might be kept out of the Austrian catalogue to prevent increasing the quota of Austrian content above what's available.

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

#63
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…

> Imagine if every state in the US did this, what Netflix would look like. 30% of movies in Indiana need to be created in Indiana. Netflix would suck, ha.

Europe is much more culturally diverse than the US. This is what this regulation is about.

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

#64
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% of movies in Indiana need to be created in Indiana Seems like the media production is pretty centralized in the US. It's hard to compare with Europe, where most nations have different languages, their own TV stations (producing their own content) and their own funds to support productions of movies. It would be a shame if these biotopes of media production would get dried out because of US monopolies. At least…

But the size of EU member states varies drastically. Germany is home to 83,000,000 people, Malta just over 440,000.

Is the EU suggesting that Malta's population should only be able to stream content 2x the volume of its domestic content output? And that's assuming the likes of Netflix was able to hoover up all of that domestic output which seems untenable.

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

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the market just matches providers with consumers. Netflix and other providers respond to demand - if they aren't showing the content you want, it's likely that (given any reasonable level of demand) someone else will be. Forcing providers to produce content with less demand is purely ideological because if the demand were high, they would already be producing content to match it. Which they do. What the EU is trying…

> if the demand were high Culture is not just about satisfying demands, it's also about giving people the opportunity to stumble across things they weren't even looking for, and so enrich themselves in unexpected ways. As a teenager I had no particular desire to go looking for ancient harpsichord music, difficult jazz, sombre poetry, magnificent choral worship or even five-minute recordings of nothing but church bell…

You have just made the opposite point you wanted to: by requiring 30% local culture you have prevented someone from stumbling across a different non-local culture, simply because the math cannot work out without censoring something else.

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

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the market just matches providers with consumers. Netflix and other providers respond to demand - if they aren't showing the content you want, it's likely that (given any reasonable level of demand) someone else will be. Forcing providers to produce content with less demand is purely ideological because if the demand were high, they would already be producing content to match it. Which they do. What the EU is trying…

> if the demand were high Culture is not just about satisfying demands, it's also about giving people the opportunity to stumble across things they weren't even looking for, and so enrich themselves in unexpected ways. As a teenager I had no particular desire to go looking for ancient harpsichord music, difficult jazz, sombre poetry, magnificent choral worship or even five-minute recordings of nothing but church bell…

why would you expect Netflix to provide culture? Culture and commercialisation don't mix. Go find an independent organisation that is geared towards lifting up cultural works - trying to force commercial entities to publish obscure art by law is going to harm both the quality of the commerce and the quality of the art. Most people don't want to tune into Netflix to experience five minutes of church bells.

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

#67

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…

>If a state wants to sponsor work and make it available at low costs I'm sure content services would jump to provide it. //

Who should they sponsor? By getting the people who are already efficiently producing programmes they at least seem to be targeting for efficient content production?

In general I appreciate the sentiment - both financial and cultural - but the proposed implementation does seem barmy. A sensible quota would be something like 1%.

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

#68
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given a choice of dystopias, I would also prefer to avoid the one where "the market" decides what I should or shouldn't watch. Nothing here is suggesting that you should be prevented from watching Jersey Shore, or the Kardashians, or whatever superhero action flick is in vogue this month, if that's your taste; but if it all came down to money then that's all any of us would get whether we like it or not.

Given a choice of dystopias, I would also prefer to avoid the one where "the market" decides what I should or shouldn't watch. You really want the state deciding what you watch?

BBC and Channel 4 both make excellent content.

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

#69
post #40
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm as much of a Black Panther fan as anyone... but how many Hispanic Marvel superheroes are there?

Loads? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latino_superheroes

Let's be serious, Miles Morales (as post-Parker Spiderman) is probably the only Marvel superhero on that list people know. Maybe Robbie Reyes (as Ghost Rider) or Kyle Rayner (as Green Lantern).

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

#70

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…

>It is beyond me how those numbnuts in Antwerp keep thinking up more stupid and useless plans each time You may question your sources of information.

Antwerp would be very fitting though (a "twerp" is an ignorant fool).
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