EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services
1–10 of 343 posts
Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services
#2Extremely good news: left unchecked, the "market" would let minority communities behind.
Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services
#3> So the move — which will probably draw loud and hair-raising screams from U.S. commentators — is, nonetheless, A Good Thing.
I'm in EU. A Good Thing is letting me watch whatever the fuck I want. It's a real dystopia if the state decides which movies you should or shouldn't watch.
Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services
#4Protectionism 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 subscribers don't want the content they shouldn't be forced to pay for it. I live in Austria and do not want to have my selection reduced or more Austrian content.
Countries should try to compete on the global market place -- entertainment is one area where good content easily jumps borders.
Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services
#5Extremely good news: left unchecked, the "market" would let minority communities behind.
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 to do is coercively transfer wealth from Netflix to their member states, which I consider to be unethical.
Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services
#6Extremely good news: left unchecked, the "market" would let minority communities behind.
Not just minorities, but also anything that might enrich or challenge the mind in any significant way. BBC Radio 3 [0] would not exist in a free market, only dumbed-down 'pop classics' stations. The world would be significantly more stupid as a result.
Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services
#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 there will be thousands of movies available, if Netflix can only get the rights to 90 Belgian films, they aren't going to pay through the nose to create or purchase many more movies. They will just trim down the available movies in Belgium to 300. After all, no competition will be able to do any better.
Worst case scenario, someone may corner the market on digital rights to some country's movies, then they will be the only ones that can provide any sort of streaming service. That country will only have access to an expensive service with a limited selection.
In those cases, the locals will just continue to pirate movies as the only way to reasonable access them online, and the local film industry will be no better off than before as their consumers will be accustomed to getting their movies for free.
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.
Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services
#8> So the move — which will probably draw loud and hair-raising screams from U.S. commentators — is, nonetheless, A Good Thing. I'm in EU. A Good Thing is letting me watch whatever the fuck I want. It's a real dystopia if the state decides which movies you should or shouldn't watch.
It's hard to watch a movie that never gets produced.
Let's not pretend there aren't strong tendencies towards centralization and homogenization in media. (That we could, most charitably, ascribe to efficiency and risk management)
On the other side, yes, protectionism leads to a lot of otherwise unmarketable things being produced (looking at you, France).
But balance doesn't seem like too much to ask. Because Hollywood is doing fuck all for diversity.
Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services
#9How can this work in practice? Can the 30% be from any EU country?
I'm Irish, we don't produce that much stuff. If it has to represent 30% of the catalogue, that catalogue is going to have to shrink massively.
Re: EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services
#10> So the move — which will probably draw loud and hair-raising screams from U.S. commentators — is, nonetheless, A Good Thing. I'm in EU. A Good Thing is letting me watch whatever the fuck I want. It's a real dystopia if the state decides which movies you should or shouldn't watch.
I don't think anybody's proposing a quota on individuals. You can watch whatever you want.