Netflix and Amazon Could Face Content Quotas In Europe (dailymail.co.uk)

jader3rd quotes an articles from The Daily Mail about a new EU proposal to be published next week: Netflix and Amazon could be forced to make French, German and even Estonian films and TV shows by the EU. The US companies could also be hit with taxes to raise funds to support the work of film-makers in Europe. The proposal is thought to be driven by the French, who are particularly fearful of their cinema and TV programmes being eclipsed by English language productions... One draft says the aims is to create 'a more level playing field in the promotion of European works by obliging on-demand services to reserve at least 20 percent share for European works in their catalogues and to ensure adequate prominence of such works'.
French may become the world's most-spoken language by 2050 (due to its popularity among the fast-growing population of Africa). But even so, should U.S.-based companies be facing "regional quotas" for the content they're offering?

Comments

Another example of regulatory overreach

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix should laugh at such frivolous demands.

Re: Another example of regulatory overreach

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix should make a show about a bunch of French-Canadians talking about how fucking stupid socialist laws from France are that require content to be in French. It should be super low budget with three or four people sitting around a coffee shop table just taking about how France doesn't even know how small and crappy it's economy and world role are these days. As a backdrop there could be a bulletin board with a bunch of anti-EU comments in English, job advertisements in German and requests for long long term investors in Greek.

Re: Another example of regulatory overreach

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant!

Re: Another example of regulatory overreach

[lgw]

Add some gratuitously naked French chicks, and you've made a mainstream French film.

Re: Another example of regulatory overreach

[Anonymous Coward]

That won't work because spoken Canadian French is absolutely unintelligible for someone from France, Belgium or some African French-speaking country.

Just like the small-government randian fantasies so many Americans are falling for are virtually unknown in the rest of world (except for 'cultural studies' circles).

And, btw, it's "its" not "it's" economy is small and crappy.

Re: Another example of regulatory overreach

[Anonymous Coward]

If you yanks are so much for the creators rights not to bother with other languages, stop dubbing asian shows. Learn to read subtitles, or even *gasp* learn a language.

Re: Another example of regulatory overreach

[Anonymous Coward]

If you yanks are so much for the creators rights not to bother with other languages, stop dubbing asian shows. Learn to read subtitles, or even *gasp* learn a language.

Only difference is that dubs are done by 3rd parties rather than the asian studios themselves, usually under contracts from the original creators.

Also, most asian shows don't even get dubs, at least not the good ones.

Re: Another example of regulatory overreach

[maroberts]

Add some gratuitously naked French chicks, and you've made a mainstream French film.

I think I'm going to be browsing the French content on Netflix real soon.

Re: Another example of regulatory overreach

[Salgak1]

Add some gratuitously naked French chicks, and you've made a mainstream French film.

Bare Naked Ladies ? They're CANADIAN. . . .not French (grin)

Re: Another example of regulatory overreach

[HornWumpus]

Even better, the frogs love it when you speak their language badly.

We should get some Cajuns to make content for France as well. Perhaps attempt to teach the French to cook, they will love that.

Broadcast middle school French class plays and call it a day.

Re: Another example of regulatory overreach

[mysidia]

Add some gratuitously naked French chicks

I'm suddenly interested in watching it, not for the other stuff though....

Same thing in Canada

[innocent_white_lamb]

The Canadian government has "always" had a film-making pool that all cable television companies are required to put a percentage of their revenue into, which is then doled out to make Canadian movies and television shows (most of which nobody actually watches, of course.) The cable companies are also required to show a certain percentage of Canadian television shows, and radio stations must play a certain percentage of Canadian music.

None of this currently applies to outfits like Netflix, and the incumbent cable companies and movie and television producers are pushing for them to also have to put money into their fund. I suspect it won't be long before an attempt is made to actually do it -- it gets brought up regularly.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> film-making pool that all cable television companies are required to put a percentage of their revenue into, which is then doled out to make Canadian movies and television shows (most of which nobody actually watches, of course.)

Bullshit - Terrence and Phillip came from SOMEWHERE, didn't they? Plus we wouldn't have had "Storage War Canada" or "Underneath the Tunes" without this valuable resource.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Nidi62]

radio stations must play a certain percentage of Canadian music.

Feel free to take back Bieber anytime to help fill that quota.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[AchilleTalon]

Yeah, and to show the requested percentage of local/regional/national/provincial content, what are they doing? They rebrand USA shows at a royality fee. Then, they claim local/regional/national/provincial content because the puppets in the show are Canadian.

In short, what they are asking for, is Netflix and others to pay for the royalities they are getting when one of their show is rebranded (I am not aware it happened to Netflix yet, but since they are now a producer, it is a matter of time before it happen).

The exact reason I no longer subscribe to any TV channel here and I am a subscriber of Netflix, is because I am tired of the cheap rebranded productions we are presented. I don't care anymore about the French content. So, I hope my dollars will fund no more rebranding. I better see the original stuff.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[ArmoredDragon]

That was before the cola wars devastated Canada. Nowadays Justin Beiber is the pride of Canada and presently reigns supreme.

Re: Same thing in Canada

[C0R1D4N]

Do all the TV series that are filmed in Vancouver count as Canadian productions?

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

They rebrand USA shows...

What exactly do you mean by that? What Canadian shows are rebrandings of USian shows? Is that anything like Netflix "original" programs that are knock-offs of British shows? (I'm thinking of one, in particular, that was promoted that way.) Are you suggesting that there were US versions of The Littlest Hobo, Beachcombers or King of Kensington?

Re:Same thing in Canada

[quantaman]

The Canadian government has "always" had a film-making pool that all cable television companies are required to put a percentage of their revenue into, which is then doled out to make Canadian movies and television shows (most of which nobody actually watches, of course.) The cable companies are also required to show a certain percentage of Canadian television shows, and radio stations must play a certain percentage of Canadian music.

None of this currently applies to outfits like Netflix, and the incumbent cable companies and movie and television producers are pushing for them to also have to put money into their fund. I suspect it won't be long before an attempt is made to actually do it -- it gets brought up regularly.

And it's a great idea.

Having strong domestic media is critical if a country is going to defend itself against foreign influence.

Politically it keeps people engaged domestically since they're interested in their own nation and the issues relevant to their nation.

If you want to see what happens if you let yourself be dominated culturally look at the Russian pseudo-invasion of Ukraine. Sure the Russians imported a bunch of fighters and had an even bigger army to back them up, but that tactic was only viable because Ukraine hadn't achieve a proper national identity. There were a lot of East Ukrainians who identified more as Russian and were happy to back the invasion. If Ukraine had better domestic media that contingent would be smaller and Russia would never have had the opportunity.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Luthair]

He was just a kid on Youtube before you guys took him, seems like the US is to blame ;)

Re: Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I remember during my three years living in Canada, hearing a lot of Rush on the classic music radio stations for this reason - Canadian quota laws. Even classical music stations appeared to have to abide by the content laws - lots of Glenn Gould, and The Tenors "Hallelujah" played practically every hour.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Pig Hogger]

all cable television companies are required to put a percentage of their revenue into, which is then doled out to make Canadian movies and television shows (most of which nobody actually watches, of course.)

Except for Québec movies who are wildly popular about. We have to keep in mind that English Canada has no significant culture of it’s own, given how much it is not much distinguishable from American “culture”

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Having strong domestic media is critical if a country is going to defend itself against foreign influence.

Politically it keeps people engaged domestically since they're interested in their own nation and the issues relevant to their nation.

So you agree with Trump ? or are you just parroting him without understanding what you are saying ?

Re:Same thing in Canada

[quantaman]

Having strong domestic media is critical if a country is going to defend itself against foreign influence.

Politically it keeps people engaged domestically since they're interested in their own nation and the issues relevant to their nation.

So you agree with Trump ? or are you just parroting him without understanding what you are saying ?

Neither.

Having a strong national identity isn't the same as nativism. The Canadian identity is multicultural, it's because we've maintained that identity that we're able to do things like welcome tens of thousands of Syrian refugees and mostly resist Tea Party influences moving into our politics.

I don't think Americans are well equipped to understand this issue. Your media dominates everything, especially domestically. Aside from the occasional BBC hit or trendy foreign film everything you see comes from an American perspective.

Other countries don't have the same economy of scale and have trouble achieving the same level of production quality, so people don't follow the media produced by their own culture. When people get disconnected it's harder to keep them engaged in society.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[jader3rd]

While I don't agree with the reasoning, I at least understand the argument for broadcast media. There's a limited amount of channels, the government licenses out the channels, and a certain amount of local content is desirable. But with pay-per-view, or subscription services, it makes no sense.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[jader3rd]

Your argument is that Ukraine deserved to be taken over because Ukrainians didn't have enough locally produced content. I disagree; that's a horrible reason for invasion.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[HornWumpus]

'Trailer Park Boys' is doing a fine job of representing Canadian culture, are there other Canadian TV shows?

Netflix exposed the brilliance of 'Troll Hunter' to the world. Europeans should thank them and take a hint. Nobody want's to see movies summarizing Proost, blow Proost up 'real good' and French movies will find an audience. The French should quit whining and compete.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Dog-Cow]

That wasn't the argument at all. That you think it is tells us that you are an incurably stupid shit.

Re: Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Try visiting somewhere other than toronto or ottawa. And other than the language in qc the culture here is more american that the rest of the country (other than the big cities). "I need to fuck everyone because everyone is fucking someone". other than a couple of good politicians its just a grabfest.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[evilviper]

doled out to make Canadian movies and television shows (most of which nobody actually watches, of course.)

Actually what happens is US content producers take the money as a tax-break to film some scenes in Canada. Set in the US, but using Canadian cities for the exterior shots, and/or sometimes interiors done on a Canadian sound-stage. No sweat. Suddenly its a Canadian film/TV show.

The worst part of the Canadian rules is the delivery of that content... Canadians aren't allowed to get Dish/DirecTV. Instead they have to pay much more for a local satellite TV service, which has fewer channels they want, but at least lots of local Canada content.... gah

Re: Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

19-2 , Corner Gas, North of 60, Kids in the Hall, Nature of Things, there have been a bunch of popular Canadian shows, just not all of them reach international audiences

Re: Same thing in Canada

[Mashiki]

No. It only counts in terms of amount of content on broadcast TV/Radio/etc. Some of the rules are downright bad, some of the required content requires stations to have 50% of the content they have on the air to be "canadian made" or they lose their broadcasters license. For anyone that wants to read up on it, the legislation is called "CanCon" and many people have been pissed off at it for years. Since it also allows broadcasters to highjack out-of-country stations and replace them with Canadian stations.

An example: Say a show is on ABC and on CTV, the cancon rules allow the cable company to take CTV's channel and paste it overtop of ABC's channel and fully block everything on ABC from US commercials to the stations broadcast events. Anyone who says "it's a great idea" has never lived in a country where media isn't free. It's not great, it's not good. Eventually you start going with a, "If they're already highjacking for TV shows, what else are they changing/blocking/etc."

You can't forget other cases that allow this too, for example court imposed broadcast bans. In the US, you're allowed to know whatever you want about a court case. In Canada, the media is blocked from publishing anything, in extreme cases the media from other countries is blocked. A good example would be the Paul Bernardo/Karla Homolka trial, where the US media was blacked(the entire newscasts were blocked) out here in Canada unless you were lucky enough to pull TV channels OTA.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Mashiki]

You should really get outside of the big cities. That's the only place where canadian identity is multicultural, the rest of the country doesn't like it. Canada is likely about to experience the same cultural awakening that Europe and it's multicultural idealism is experiencing. One also can't forget that said multicultural idea has allowed ghettos to start appearing here in Canada, something that is new to the Cancuk landscape.

But if you don't think Americans aren't well equipped to understand this, you don't know Americans just like you don't know Canadians outside of the social bubbles in big cities.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[quantaman]

'Trailer Park Boys' is doing a fine job of representing Canadian culture, are there other Canadian TV shows?

As the other poster mentioned there's lots and I think a lot of them are of high enough quality to survive on a major US network. The thing is they generally don't show up there because they made for a Canadian audience.

Trailer Park Boys is actually an interesting case. The new seasons were made to cross over to an American audience and it's actually changed the show. Personally I don't find them to be quite as good, but an American audience might disagree.

Netflix exposed the brilliance of 'Troll Hunter' to the world. Europeans should thank them and take a hint. Nobody want's to see movies summarizing Proost, blow Proost up 'real good' and French movies will find an audience. The French should quit whining and compete.

Yeah... that's not why they're having trouble finding audiences.

Everyone's second language is English, that gives Hollywood a global audience and way more money. If you want to make good shows and movies you need money, and if you want to make several good movies in the hopes that one turns out to be a hit you need a lot of money.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

> There were a lot of East Ukrainians who identified more as Russian

No, they didn't "identify" but they were russians. In the 1930s Joe Stalin had half of Ukraine exterminated via artificially induced famine (the Holodomor) by confiscating all crop at army gunpoint. Afterwards, the hiatus was filled by importing millions of russian proletariat scum, those too drunken to be factory blue collar workers. They had no idea whatsoever concerning agricultural work either, that's why USSR fought WW2 on US canned food rations. That despite Ukraine having the world's most fertile black soil, the "chernozjom".

Now let's mention that Putin is the grandson of Vladimir Lenin's personal kosher cook (no kidding!) and you can see that the USSR is still alive and kicking its neighbours while they are down. There is a reason Poland has arrested some russian agents among its political elite during the last week. They don't want to end up like the Ukraine. Meanwhile, a Putin-minion called Viktor Orban is quickly establishing himself as the dictator of Hungary.

Re: Same thing in Canada

[stealth_finger]

19-2 , Corner Gas, North of 60, Kids in the Hall, Nature of Things, there have been a bunch of popular Canadian shows, just not all of them reach international audiences

Due South? Was that Canadian? It had a mountie...mounty...one of them guys in the red coats in it.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[stealth_finger]

Was the argument they would have been more resistant to be being taken over if they had their own 'Doctors' or 'Home & Away' to rally behind and unify them?

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you don't think Americans aren't well equipped to understand this, you don't know Americans just like you don't know Canadians outside of the social bubbles in big cities.

So would that be the silent 19% majority of Canadians that live in rural areas?... or are you counting larger towns and small cities as well?

Re: Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to pierce your bubble or anything but Ukraine wasn't controlled by the USSR for the most of the war. Plus unlike Iowa it was an actual battlefield, so not as conducive to farming

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Mashiki]

So would that be the silent 19% majority of Canadians that live in rural areas?... or are you counting larger towns and small cities as well?

I live in the SWON. A large town in Canada generally has a population under 150k(in most peoples minds--if you don't live in Canada and have never traveled it the scale and scope of this part of the world is kind of amazing), and small cities usually start around 200k in most peoples minds. Even at that, the cultural gap between a place like Toronto or Ottawa is vastly different compared to a place like Kitchener/Waterloo and the gap is even further when compared to a city like Woodstock or London. Even where I live now it's considered rural, even though the population of the city is ~50k and the county has nearly 500k people living in it. Though many in Toronto would call this area "the land of rednecks" and "socially backwards people."

With that, people like their nice quiet life. They don't like cultural invasions of people who don't want to live like the rest of the people do. They don't want to bend over backwards because someone who's immigrated here has gotten their panties in a twist because they don't want xyz thing going on and disrupting the way of life in the area. If on the other hand a person immigrates and goes with the flow of the area, there's no problems. A good example would be the bend-over-backwards mentality of school boards in many areas to allow muslims to hold religious prayers on school property or attempt to demand that they be held in class. The first, no one really cares about as long as they're not trying to shove it down anyone elses throat. The latter? Everyone cares about. Why? Because back in the 1980's when the lords prayer was banned from being allowed in classrooms everyone was fine with it. No one wants special exemptions if they can't play by the same rules. The big city folks see that as "socially backwards" the average person outside of there? They see it as socially correct, after all everyone has to play by the same rules.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[sabbede]

Well, Netflix does carry a lot of Canadian shows. Including "Trailer Park Boys", which they picked up and produced another season or two of. I think that had more to do with its cult status than a desire to promote Canadian culture.

Personally, I'd like it if they at least picked up Canadian classics like The Kids in the Hall, Corner Gas, Dan for Mayor, SCTV, etc.

Re: Same thing in Canada

[sabbede]

Well, Kids in the Hall did, but that was an unstoppable comedic juggernaut. Trailer Park Boys is now a Netflix "Original", so I guess they can claim to be producing original Canadian content.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[bluefoxlucid]

It's like nobody understands this actually makes their country poorer.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Zo.... parlez-vous fellatio?

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

We admit our mistake now do the neighborly thing and take him back.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only fair. Either make Netflix and the like do it, or stop require that cable/radio do it.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[mlts]

It makes sense to have a pool of money and some allocation for domestic culture on the airwaves, otherwise a country's culture will just be overwhelmed by what is cheap and easy to produce or import, such as "reality" shows or $COUNTRY Idol, which take little to no thought to produce, and require very little F/X work, outside of a basic set design and some "stars" with snide commentary, decent looks under airbrush makeup, and little else.

I respect France and Germany for this. Music-wise, this is what the US desperately needs. Not another boy band or "band" put together from individuls by a MBA and promoed to death, but an actual shot at being able to do something with a band.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

That was before the cola wars devastated Canada. Nowadays Justin Beiber is the pride of Canada and presently reigns supreme.

He's a fraud who doesn't write his own shit, JUST LIKE ANNE MURRAY! >:-(

Re:Same thing in Canada

[cayenne8]

How about another RUSH?

We all liked them!!! An actual band with talent!!

Re:Same thing in Canada

[cayenne8]

...we're able to do things like welcome tens of thousands of Syrian refugees"

Well, you have fun with that, eh?

Just make sure and KEEP them all up there, and don't let them cross the border to come bomb or shoot Americans....

Re:Same thing in Canada

[Shirley Marquez]

Classic TV isn't a big part of what Netflix does. Those shows are much more likely to show up on Hulu.

Re: Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

The Degrassi series of recent years.

Rookie Blue, series just finished.

Years ago, Anne of Green Gables.

Republic of Doyle.

Re: Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Watched the first few episodes of Letterkenny.

Check it out, it's far from city plot as there can be.

Re: Same thing in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you give some examples of shows/movies taking Telefilm money and setting in USA? I can't think of any.
Watched "Guidance" yesterday. Shot in Toronto, references Winnipeg, shows Canadian money.

Some shows don't go out of their way to show Canada, but I live in a BC town where they frequently shoot a rock's throw away.

Not all Canadian shows get the Telefilm cash, but they'll all get the Provincial tax credits.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[HornWumpus]

Troll hunter is in Norwegian. There are about three people in the USA that speak Norwegian. Yet it's watchable, subtitles mostly optional (unless you need to know; it's christian blood being used to bait traps, the one that got ate was secretly a god botherer etc), and is likely making as much off Netflix as it did in the theater in Norway.

The frogs weren't bitching when froggish was everybodies second language and the language of science. Now the shoe is on the other foot, I think Netflix should just ignore them, perhaps move their servers out of France.

If they ultimately lose in court, serve up content from Quebec and Louisiana, in very bad French. Especially children's programming. Get a generation of frogs speaking Cajun.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[quantaman]

You should really get outside of the big cities. That's the only place where canadian identity is multicultural, the rest of the country doesn't like it. Canada is likely about to experience the same cultural awakening that Europe and it's multicultural idealism is experiencing. One also can't forget that said multicultural idea has allowed ghettos to start appearing here in Canada, something that is new to the Cancuk landscape.

But if you don't think Americans aren't well equipped to understand this, you don't know Americans just like you don't know Canadians outside of the social bubbles in big cities.

I'm not sure this is true, I grew up in a small town and while it's certainly more conservative they still bought into the idea of multiculturalism.

Europe is in a different situation for a few reasons. First most European nations have strong historical ethnic identities that are hard to integrate with immigration. The immigration they get also tends to be lower skilled since it's easier for poor people to get there, so they fall into the ghettos.

A lot of the Canadian immigrants are already well off so they tend to move into the middle class within the first couple generations.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[sabbede]

Ahh.... That explains a lot.

Re:Same thing in Canada

[HornWumpus]

In other words, Canada controls its borders. The same thing Americans are called evil for wanting. Europe is just starting to get a taste. At least it will shut some of the eurotrash's talking down.

How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Foxhoundz]

I'm talking the whole shebang: Google, Netflix, Yahoo, Amazon Web Services, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Let's see how fast and to what degree of stability could the EU sustain its own content network without major US backing.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent idea. In fact the world should ban US content, i.e. exclude the USA from 96% of the worlds population.
And while you are at it, keep your military, your drones, your CIA meddling , your economic bullying and your other "US interests" at home too.

The EU is already a BIGGER economy than the USA, China is only a few years away from being the 2nd biggest economy.

Peak USA was the 1950s-1970s since then it has stagnated while the rest of the world has grown.
Turns out the USA needs the rest of the world more than the rest of the world needs the USA.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe is too big a market to abandon.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

You could say the same thing about the US. How long would the US survive with out Europe? All the US has to sell anymore is weapons and entertainment. Do you not realize if you go into a market selling your product you also have to play by the rules of the countries you are in? I forgot that Mr. Michael Fay American thinks they should not follow the laws while in other countries. It is funny though that you think Facebook or Twitter offer any real value. When will you grow up and learn maybe the way things function in the US are not always the best?

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

ha ha greedy merkin media corporations walk away and leave money on the table ? Never fucking happen they will just buy some more american politicians to add it to the tpp that they can sue to recover the cost of doing business there or ven better get paid and still not have to do any business.

Merkins pissed of god acccidently put their money in other peoples pockets since 1776.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[viperidaenz]

There are no European countries in the TPP. It's already been signed, so can't be changed without all countries re-signing.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

We would LOVE to do that. But everytime we do, some little whiney bitch like yourself complains that we didnt help . Or one of your beloved EU countries goes into some shithole, fucks shit all up, and cries to the US to come save them (and them blames us for all the shit they fucked up).

I also find it amusing that you come to a US site to complain about how much you hate the US and everything it does. All the while you use hardware/software designed by US companies (using IP owned by US companies), consume US media, and jerk off to pictures of Hillary Clinton. (Or Bill if thats your thing)

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey if they want to be on the market they have to follow the rules here -as have local companies. People still would have the choice here to watch the movies they want but a certain percentage of local produced content to 'offer' is something regulators can ask here for.

If not no one needs them here - there are enough other choices and for sure it would make local providers in Europe to develop much better and a part of the flow of money from Europe to America would go away - this can only be a good thing. (as they try to go away without paying proper taxes in Europe anyway - also something we have no choice but to stop as good as possible)

It is still so that we in Euope can decide the rules how those companies have to behave on our markets. (and as another poster said - regulations in Australia, Canada and other countries are not much different there - they maybe did not touch the Netflixes of the the world yet (if it did not happen it will happen soon).

I dont think there is a reason why it should not work. I must say we particularly enjoy French movies on Amazon prime because the American content which is freely available in Prime has often already been shown in TV here.

Having more choice can only be a good thing.

Dietmar

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

ha ha dumbshit thinks americans invented the computer.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

We're talking about TV. There's no "needs" here: the US doesn't "need" European TV, nor does Europe "need" US TV. In fact, nobody needs TV. It's entertainment. Lighten up, Francis.

There's plenty the EU could learn from the US, like how to conduct fiscal transfers between regions without having the richer region complain. In the US, money flows from rich states to poor states without a problem or even a complaint; in the EU, the Germans will do anything to keep Greeks from ever being employed or having the stability to start families. The EU is designed to enrich merchants in the most developed nations (free trade zone, German-driven monetary policy) without any actual fiscal solidarity (no wealth transfer across borders, no common safety net, no common debt mechanism) that could relieve the iniquity that the EU has created.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[meerling]

Depends on which of the 3 "first computer" you want to count. Two of which were by people in the UK.
On the other hand, making personal computers available to the masses, that was definitely from the US.

Of course, getting into a dick waving contest over who made what has pretty much nothing to do with the topic, which in case you've forgotten in your excitement to pull your dick out and start waving it around, is non-european media providers being forced provide and even pay for specific language programming.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't an EU thing. This is a few specific countries that have laws on the books to "preserve" their cultural identity.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, fucking please, do it.

American media, American food, American culture, fucking ban it from Europe.
It ALL sucks.
The only decent thing that has come out of that shithole in the past several decades if the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And that is all built on a legacy of works done by people that mostly hate what the US has become.

America is capitalist-scum central, corporatists making the country unequal, multinationals putting out ever increasing toxic food, ever-increasing failure rates of hardware and everything under the sun.
American, the poorest 1st world country around. There are 3rd world countries with a better economy than you. But no, keep spouting "BUT MAH GDPS!", learn some damn Econ while you are at it as well. GDP is a worthless metric outside of trade and only trade.
Oh NO, I said a bad thing, capitalist! In before all the freedum-kiddies whine about socialists and damned commies ruining the world.
OH, WAIT, no, that never happened. And the extremist ones were killed off before you came in and decided you won world war 2 when it was already in the clean-up stages of the war. (just like every war you were in not started by yourselves, which you all lost! pfft)
Worthless country is worthless. America won't even get the chance to grow up as a nation, it will end itself long before then. (or the world if it doesn't get its way, literally run by children)

Also, fuck your "blah but you are using an american websights", I'd phone you up to call you all shit as well, but this is cheaper.
Also, you never invented the damn internet either. It was a joint project, learn some damn history.
You literally cannot invent the internet. HINT, it's in the damn name. INTERNATIONAL.
The internet is absolutely nothing like ARPANET either. The Internet would never been able to survive a nuke.
It can't even survive a slightly irate Pakistani blocking Youtube from the world. (which happened twice)
Packet switching was done before even the US and UK both came up with it independently, and better, by a few years.
It is the reason the internet works as well as it does now, without it we'd have been stuck with the crap version US-UK made, with even higher latencies than we already have.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Applehu Akbar]

Attempt no broadcasting there?

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

making personal computers available to the masses, that was definitely from the US.

Asia thanks you.

You made China the richest nation on Earth while you idiots fell for their tricks.
Now America is one of the poorest and most unequal Developed Nations on Earth. Oh, and the most expensive everything.
But hey, at least you can get some freedum guns and toxic food for cheap. How's that working out for ya?

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the US wouldn't like it.
Those companies would abandon the USA as they make most of their profits from the 96% already. The growth potential fro the rest of the world is much much higher than for the USA.

The US is more dependant on the rest of the world than the rest of the world needs the US.

And pointing out the truth and disagreeing with US policy is not "Hating the US", so put your school girl histrionics away.

Go look at where the US ranks in
Health
Education
Free speech
Democracy
Crime
Freedom of the press
Welfare
Free trade
etc etc etc, its not good, and its getting worse. The USA 40-50 years ago was a MUCH better place.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like nobody knows where the Pacific Ocean is. Or Europe. Hint: they're on opposite sides of the planet!

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Food production... nuff said. Eat shit...

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're a Trump supporter? Cause if we can get him in, you will be on your own. Which, from your comments will make us all happier.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Go look at where the US ranks in

It's not even clear what those "rankings" are supposed to mean. Do you think spending a lot of money on welfare is good or bad? Because the US actually ranks first in welfare spending. Do you think a high voter turnout or a low voter turnout is good for democracy? You may have had it drilled into you that high voter turnout is good, but that's not ncessarily so.

etc etc etc, its not good, and its getting worse. The USA 40-50 years ago was a MUCH better place.

The US is by far the most popular destination for emigrants, and for good reason.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/153...

Speaking as an immigrant to the US myself, I agree: the US is still by far the best place in the world to live in, except if you're part of the global ruling class; for the global ruling class, Europe is much more friendly.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[sumdumass]

Silly rabbit. ... all that will happen is the cost of entertainment in Europe will increase. You will get more advertising by default and subscription fees will increase. You might even get regular shows with crappy audio dubbing just to comply but they won't be quite the same.

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? Clinton and Democrats are at least as much economic isolationists as Trump. The only "interaction" Hillary wants with the rest of the world is to bomb it into oblivion.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

you go into a market selling your product you also have to play by the rules of the countries you are in?

Not necessarily. We can also subvert those rules, demonstrate how absurd they are, work towards change in those countries, get the US government to pressure the French government, etc.

I think Netflix will have a great time producing inane lengthy films with ugly actors on low quality sets in original French mocking France and French impotence. Vive la France!

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh-emm-jeepers I'm so offended by your anti American sentiment!

Just kidding. I've shit more offensive things. Rant score 3/10.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[ravenshrike]

Excuse me while I laugh at your complete fucking idiocy.

HAAHAHHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAhAHAHAHAHA!

Okay, now that that's out of the way shit for brains, the inter in internet stands for between. It has nothing to do with the term international besides using the same prefix. Also, less A joint project so much as multiple projects, some of which collaborated and a few who later were joint projects from the start.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm talking the whole shebang: Google, Netflix, Yahoo, Amazon Web Services, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Let's see how fast and to what degree of stability could the EU sustain its own content network without major US backing.

Don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

european here. I would be fine with that, verging on happy about it. Cut them off.

We will endure, build out our own where needed - plenty of innovative and educated people to do so.

Cutting out US cultural influence will help speed up the removal of all US tech from europe, speed up the removal of US military from europe and speed up a strong europe-wide common defense strategy which excludes US and replaces NATO.

What are the downsides?

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[fox171171]

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

And Io, Ganymede, and Callisto while they are at it!

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[delt0r]

Don't want to burst your bubble. But a few TV shows and movies is hardly going to bring the EU to halt. In fact a fair bit of the EU probably wouldn't even notice. And the ones that do wouldn't care. It is not like there isn't quite a bit of local content.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[quenda]

Excellent idea. In fact the world should ban US content,

Uh, no. Lets just limit it. Europe produces some great TV shows - some even are on Netflix - but s its hard to compete with dumped US content, which has next-to-zero marginal cost for export. I'd very much like to see both US content (HBO, netflix, etc) and European. Unfortunately, the free market model is not very suitable for this.

And while you are at it, keep your military, your drones, your CIA meddling , your economic bullying and your other "US interests" at home too.

Mmmm ... bad as the US is, who would you rather fill the power vacuum? After WW2 the UK and France were all ready to do Versailles 1919 mark II. Or would you rather a Pax Sina?

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hard to take you seriously when you think that's all America exports. Go check it out sometime.

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol... Jealous much?

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that you're a bunch of lazy socialist pigs who have completely failed to keep up with "stupid" Americans in literally every endeavor.

But hey.. Keep using your American cell phone to post on this American website, hypocritical cunt.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be like cutting your nose to spit your face.

It will only hurt American interests on short and long term.

In Balkans, for instance, crappy Turkish TV series are already MUCH more popular than American TV shows.

Russian media and Russian facebook and google-like outfits are already dominating in most of former USSR countries.

And while West Europeans do consume a lot of American content, they're not very loyal, and will switch without much fuss to whatever local crap they're fed, and even feel patriotic about it.

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahahahhahahha. If your arrogance weren't so stupid I'd feel threatened.

No company will leave a democratized market of 400m people because they're forced to pay a little or play by our rules. This isn't Google/China (which, by the way, was Google saving face by leaving the country and claiming privacy on principle. Reality was they didn't want to partner with a local company as majority shareholder which is what most companies are forced to do)

So take your arrogant head out of your ass and recognize I've that Netflix would get destroyed by shareholder if they thought for a second to leave their next major growth market.

Seriously, this is why coders shouldn't lead companies. The world isn't black or white (0 or 1).

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this drivel modded 'Insightful'?

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[stealth_finger]

The only decent thing that has come out of that shithole in the past several decades if the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Disagree. Those movies are some of the most mindless drivel ever produced. Sure they're chock full of eye candy and they sure do look nice but they are crap.

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[stealth_finger]

But hey.. Keep using your American cell phone to post on this American website, hypocritical cunt.

Hey, we'll stop using your stuff when you stop using our language. OK?

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[jabuzz]

My ZX81 and ZX Spectrum beg to differ on that front.I guess the Commodore 64 did sell more, but where in the UK at least considerably more expensive.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Tom]

This bullshit comes up every stupid time that US companies are told that actually, you know, Europe is not a state within the USA, and it actually - unbelievable! - has its own laws. How dare they?

Pull out of Europe. PLEASE. Pretty please.

Guess why they don't? Not even if the EU puts a billion Euro (omg, they have their own currency, too!) fine on them for some of the shit they did?

Because if a multinational corporation had to choose between doing business in the USA or Europe, but not both, each and every one of them would rather pull out of the USA. Europe is bigger both in population and market size. Europe has more and better business connections to the rest of the world, especially the fast growing zones. Europe is a more challenging market, but pulling out of it is suicide. If any of the large Internet companies did that, it would be out of business very fast. Google, Facebook, doesn't matter. If there were no Facebook, say, in Europe, how long do you think it would take the 740 million people inside to either bring up a competitor, or move to non-western competitors like VK (from Russia) or Renren (from China)? How long do you think Facebook could compete with a global competitor with more than a billion users, if it had decided to pull out of the European market? If american users had a choice to stay on Facebook, but be isolated from their European friends, or move over to something else and connect with the world?

Please, pretty please, let's have one major international corporation do this stupid suicide move and pull out of Europe, so that we finally don't have to see this asine comment on every fucking story about Europe all the time. And you wonder why the rest of the world thinks that half of America is mentally retarded. Because of stupid comments like that, that's why.

Let's see how fast and to what degree of stability could the EU sustain its own content network without major US backing.

Instantly. We already have local alternatives to many US services. You just never heard of them. Just one example: Here in Germany, Linkedin is known mostly for the stupid spam they send to you all the time, the primary business social network is Xing. And no, it's not a copy of Linkedin, it is even slightly older (by a few months, or if you count when Linkedin became available in german, by 6 years).

You need to get off your high horse. If the USA would be swallowed by the ocean tomorrow, the rest of the world would have replaced everything run from there within a few months.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[AlterEager]

Because ignoring 22% of the world's economy is such a good idea when you want to make money.

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[AlterEager]

But hey.. Keep using your American cell phone to post on this American website, hypocritical cunt.

American cell phone? Where can you buy one of them? All the ones I see for sale are made in China.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Not if they make it unprofitable to do business there.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[sabbede]

Considering how interconnected the industrialized world is, neither side of the Atlantic would do well without the other.

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[jeremyp]

Almost all cellphones are made in Asia, that includes the Apple ones.

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF economic isolationists, as we export all of our jobs overseas and signs onerous free trade agreements?

You are off your rocker.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Want some peanut butter with your jelly fag?

Let me fix a few things here: WW2 The europeans most certainly needed the Americans. I wonder how D-day would have gone without Americans giving their lives.
The internet came from a collaboration between American educational institutes and the American military. It came from apranet. And no the int in internet doesn't stand for international you dumb POS. it is for inter network. Meaning between networks, it has never meant "international network" you looser fag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

In fact the first computer to computer communication came from arpanet.
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4399541/ARPANET-establishes-1st-computer-to-computer-link--October-29--1969

So please share who beat them to the punch. Fag

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ancestors came up with something useful 1500 years ago. You must be so proud.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally!! +1

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

That kind of depends. Europe as a whole is huge, but if needing to support local languages splits it into 5 or so markets it starts to lose to other areas on exploitability.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you compare the economy of the US, a single country, to the entire EU? Why not compare it to the continent of Europe, or Asia while your at it? Or compare NAFTA countries to EU countries if you are trying to equate GDP?

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

In the early-mid 80's home computers were widely available and used in Europe even as the US lagged behind.

Ultimately the PC standard out of the US took over as the dominant standard but %-wise Europe led the way early on with being early adopters of computers.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[rahvin112]

I see the comment a lot, but not all GDP is worth the same. European GDP figures suffer from many complications such that the total worth of that GDP for a multinational is less than elsewhere. These include the language problem, the lack of judicial cohesive, significantly different costs of living, market bureaucracies, different tax jurisdictions and many many other things that make the EU market nothing like a real common market. In fact there is a significant chunk of the EU market that's almost worthless due to corruption and pay to play that make it nearly impossible for multinational to operate fairly.

Were the EU to implement a real common market with cohesive taxes and regulations the GDP would rival that of the US but this lack of commonality will continue to hurt the EU and if current events are any indicator this will get worse before it gets better. Regulations such as this hamper multi-nationals (one of the intents of the law). This law is structured to harm Netflix a the behalf of local cable companies. Why do I say that? Because they will require Netflix to license European content but they won't give them a mandatory licensing clause allowing the content holder to charge whatever they want because Netflix will be obligated to purchase it. As much content is owned by the local cable monopolies they will charge whatever is necessary to displace Netflix from the market or raise their price to be equivalent to the the local video monopoly.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

As an American, I don't want my government spending tax money on your country either. The reason the EU can spend so much on public welfare is because they don't spend any of it on the military, whereas in the US the opposite is true; most money is spent on the military and much less is spent on the public welfare.

It'd be great if America withdrew all of its bases and cut the military to 1/10th its current budget. That means the EU would need to deal with its own problems (like Russia).

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[HornWumpus]

There was the BBC POS. Any other early personal computers made or engineered in Europe?

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[HornWumpus]

How about we just send you all the useless extra 'e's and 'u's.

Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU is already a BIGGER economy than the USA, China is only a few years away from being the 2nd biggest economy.

Very funny. According to the IMF US had a lager GDP than all EU nations combined last year. If you are talking about GDP with PPP then China is already number one, beating both EU and US.

Turns out the USA needs the rest of the world more than the rest of the world needs the USA.

I wonder who made the processors in your computer? Intel? AMD? NVIDIA? Can you even name one thing US absolutely needs right now that is made by your country?

Re: How about content providers pull out of Europa

[stealth_finger]

Great, but you can keep all the 'z's as you seem to be so fond of them.

Re:Chinese will take over

[Anonymous Coward]

The Democratic PARTY OF THE DEVIL will bring GOD's fury upon us and China will send their smartest and toughest negotiators so that THE USA will be cut in pieces. Cut in pieces it will be.

Barrier to entry

[Dunbal]

And what exactly is stopping French/German/Other EU companies from making their own national "Netflix" showing 100% local content? What do you mean no one wants to fucking pay for it? Surely there must be someone stupid enough to pay again for what they get through their local service anyway.

Re:Barrier to entry

[AchilleTalon]

No market or too small market to justify the cost or multiple small markets for each national language.

Re:Barrier to entry

[onepoint]

What are they going to do? block the IP address of xyz service provider of netflix type company, LOL funny. VPN's for everyone. While I do respect that they want to keep the culture going, they need to make it investment friendly.

Re:Barrier to entry

[inhuman_4]

They haven't gotten the population sufficiently upset yet to justify a state sponsored Netflix that no one watches.

Re:Barrier to entry

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU just defunded the European Youth Orchestra, which was THE perfect example of the values for which the EU once claimed to stand. Children, the future of Europe, from across the EU, learning to play in harmony in order to celebrate European culture through music: what more could a EUrocrat dream of? Well, apparently he could dream of 600,000€, because that's what the EU will save by cutting the orchestra. Kill a symbol of a future that celebrates European culture, save less than a million euros, then spend over a billion euros to bring as many African and Mid-Eastern (especially Muslim) migrants into the EU as possible.

Re:Barrier to entry

[Anonymous Coward]

So let the consumers choose what they want: if they want what Netflix feels like offering them, so be it, and if they want instead some local offering, so be it. There's zero need for market intervention here. If the natives in Europe wanted to pay for some local production, there would be natives who would sell it back to the other natives. This is just a power and money grab by the EU.

Re: Barrier to entry

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumers don't get a choice, what happens is that McDonald's gets so much of the market that nobody else can survive and we're all eating Big Macs by default.

Re:Barrier to entry

[drinkypoo]

It is US bullying and copyright laws which are the problem.

They are problems, but how are they problems here?

You can not take just once program you are forced to take the 1 you want plus another 9 pieces of rubbish or you get nothing.

I fail to see the problem. Nothing is an acceptable return.

This places a financial barrier for other networks around the world.

It's not our fault that people around the world want some of our media so badly that we can drive a hard bargain. Maybe the rest of the world should get its shit together and become as good as we are at making media. The BBC had the most popular television show in the world until 2015, though, and they still make many of the most popular series on television. Why aren't they able to make a similar deal? The UK has the same kind of hard-on for strong IP law that we do here in the USA; in fact, the UK invented it! Remember, the first copyright law was at Alexandria, and it was about the right to copy, not the right to prevent copies. It's the English that turned that upside down, not us here in the US. But you want to blame us? Poppycock, cock.

Foreign media has a LOT to offer, in fact the US takes a LOT of it, americanises it (i.e. ruins it with canned laughter, poor writing,etc) for the local market.

We make our own version for two reasons. First, we don't want to read, sorry. By "we" I don't mean me, but it's still generally true, so I'm saying it. Second, we get control over the content. It doesn't support your media empire. It supports ours.

Media is basically the thing we have going for us in the world, IMO. It keeps the world sucking our teat. It's our best possible PR. It would be daft to change the game plan now.

Re:Barrier to entry

[sumdumass]

They would probably block payment by credit cards or something, sue in a local court, then sue to recover the judgment in a U.S. court. Netflix would likely counter punch with a WIPO trade violation if they can convince anyone in the U.S. government to back them.

Re:Barrier to entry

[hcs_$reboot]

That's not the point. French (and Europeans in general) want to watch American movies/series. Would it be from Netflix or a local provider. But the French government, for the sake of "Cultural exception", and in order to give jobs to many "shows Intermittents" (actors working temporarily on a show) want Netflix to make local movies and TV shows. That's already the case in France, and most of the "local sponsored content" (made by TVs) results usually in a crappy outcome (bad script, bad play...). That's the difference between "You'll get money if your movie is good" and "This is the money, take it and do what you want".

Re:Barrier to entry

[Kjella]

And what exactly is stopping French/German/Other EU companies from making their own national "Netflix" showing 100% local content? What do you mean no one wants to fucking pay for it? Surely there must be someone stupid enough to pay again for what they get through their local service anyway.

Want to and want to, here in Norway there is a lot of subsidy over the culture budget and other regulations and it's as much wanted as the other laws we have in a democracy I guess. Music, theaters, festivals, authors, movies, museums, various volunteer groups, religious/ethnic minorities and whatnot in total get support of almost 1% of the GDP. Part of that is also "hidden" in other regulations like for our public broadcaster NRK which will play 35%+ Norwegian music on radio and a very high degree of locally produced content in general. It's no secret that it's cultural protectionism.

Despite that, Norwegian movies have 20% market share in the cinemas, 80% is foreign films and mostly the big international blockbusters. Foreign series like Game of Thrones is huge, same with international artists. Literature is more of a mix, but it's not like we're trying to keep a monoculture more like trying to keep the local culture from becoming a casualty of global economic interests. I don't really see this working very well with a streaming service though, on a broadcast there is just so many hours in a day. If you're streaming people watch what they want when they want, the percentage of the catalog doesn't really matter.

If nothing else they'll probably just tax us some more and increase the budgets, I guess.

Re:Barrier to entry

[HornWumpus]

Thank you for 'Troll Hunter'. That film is brilliant and making money on American Netflix.

I recommend it to all /.ers. You can skip reading the subtitles, if you want, and not lose much.

Re: Barrier to entry

[MisterSquid]

Why the fuck would Canadian or Australian tv shows be subtitled in English ? They speak the language better than Americans. They can also use a knife and fork correctly too.

1. Hearing impaired.
2. Visual channel for poor/no audio environments.
3. Screenshots in an educational (i.e. Fair Use) context.
4. Other uses not anticipated by easily offended linguistic nativists.

Re: Barrier to entry

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't everything subtitled now ? I just flipped on captions for an American movie because I was having trouble hearing some of the softer audio where I was. ... who cares ? Chip on your shoulder much ?

Re:Barrier to entry

[Tom]

And what exactly is stopping French/German/Other EU companies from making their own national "Netflix" showing 100% local content?

The inability to compete in a market place where economies of scale are such a massive factor. You cannot compete with Amazon in the online retail space for the same reason you could not compete with Microsoft in the PC Operating System space. It didn't matter if your offer was better, or cheaper, or even both.

Re: Barrier to entry

[Anonymous Coward]

Also to the list:

- Allows learning both written and pronounced form of a word, especially useful if there are e.g. complex names
- Allows having less-than-clear speech (heard) on the show while still preserving clarity (subtitles). The language used in films/tv is unnaturally easy to listen to.

The second point is sometimes addressed by having subtitles appear only when necessary, but that makes it harder to follow. It also does not happen in all cases it would need to, as a non-native observer.

Re:Barrier to entry

[Anonymous Coward]

No market or too small market to justify the cost or multiple small markets for each national language.

But I thought another poster in this entire thread said that Europe is a bigger market that the USA alone?

I guess a bigger market doesn't mean a better market for locally produced content, eh?

Re:Barrier to entry

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the point. French (and Europeans in general) want to watch American movies/series. Would it be from Netflix or a local provider. But the French government, for the sake of "Cultural exception", and in order to give jobs to many "shows Intermittents" (actors working temporarily on a show) want Netflix to make local movies and TV shows. That's already the case in France, and most of the "local sponsored content" (made by TVs) results usually in a crappy outcome (bad script, bad play...). That's the difference between "You'll get money if your movie is good" and "This is the money, take it and do what you want".

The limits of French Socialism defy comprehension, no?

magic word: mockery HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Re:Barrier to entry

[Dunbal]

They would probably block payment by credit cards or something

This. The banks are so scared of the government nowadays they will bend over backwards and do everything the government says. There's an interesting case happening here in Panama with the Waked family being "investigated" for money laundering. Please note they are being INVESTIGATED. They have not been tried or convicted - this is merely the US government pointing a finger and saying "these might be bad guys" because of the Panama paper leak. So what happens then? This family owns many big chain stores. The banks just dropped them (because of US government pressure) and will not process credit card transactions for them. So they can only accept cash in their stores now. Again it must be noted that no one has been found guilty, no one has gone to trial and nothing has been proven.

Stores who rent space in their mall won't get their contracts renewed and have been threatened by the banks - because guilt by association as another favorite government tool. Oh and get this - if you are a US citizen you are being told it is a crime punishable by up to $500,000 or 10 years in PRISON if you shop at a store owned by the Waked family, because you'll be blah blah blah whatever facilitating money laundering (IANAL). So you, a US citizen living as an ex pat in a 3rd world sovereign nation can be arrested by the US government for making the mistake of shopping in a store which the US government seems to have slapped with a modern day bill of attainder. Nice huh? Welcome to the brave new world. And if you think THIS is government power, wait another 20 years.

Re:Barrier to entry

[Dunbal]

Yeah but see, Netflix is not French. So why should it have French content? If you are a frenchman and order a Budweiser at a bar, does a little government gnome appear and bitch at you because your beer can should have at least 20% French beer content? No. This is just government wanting to latch on to another revenue stream, and this is a way to do it.

Re:Barrier to entry

[Dunbal]

The inability to compete in a market place where economies of scale are such a massive factor. You cannot compete with Amazon in the online retail space for the same reason you could not compete with Microsoft in the PC Operating System space. It didn't matter if your offer was better, or cheaper, or even both.

If this was true we would have reached stagnation thousands of years ago. Economies of scale are important, but if that was all that mattered there would only be Mcdonalds because they were first and biggest, and no one else would ever be able to sell burgers. There's more to it than that, such as offering a different product or service, or a better product or service. Not competing head on but rather offering something the other guy can't.

Re:Barrier to entry

[Tom]

If this was true we would have reached stagnation thousands of years ago.

Which part of "in a market" was displayed in chinese on your screen? It's not true of every market, and for 99% of human history, transportation and communication where the primary limiting factors of trade. Some competition even a hundred miles away rarely mattered.

This is just the best!

[Archtech]

Wooooooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Estonian movies - just what I've been waiting for!

Re:This is just the best!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been on an Estonian film once, there was a Q&A with a director afterwards. According to her, they have like 1 film in two years released there.

Re:This is just the best!

[martinfb]

Wooooooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Estonian movies - just what I've been waiting for!

I don't get the 'joke' here. What's funny about Estonians making movies? What if there is a really really good Estonian movie? Wanna see it yourself? I'd like to at least have the opportunity.

Re:Chinese will take over

[Anonymous Coward]

Our doom is near, and the only way to prevent it is to vote for the SAVIOUR who chose Trump to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

"even playing field"

[dnaumov]

You keep using that word, it does not mean what you think it does. In this case, it's actually the total opposite.

1) People can and do vote with their wallets. Nobody HAS to order Netflix. In any country.

2) If the stuff french filmmakers produce is not wanted by consumers, well that's too damn bad. Adapt or die.

Re:"even playing field"

[AmiMoJo]

It's not that simple. English is the most common second language in most European countries, so there is a temptation to save money by making everything in English and maybe providing some subtitles in French/German/Polish/etc if there is demand.

So it's not that what French film makers produce is not wanted, it's that investors only care about the return they get so will want to put their money in low quality English language mush that sells in every country.

This is nothing new. Most countries have some rules requiring local broadcasters to produce a certain amount of local content, to prevent culture homogenizing or being destroyed. You are effectively trying to put a price on art and culture, which is impossible but doesn't mean they are worthless.

Re:"even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

People can and do vote with their wallets. Nobody HAS to order Netflix. In any country.

In fact, they try to do just that. People do pay for Netflix in other countries but all they get is a watered-down Netflix Lite, with considerably less content.

Re: "even playing field"

[dnaumov]

I live in the EU and would very much like for EU bureaucrats to stop fucking up "the market" with their meddling. Calling something "making an even playing field" while in reality advancing the exact total opposite, a protectionist agenda, just takes the fucking cake. Thanks, but no thanks.

Re:"even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird, because the USA has one of the least free markets in the developed world.

Huge portions of their economy have trade barriers, subsidies, regulatory barriers etc etc etc that prevents other countries from being able to sell their products in the USA.

Kill your agriculture subsidies and trade barriers and THEN come and tell us how the US should be allowed into other countries.

Re: "even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Calling something "making an even playing field" while in reality advancing the exact total opposite, a protectionist agenda, just takes the fucking cake."

free trade It's the american way !

Re:"even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

It is that simple you fucking muppet. If they want the shit made, they can fucking pay for it themselves.

Re:"even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that the EU "Common Agricultural Policy" is pretty much nothing but agricultural subsidies, right? US farm subsidies are less than €20B. EU CAP is closer to €60B. The US has far lower subsidies than the EU.

Re:"even playing field"

[ScentCone]

Same for netflix, if doesn't want to respect the markets rules can go elsewhere.

It's not a market when you make the merchant into a slave.

Re:"even playing field"

[Harlequin80]

In principal I agree with you. But in practice there isn't a level playing field at the beginning because each country offers different levels of resources. If a US & a French Netflix were to start day one, with only their own personally created content you would have an argument that the playing field was level. But in reality a US netflix has access to a huge catalogue of english media that people are already educated / programmed into wanting. So they have a huge advantage over the French version.

Re: "even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep please keep watching the 1000th remake of the same super hero marvell blockbuster film.

It's Marvel you fucking idiot.

Given the point he was making, I suspect your mistake lies in assuming he gives a fuck about the spelling of the Disney-owned producer of cod-serious superhero flicks for perma-adolescents, such as "Captain America- Winter Avengers of Guardians of the Galaxy: Origins" (the prequel to the to the four-and-a-halfth reboot of the Spiderman franchise in a crossover with the third incarnation of the "Avengers: Age of Pretentiously Subtitled Sequels" set in almost the same shared universe continuity as the incarnation of Spiderman that featured the dog that played Bouncer in Neighbours before he died).

Or something like that.

Re:"even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

You are effectively trying to put a price on art and culture, which is impossible but doesn't mean they are worthless.

I thought you were forcing artists into a medium. E.g., Leonardo you must make 20% of your artwork on fresco because we need to maintain fresco. No Leonardo you just can't paint huge penises on Fresco and call that art.

Re:"even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

And I live in New Zealand , a country where we have no agricultural subsidies.
A country of 4 Million people.

Yet NZ has all sorts of problems trying to sell into the US market because of trade barriers, subsidies, etc etc etc
The USA is no closer to being a "free market" than Russia is.
Hell even US companies have issue, look at Tesla and how they are being blocked at selling electric cars unless they use middle men.

Re:"even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

You are effectively trying to put a price on art and culture, which is impossible but doesn't mean they are worthless.

If people aren't interested in them, they are worthless. And if people are interested in them, then they are willing to pay for them.

Re: "even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish,American does NOT believe in free trade.

The US spends tens of billions in agricultural subsidies, has import restrictions, import tariffs , import quotas.

The US is closer in trade restriction to Russia than it is to "Free trade"

Re: "even playing field"

[Bing Tsher E]

Hay Now!

Comic Bookstore Guys need a template to follow. It wouldn't do for them to live their lives.

Re: "even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

NZ has had some good shows. I enjoyed pirating (not otherwise available) "This is Not My Life" about 5 or 6 years ago.

Re: "even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to play-doh, movies are visibly far beyond what meager intellect you have developed.

Re: "even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

So, far, far, better than the EU who MUST protect the French farmers or see them burning trucks full of Spanish sheep/produce like they did a few years ago then. How "Unfair" of the spaniards to be able to make a profit at a lower price than the French...

Re: "even playing field"

[HornWumpus]

The funny one was when box wine got to France.

The makers of cheap French wine 'went on strike'. Because they couldn't sell their low grade at any price anymore. French winos prefer cheaper, better wine...who would have guessed?

Can't sell you product, go on strike. French thinking.

Re: "even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Spider-Man you fucking idiot.

Re: "even playing field"

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor merchant, you have to abide by rules to set up your shop. What a terrible thing! Why you can't even use your own scales, but have to have them certified! You can't even keep copyright forever, or enforce it with your own hired goons! You have to warranty the products you sell and even test them for hazards!

Such abuse of Almighty Freedom!

Next you'll be telling people they can't have an open pit fire in their house.

Re:"even playing field"

[beh]

Any company can offer anything anywhere?

OK, by that token, you'll be happy if, say, a Nigerian company sells cancer medicine that is deemed safe in Nigeria to the US market without any meddling by the FDA, right?

Every market can regulate whatever they want - and, what might be a difficult concept for you to grasp is, that Netflix wouldn't be forced to sell Estonian films in the US. But the cost of business to enter the European market might have to be a certain percentage of films made in other languages.

As for your comment about the quality of stuff French filmmakers produce -
    a) The US industry seems to have a knack for rather remaking stuff than taking over others - even if it's originating from another English-speaking country (e.g. the UK): See "The Office", the sucky US-version of "Red Dwarf", ...

    b) Given the a lot smaller size of other countries movie industries - have a look at how many of them were remade in the US -
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ...and that is not just old movies but recent ones as well...

Re:"even playing field"

[SvnLyrBrto]

Yes, but even with them expanding their offerings, very little of Netflix's content is self-produced. The vast majority is third-party material the owners of which licensed to Netflix for distribution. There's no reason that the local content producers couldn't just license said content and let the customers chose what they want to watch, whether than have one language... ANY language... imposed on them by legal force.

And it's not like Netflix is a monocle-polishing, mustachio-twriling conquistador that mandates "no language but 'murken". I don't go looking for French or German or whatever usually. But Netflix (In the US) has no shortage of content in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. And I was even just able to find a few titles in Tagalog. I'd be fairly PO'd if the government were to up and decide that I should have access to none of that... and force Netflix take it away... because english MUST reign supreme because US culture MUST reign supreme.

Re:"even playing field"

[Tom]

You cannot "vote with your wallet" if choices are limited.

There's a lot of bad to be said about Brussels bureaucracy, but this is not one of them. To demand that local content is not crowded out of the market is quite reasonable. Nobody demands that Netflix needs to meet certain sales quotas, simply that local content is available. With that, people now can vote with their wallets - or at least their clicks.

You need to give people a choice before you can talk about free market magic. The main reason Hollywood is so big is not that it's great - I think practically everyone agrees that its storytelling is atrocious, and the formulas used are becoming transparent even for people not interested in writing. All that it has going for it is production value - great special effects and actors and all the other things that you can buy when you are swimming in money. The benefits of a virtual monopoly. Imagine a typical Hollywood movie made with the budget of a typical european movie. It would be such utter crap that you would have to pay people to go and watch it.

The funny thing is that most of Hollywood is finance with european (mostly german) money. But that's another discussion.

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the studios insist the world is divided into regions and are fighting tooth and nail to prevent a free global market when it comes to content it is only fair they are forced to specially cater for those markets... nes't pa?

Re:Well

[dinfinity]

nes't pa?

*n'est-ce pas.

Re:Well

[AlterEager]

WTF man!

N'est pas? (lit: "is it not?"/"is that not it?")

Where on earth do you get "nes't pa"?

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

That's "n'est-ce pas", and I agree. They made their bed, let them lie in it.

Fuck the french

[Anonymous Coward]

If they want more french content, they should make it themself.

Re:Fuck the french

[AchilleTalon]

They are, they just need the money.

Re:Fuck the french

[grahammm]

There is a very large amount of French TV and movies. All they have to do is have the desire to show them and to negotiate with the rights holders to do so.

Re:Fuck the french

[meerling]

Does the law say it has to be new or expensive french content?
Of course we are talking about France, the country that even wants it's scientists to stop using scientific terms/words that were not made up by French nationals.

Re:Fuck the french

[CrimsonAvenger]

Note that the rights holders will have a moderately enormous advantage in those negotiations, since the law will require that 20%, so if they insist on a huge pricetag, well, you still have to do 20%, even if the 20% costs more than the other 80%....

Re:Fuck the french

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the law say it has to be new or expensive french content?
Of course we are talking about France, the country that even wants it's scientists to stop using scientific terms/words that were not made up by French nationals.

So what's the problem ? Ordinateur vs Computer ? Baladeur vs Walkman (ok this is bad nobody even remembers what a Walkman is lol). If there is a french equivalent word for an english one I don't see why people living in France have to use the english one. Especially when we're talking or writing in french.
The French do love their language, that is a trait Italians don't feel towards their own language. And we (Italians) end up talking like Alberto Sordi in the film "An American in Rome".

Re:Fuck the french

[HornWumpus]

If only there were other French speaking markets that produce shows.

I'm sure the Frogs will be happy listening to the 'French' spoken in Quebec.

What a piss poor article...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Amazon and Netflix could be "forced" to have a quota of movies from those States because it's already in the European States law and has been for several years (only the quota varies between States).

All content distributors have to reserve quotas on their catalog, that goes for TV Stations, cable companies or IPTV, VoD platforms, video stores, etc. Only the medium and distribution platform changes, not the law, and what it's being questioned is why those companies aren't complying with the law, nothing else. It's just an update from "broadcasting" platforms to "streaming" platforms.

Re:What a piss poor article...

[tlambert]

All content distributors have to reserve quotas on their catalog, that goes for TV Stations, cable companies or IPTV, VoD platforms, video stores, etc.

Netflix is a content portal.

The ISP you connect your phone or computer to is the content distributor.

As far as I can tell: in France, they are all French.

Re:What a piss poor article...

[meerling]

Hmmm.... If they must reserve 20% for this country, and then more jump on that bandwagon, how long until they are 'required' to reserve percentages that equal or exceed 100% leaving nothing of their previous catalog? Yes, that's right, 5 countries. Even before it reaches that point it becomes obvious this is really stupid on an international front.

Re:What a piss poor article...

[Bing Tsher E]

So my local ISP curates which content they distribute via Netflix?

That's odd. I thought Netflix curated the content. They're just a portal, through which whatever content there is happens to pass?

Re:What a piss poor article...

[tlambert]

So my local ISP curates which content they distribute via Netflix?

That's odd. I thought Netflix curated the content. They're just a portal, through which whatever content there is happens to pass?

Your ISPs dictate whether or not you get charged against your bandwidth cap for content from Netflix vs. not getting charged against the cap for content from them (think Time Warner, Comcast, Verizon).

Your ISPs also decide whether or not they will peer with Netflix's hosting provider, given that all the data tend to move from that peer, into their network, and not vice versa.

Your ISPs distribute the packets.

Yes, Netflix curates the content, which is why the hell I said they were a *content portal*.

They are certainly *NOT* the ones responsible for sending the packets to your device.

Re:What a piss poor article...

[Anonymous Coward]

Should every company on the internet have to conform to every law in every country? ..and this shit applies to video stores? Can France force some guy who sells DVDs in California to carry French DVDs?? Can France require Steam to make/distribute French video games?? Maybe France should start their own walled internet like China or North Korea if the idea of French people consuming non French media terrifies them so much.

Re:What a piss poor article...

[AlterEager]

Your ISPs dictate whether or not you get charged against your bandwidth cap for content from Netflix vs. not getting charged against the cap for content from them

What is this "bandwidth cap" of which you speak? That does not exist in France (outside mobile).

Re:What a piss poor article...

[tlambert]

Your ISPs dictate whether or not you get charged against your bandwidth cap for content from Netflix vs. not getting charged against the cap for content from them

What is this "bandwidth cap" of which you speak? That does not exist in France (outside mobile).

How long until computers don't exist outside mobile?

I'd say that the ratio of people using mobile devices to access content has been going up, andit's only going to go up further. If you are not concerned about data caps on mobile now, you will be.

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution is a dark CURSE BY GOD the the LIBERALS and SCIENTIST LIARS have cast upon us and which FEASTS from the minds of the INNOCENT CHILDREN. The only way to get lifted from the curse is to deny its existence. ONLY IF YOU ARE STRONG ENOUGH YOU CAN SEE THE TRUTH.

I sense a new spinoff

[SuperKendall]

Perfect idea - a spinoff "Terrance & Phillip" show, guided by the same people that write South Park, but written strictly targeting each region...

Re:Chinese will take over

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody will be safe from the WRATH OF GOD. He will BECOME FIRE and destroy everything just like he did with SODOM and GOMORAH.

Re:Chinese will take over

[Anonymous Coward]

He is a GOD OF LOVE and he never loses HOPE in his children, but if they die they get sent to HELL where the DEVIL punishes them for their SINS.

DONE! "...reserve at least 20per cent share..."

[tlambert]

DONE! "...reserve at least 20per cent share..."

Feel free to get off your asses and fill that reserved-but-currently-empty space with content.

XOXO
-- Netflix

Easily circumvented

[admiral snackbar]

What would prevent Amazon or Netflix from just approaching some YouTubers in these countries, offering them 100 euro for the worst and most crappy movies ever produced in French, German and all the other European languages, and putting these on their platform as the 'required local content quota fillers'. Hey, if 20% has to be European, nobody ever said it had to be the best European movies and shows... I would be more than willing to produce Dutch content for Netflix, consisting of hourlong diatribes against ridiculous European regulations designed to protect crappy content from competition. Hell, I'd probably do it for free. My German is just good enough to even produce a rant in German, which could potentially be submitted under comedy, considering my mediocre german vocabulary and pronunciation skills.

Re:Easily circumvented

[Place a name here]

Sounds like a perfect fit for Uwe Boll!

Re:Easily circumvented

[meerling]

Except that sheep weevil would probably try to punch out anyone that complains and calls it for what it is.

Re:Easily circumvented

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine the fun that would be. The french version of Pewdiepie, (whoever that may be) doing "Let's Play" videos for hours on end. "Let's Play" videos always tend to be very highly ranked, so it wouldn't be unreasonable.

I mean look at the Pewds. He has 44 millions viewers. Just pump that into French Netflix until they cave and say "We Surrender! No more!"

Re:Easily circumvented

[CmdrTamale]

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
--
I'm pretty sure I've been replaced with a simple shell script.

Do they need to 'make'?

[grahammm]

The article states that a certain proportion of the streaming output should be in the European languages. This can be done without the streaming services making programmes in these languages. All they have to do is stream sufficient (already existing) 'native' TV programmes and movies to meet the quota.

Re:Do they need to 'make'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which would still cost licensing fees to those TV stations or studios. Which would be greatly inflated by said studios and TV stations right after a law such as this is passed.
Thus solving nothing in terms of money.

Re:Chinese will take over

[Anonymous Coward]

WE WILL ALL DIE FOR THE SINS OF THE FEW. We all will. GOD's mercy will meet all those who are OPEN for it, but if you vote for the DEMON called CLINTON you show you are not. GOD's WRATH will destroy america because it will become HELL ON EARTH if CLINTON casts her dark rule upon this country.

Warning

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you who don't live in the UK, please be aware, 99% of everything in the Daily Mail is lies. This rises to 99.9% for stories about "Europe". Be ye warned.

Re:Warning

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you who don't live in the UK, please be aware, 99% of everything in the Daily Mail is lies. This rises to 99.9% for stories about "Europe". Be ye warned.

The French have long had a habit of propping up their cultural industries even when it doesn't make economic sense. They have a very nice name for it "Exception culturelle". Cultural exceptionalism (see they've even copied the stupid american exceptionalism mantra).
There is already a law in France which makes it compulsory across TV and radio to reserve a certain % of airtime to French series/music. Foreigners be damned. They'll just extend it to streaming services as well.

Re:Warning

[stealth_finger]

For those of you who don't live in the UK, please be aware, 99% of everything in the Daily Mail is lies. This rises to 99.9% for stories about "Europe". Be ye warned.

The only thing true in the daily fail is the date.

Re:Warning

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you who don't live in the UK, please be aware, 99% of everything in the Daily Mail is lies. This rises to 99.9% for stories about "Europe". Be ye warned.

The only thing true in the daily fail is the date.

Even this is proven to be incorrect the following day

Re:Warning

[Ashe Tyrael]

To expand on this, the context of this is the ongoing debate over the referendum on whether the UK should leave the EU. The Daily Fail is an often-hilariously eurosceptic trashrag, given to exaggerations, stretching points, massaging figures, and sometimes outright making up stories out of whole cloth. This story basically has one purpose, to make the EU look bad to try and convince the technologically illiterate masses that under the EU, people will get things imposed on them that are to their detriment, to try and force a "Leave" vote in a couple of weeks.

Re:Warning

[hsqueak]

That's most unfair. Some of the Daily Mail is statistics too.

Re:Warning

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually they get the title of the news paper right too.

Re:Chinese will take over

[Anonymous Coward]

She prays to the DEVIL each night.

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[baker_tony]

Considering Trump actually has a shot now, I really don't know if these comments are serious or not.
You American's are seriously screwed up.

What could go wrong?

[denbesten]

I've never really understood why "the man" wants to make it hard for me to spend my money to legally access the content I want to watch.

Lets presume Neflix can identify 2000 European works in their existing global catalog. To attain 20% European content, their European Catalog suddenly becomes limited to 10,000 movies. This will be 8000 mainstream movies and 2000 European movies. Anyone who wants to watch Independents or Classics will be out of luck.

The real question is what the customers do next. Will they step in line and only watch the "Mass Media" movies? Or, will they find themselves driven to VPNs and PirateBay in search of the classics.

Re:What could go wrong?

[Zumbs]

... or they could do a little work and find thousands and thousands of European classics? Many of which could be BBC productions? Seems to me that that would be a win-win all around. I get to watch local and foreign classics and movies, local and global producers get to show off their stuff on Netflix and Netflix becomes interesting for a new segment of viewers.

Re:What could go wrong?

[ScentCone]

... or they could do a little work and find thousands and thousands of European classics?

Why should that be the responsibility of Netflix, or a cost burden carried by its customers? What's stopping an entrepreneur (it's even a French word!) in France from providing such a service for all of those French people just dying to pay to see those works? I get it, though. France makes it so miserable to try to start and run a business in that country that they'll never see anyone bother. So, let's just make Netflix an organ of the State and force them to do it! Socialists.

Re:What could go wrong?

[meerling]

I believe most of the BBC is in English, the French government wants them in French. It's just mentioning European Union and all that to bolster the image of influence and control they want to go with their demands.

Re:What could go wrong?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

their European Catalog suddenly becomes limited

You make it sound as if that wasn't the case already... We're already getting one fifth on the contents...but for the same global price! Amazing, this global business, isnt't it? :-p

Re:What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this quote from Yes Minister may answer your question:

Sir Humphrey: "Bernard, subsidy is for art...for culture. It is not to be given to what the people want, it is for what the people don't want but ought to have."

Re:What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should that be the responsibility of Netflix, or a cost burden carried by its customers? What's stopping an entrepreneur (it's even a French word!) in France from providing such a service for all of those French people just dying to pay to see those works? I get it, though. France makes it so miserable to try to start and run a business in that country that they'll never see anyone bother. So, let's just make Netflix an organ of the State and force them to do it! Socialists.

Netflix has already locked up all the other content which would also be desirable to those consumers, so that another provider wouldn't be able to even negotiate for it, thus leaving a segment of the market unserved, since they wouldn't also be able to provide what Netflix has.

Sadly, that is a reality of the entertainment market, as true for net providers as it was for theater operators.

But you'd know this if you paid attention to history, rather than made up whatever claptrap came along.

Re:What could go wrong?

[ScentCone]

So all of the OTHER companies that also stream media that people are willing to pay for, they're ... stealing it? Or are they also offering the people who make that entertainment competitive deals, and the people who make it are having their choice of outlets? Right. The problem is that nobody in France feels like raising the capital to operate a company that can negotiate licenses the way that many other companies have managed to do just fine. And why should they? The French are used to just using government compulsion and taxation on such things, and and they just can't believe that other people don't want to play their game. Shocking! Sacre bleu!

Re: What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

So all of the OTHER companies that also stream media that people are willing to pay for, they're ... stealing it? Or are they also offering the people who make that entertainment competitive deals, and the people who make it are having their choice of outlets? Right. The problem is that nobody in France feels like raising the capital to operate a company that can negotiate licenses the way that many other companies have managed to do just fine. And why should they? The French are used to just using government compulsion and taxation on such things, and and they just can't believe that other people don't want to play their game. Shocking! Sacre bleu!

Nope, I don't have a choice of outlets as a consumer, if Netflix (or any other company) has something, they've locked it up and not only that, they expect the government to enforce that right. Which in turn restricts the market I have available, thus I can't buy elsewhere, and yes, there is a lot of trouble over streaming and digital rights. Which has indeed lead to a few entities that are stealing existing, such as tPB, Mega, and PopCorn time. But even among legal providers, VPNs are a current hot button issue since sometimes there are rights held in one place, but not another, an issue that is worldwide, so don't focus on France for any ire there. They didn't invent that process. I'm not sure who did, but I would say it came from another industry first, and carried over. Probably a long time ago so no real point in worrying over it.

Your picture of the market, are you not aware of this? Do you not know how the system works? How complicated it has been?

It isn't a matter of money, it ultimately boils down to the police storming to your place of business and stopping you from whatever you are doing.

Because somebody else says they have the rights by contract and they demand the law enforce them.

Yes, eventually these rights end, but that could be decades from now, if not longer, or forever if you believe that the Mouse has enough power.

Until then, there is an expectation of enforcement of the agreements.

So as long as the government of France (and other governments) is being expected to serve the interests of Netflix and their partners, as well as similar entities, I think the sovereign power of France, ie the people, are entitled to set conditions that serve their interests on Netflix and others for the services they want. And it is their right to determine their own priorities, or do you not believe in their own freedom? And yes this does apply to other governments.

PS, none of us have reported or examined the actual situation in France in any kind of exhaustive detail anyway, so I'm mostly going from principle and not feeling myself behold to any particulars as to details.

But I am aware of things like US v. Paramount Pictures, Bigelow v. RKO, and even the Fin-Synd rules. At least try to be a bit less of a Francophobe.

You're bordering on liberty fries territory.

Not that they didn't rename sauce allemande, but then i doubt that any of those names is accurate. It is silly to get so jingoistic though.

Re: What could go wrong?

[ScentCone]

Fascinating. I can watch the same movies on my choice of half a dozen different legitimate outlets. You're essentially just making stuff up.

Re:What could go wrong?

[stealth_finger]

Netflix has already locked up all the other content which would also be desirable to those consumers, so that another provider wouldn't be able to even negotiate for it, thus leaving a segment of the market unserved, since they wouldn't also be able to provide what Netflix has.

That seems to be the problem. Netflix is an established thing that exists. No one can come along and say we're going to do the same thing but only with french and other non english european language films because no one would give a shit enough to pay for it so instead they're forcing netflix to do it so the few people that do want can be pushed to netflix. Meanwhile there's a bunch of content that no one wants, no one is watching but has been mandated into existence because seemingly if it's not there it won't be there.

Re:What could go wrong?

[Tom]

Why should that be the responsibility of Netflix, or a cost burden carried by its customers?

Yeah, why should companies have any responsibilities? If I want to produce a car that throws out so much pollution you can't see for a mile around it, shouldn't I be allowed to? And if my children toys sometimes kill a kid, parents can just stop buying them, right? Why should the government interfere with my business and tell me I can't use poisonous paint? It's a free country! And while we're at it, if I want to sell kiddie porn on the street to school children, why can't I? There's demand, there's supply, let the magical invisible hand of the market sort it out! Socialists! They won't allow me to do as I want!

---

Part of living in a society is that there are rules that the society makes that not everyone in it might like. You know, making murder illegal. Generally a good idea, even if sometimes you just really want to kill someone and it's so damn inconvenient you're not allowed to.

Well, guess what, there are rules about doing business. Some are for reasons of safety. Some are for reasons of ethics (disallowing some scammy business methods). And some are for reasons of culture, like this one. You can like it or not, just like murder being illegal, but that is how it is and if you want to be part of this society (i.e. do business in this country), then you follow these rules, period.

Don't like it? Nothing is stopping Netflix from staying out of Europe and leaving the market to local competitors. Of course they won't do it. Never in a thousand years. Europe is a much bigger market with much more people than the USA.

Re: What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fascinating. I can watch the same movies on my choice of half a dozen different legitimate outlets. You're essentially just making stuff up.

I'm making up that Netflix has licensed content in an exclusive fashion?

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2013/08/20/netflix-scores-exclusive-licensing-deal-with-weinstein-brothers.html

The deal, which marks one of The Weinstein Company’s largest ever, makes Netflix the exclusive U.S. subscription television service for TWC’s first-run films, which in the past have included Django, Marilyn, The Artist, Butter, Our Idiot Brother and the Scream franchise.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/04/netflix-signs-exclusive-licensing-deal-with-disney/

The deal means that if you want to watch a live-action or animated Disney film, you’ll only be able to do it on Netflix and not Amazon Prime or Hulu. This is a huge win for hardcore Disney movie buffs, who until now could only purchase digital copies of Disney films or watch them on DVD/Blu-ray.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/01/07/news-netflix-warner-bros-in-licensing-agreement.aspx

On Monday, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX ) announced that it has taken out an exclusive license to stream complete seasons of several serialized dramas developed by Warner Bros. Television.

Huh. Guess I'm making up something that is reported in numerous media outlets. How does that work, exactly?

Re: What could go wrong?

[ScentCone]

No, Netflix has indeed invested a lot of its money (which it collects from the customer who pay money as they choose to use their service) to both license and, more close to hand, have created for them, some content you can't get elsewhere unless you paid to go to a theater, don't mind watching it with commercials, or are OK with simply waiting a little while because your life is more important than whether or not you can keep up with some vampire series based on the cost of a couple of cups of overpriced Parisian coffee. Don't like the fact that you were too lazy or too busy to watch some given show at the time it was aired for you for free to watch and/or record on your DVR to watch whenever you felt like it? Yup, one business out of many struck a deal with the creators of that show to give you another shot at it for a few pennies. I know you feel entitled to tell the people who made the show when and how you want to watch it, since they mean nothing and you are The Most Ultimate Precious Snowflake King and should be able to tell other people how to make arrangements with each other to suit your particular tastes, and because all of your pocket change is tied up every month buying some other kind of entertainment. Boo hoo. I bet you're also horrified that nobody is giving you lunch for free today, since you missed out on that free lunch at work yesterday.

Re:What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're comparing "not offering 'enough' French films" to murder. Do I really have to tell you how idiotic this post of yours is?

Re: What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Netflix has indeed invested a lot of its money (which it collects from the customer who pay money as they choose to use their service) to both license and, more close to hand, have created for them, some content you can't get elsewhere unless you paid to go to a theater, don't mind watching it with commercials, or are OK with simply waiting a little while because your life is more important than whether or not you can keep up with some vampire series based on the cost of a couple of cups of overpriced Parisian coffee. Don't like the fact that you were too lazy or too busy to watch some given show at the time it was aired for you for free to watch and/or record on your DVR to watch whenever you felt like it? Yup, one business out of many struck a deal with the creators of that show to give you another shot at it for a few pennies. I know you feel entitled to tell the people who made the show when and how you want to watch it, since they mean nothing and you are The Most Ultimate Precious Snowflake King and should be able to tell other people how to make arrangements with each other to suit your particular tastes, and because all of your pocket change is tied up every month buying some other kind of entertainment. Boo hoo. I bet you're also horrified that nobody is giving you lunch for free today, since you missed out on that free lunch at work yesterday.

Oh my, now it's upsetting to you that Time-shifting exists? Sorry, but that was already decided as well. In the US, it was Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. This was back in 1984, though it started a lot earlier. I'm sure there was something similar in Europe and France, but it might not be in a language you can understand. But yes, that was a movie company trying to tell another company that they couldn't come to an arrangement with me for me to watch the content that I wanted to watch in the manner I chose. However, the court ruled otherwise, because ultimately they recognized that the public's interests had to be satisfied.

You really do seem out of touch with the realities of the market. You fail to recognize historical actions that have already occurred, you claim things that are real are made up, and you don't seem to be aware that all of these companies are expecting the rest of us to act in their interest.

You should really seek to inform yourself better, then you could participate more intelligently in the conversation. Right now, you're not offering anything cogent or even meaningful.

Re:What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, mainly the issue is that the amount of people who like French culture is smaller than the number of people who like the idea of French culture.

The latter is also probably small but is comprised chiefly of old rich frenchmen who presumably run the government in France.

Re:What could go wrong?

[ScentCone]

Really? You're comparing polluting the air with not providing a particular type of entertainment for paying customers who are choosing to use a service? Are you even listening to yourself?

Re:What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems to be the problem. Netflix is an established thing that exists. No one can come along and say we're going to do the same thing but only with french and other non english european language films because no one would give a shit enough to pay for it so instead they're forcing netflix to do it so the few people that do want can be pushed to netflix. Meanwhile there's a bunch of content that no one wants, no one is watching but has been mandated into existence because seemingly if it's not there it won't be there.

Or people want the content, but it's not offered, because it isn't produced, because there's no effective means for the peoeple to exercise their desires since the market isn't giving them a true voice in the matter.

This is a concern that didn't start in France or recently, but actually exists in the US, Canada, and other places.

Re:What could go wrong?

[Zumbs]

Why should that be the responsibility of Netflix, or a cost burden carried by its customers?

You make it sound like it is an incredibly difficult and labour intensive task. With a few locals (maybe some of the people in charge of providing translations) it would be fairly easy to find hundreds or thousands of classic movies from each country. Tracking down the rights holders may take a bit more, but usually they are owned by a few larger companies who are more than willing to rent their old content to Netflix at a low rate. If any of the movies or series were a success outside of their own markets, it should also be possible to track down appropriate subtitles/dubbing and rent that at low prices. I expect the actual cost for Netflix to be low, with the added bonus that they may actually attract more elderly subscribers who want to relive the movies of their youth.

Re:What could go wrong?

[Tom]

I am pointing out the stupidity of the GPs point by exaggerating it so it becomes clear just how crazy the demand to do business in whatever way he wants to is. It's called reductio ad absurdum.

Re:What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am pointing out the stupidity of the GPs point by exaggerating it so it becomes clear just how crazy the demand to do business in whatever way he wants to is. It's called reductio ad absurdum.

Actually, ScentCone has already referred to this situation as: "It's not a market when you make the merchant into a slave."

So you can ignore any protestations of this sort as being void ab inito.

Re:What could go wrong?

[Tom]

I'm sorry if you can't see the difference between we-don't-live-in-the-jungle-so-no-you-can-not-do-whatever-the-fuck-you-want and slavery.

Also, corporations cannot be made into slaves. They already are - they are owned by others and can be bought and sold, and their children the same.

Re:What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not my problem, just pointing out ScentCone's position is already beyond the pale.

Re:What could go wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! I'd love to see that long-lost documentary from the BBC about spaghetti trees.

America's Leftists problem

[Anonymous Coward]

A victory in 2016 by Trump would be a step in the right direction. But it won't be until 2020 with Ted Cruz that we can start solving the problem at the core.

Re:America's Leftists problem

[meerling]

Off topic much?

Re:America's Leftists problem

[AlterEager]

Not so much off topic as off his head.

And in return they get?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

They get EU wide license on content? Right now they have to negotiate content in every country they want to show it. This is how the old industry likes it.
People and goods can move across borders. But movies and TV series cannot.

Re:Chinese will take over

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I don't understand why people confuse Slashdot for Reddit.

WTF is wrong with these French...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do these French feel inferior?

I greatly enjoy the French programming that Netflix and Amazon stream. Just put the English subtitles on and enjoy. There aren't enough French series on Netflix and Amazon.

Why do these French fear the English and we Americans? (Other than beating their asses on the battlefield and winning their wars for them. Come one, we American like you.)

Re: WTF is wrong with these French...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice reference to the american revolution..
Yes, the French did do the fighting for the Americans and yes they did beat the British.
 

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell at least we can still draw cartoons of mohamed

Random Thoughs

[Anonymous Coward]

Argh.. Marseille on Netflix is horrible. (I am not French, but I am European).

New Top Gear on Netflix is probably going to be awesome.

Currently, I estimate 10% of Finland's Netflix content to be European. And most of it is good stuff, too. Original European versions of TV shows that you Americans made worse (Killing, Bridge).

Now the French want to put more crap on Netflix.. Just great. I think 10-20% of our local Netflix is totally unwatchable as it is, because it is just some  crappy movies that have IMDB rating of 1.9 - 4.9 and they really suck.  If they want it to be 20% of content by your local country, I am quitting my subscription immediately. I can't even begin to imagine, that amount of crap they have to buy just to fill the quota.

Re:Random Thoughs

[Cederic]

New Top Gear on Netflix is probably going to be awesome.

Oh, there's a third one? I was going to give the new BBC show a chance, and I'm looking forward to seeking Clarkson's new vehicle (accidental pun, but fuck it) on Amazon Prime. Will wait and see what Netflix launch, their UK offering just isn't worth the subscription fee.

European Commission says

[Anonymous Coward]

"Geo-blocking and other geographically-based restrictions undermine online shopping and cross-border sales. The Digital Single Market strategy includes a commitment for an initiative to end unjustified geo-blocking by way of legislative proposals to change the e-Commerce framework or the Services Directive framework."

Re:Chinese will take over

[fahrbot-bot]

GOD will punish the whole USA if Clinton wins. She serves the DEVIL. Yes, Lucifer himself is her master.

Wait. She works for Ted Cruz? Now I'm *really* confused.

Can't the French make French films?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't recall French speaking people being forced to use NetFlix. Shouldn't French services have the ability to compete by differentiating themselves by providing French content?

Of course, NetFlix could probably meet the quota simply by paying Funimation to dub to French.

Does the BBC count as European?

[gb7djk]

Assuming the UK is still the EU after 23rd June: it being being European - and according to EU rules - it too should be able to share that money. Which would be ironic, not just because it would piss off the French and the Germans, but also Newspaper (think Murdock) Big Content (er.. M..) and Cable (ah.. M) companies whom have been been lobbying the UK Government to clip the BBC's wings for the last couple of decades.

Re:Does the BBC count as European?

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't matter, these stupid retards in this UK are going to leave the EU because they have been lied to out the ass.
And because the BBC didn't play ball, they already have been budget-slashed to death.
Whole channel gone, and probably more to come, internet services crushed, even popular ones.
Not trying to defend the BBC in the stupid decisions it has made recently, but they are still being punished because of corrupt media cartel throwing their weight around.

The whole Tory party needs to be imprisoned. Hard.
Actually worse than Hitler, and that is only because they are still alive.
Ban all American multinational relations as well.
HQ in UK and 100% transparency forced on them by 3rd party, or kicked out the country, period.
They simply cannot be trusted to be Honourable.

Fuck the french.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a european I can happily say that the french can go fuck themselves and their culture.
If their culture is so weak and pathetic that it can't survive by creating it's own movies and series then it deserves to die out.
This is exactly the kind of BS that makes me want to leave the EU.
All these stupid regulations that make it more difficult for me to buy the things I want.
And for good measure I hope the africans start speaking chinese just to spite the french mother fuckers.

Re:Fuck the french.

[Anonymous Coward]

Film the French getting fucked and stream this on Netflix!!!!

Re:Fuck the french.

[AlterEager]

Film the French getting fucked and stream this on Netflix!!!!

http://www.explicite-art.com/tour/

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[KiloByte]

By popular vote, he does (Hillary is that bad). By electoral college, no freaking way.

But the choice between a vile corrupt lying bitch and an inept nazi means you're screwed no matter who wins.

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[baker_tony]

That's what I don't understand about America, how on Earth have you gotten in to a situation where these two are your choices to run a superpower? The next few years are going to be pretty bad for the world, I'm just happy to be in a country that doesn't even show on most American maps!

Moderate to critically endangered

[ajyand]

Dear French Content Creators, maintain calm for now and ask for reserved quota when the status of your work changes from 'moderately endangered' to 'critically endangered'.

Outdated premise

[misnohmer]

There have been laws in the past requiring some percentage of local content on TV, for example in Canada. The laws originated because TV content was delivered via air-waves, which were a shared national resource, hence it was thought fairness should be regulated. What the politicians don't get is that Netflix is not pushing/broadcasting content, it is an on-demand/pull model. What this means is that even if they were to reserve 20% (though I'm not sure what that means as cloud storage can be extended almost at will) for French content, it is not going to result in the content being watched if people prefer to watch the other content. So what's next, forcing Netflix to make users watch French content? How is that going to work, a used gets a message when they go to watch rerun of "Friends" - "Sorry, no more non-French content allowed for you until you go watch a few hours of French content"?

Re:Outdated premise

[aevan]

Don't. Give. Them. Ideas.

~Rest of Canada

They should

[Anonymous Coward]

Start publishing and publicizing some of these non English movies for the English speaking public.

I would personally love to watch them and learn the Language with Subtitles but there is no method for me to even knows the names of them anyway without actually going there.

That's supposed to be the purpose of the Internet. Sadly everyone seems to want to either try to hide who they are or act like you are an intruder if you want to learn their language. It is all very strange.

Re:They should

[Anonymous Coward]

And please make the subtitles optional. When trying to improve ones understanding of a language, subtitles can be a distraction.

Re:They should

[AlterEager]

WTF?

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=french+movies

French Cultural Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

If the French weren't so terrified of the weakness of their culture, it might just be strong enough to not need this "protection."

Stop fighting fate.

[pla]

Dying languages really need to quit pissing in the wind. Yes, the world will always have a place for French as a Dead language, right up there with Latin and Greek.

But really... Quit tilting at windmills, guys - We'll all either speak English or Mandarin a century from now. All the "also-rans" need to throw in the towel and pick a side.

Re:Stop fighting fate.

[GuB-42]

We will probably all speak some bastardized variant of English, something like Nadsat in "a Clockwork Orange".
Some of the British will probably continue speaking proper English like some the French will continue speaking French but both will be essentially foreign languages to the "world English".

Re:Stop fighting fate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dying languages really need to quit pissing in the wind

But FTFS :

French may become the world's most-spoken language by 2050 (due to its popularity among the fast-growing population of Africa)

That's an interesting definition of dying you have there...

Re:Stop fighting fate.

[Tom]

We'll all either speak English or Mandarin a century from now

That is total nonsense.

The amount of languages in the world is staggering, and even though a few are dominant, you should take a good look at what peoples first language is. Check out just this WP page and you see that amazingly, the top one hundred native languages all have at least several million native speakers.

Something that several million people share will not disappear very fast. Languages die all the time, but those are languages spoken by a few thousand people from isolated tribes that disappear when the tribes disappear or get assimilated into larger societies.

But you really think that something like the Korean language, with over 70 million native speakers, will disappear anytime soon? That something like the Thai language, which is much older than English, will vanish "a century from now"? You live too much on the english-speaking Internet and too little in the real world.

All the "also-rans"

The dominance of English on the Internet is a historical oddity that is disappearing fast. When I started using computers, I had to learn english even before I had the first english class in school, because everything was in English. Today, in many parts of the world you can go online and use everything that is important in your native language.

Re:Stop fighting fate.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Nobody will be speaking Mandarin. It is a horrible language with way too many homophones and an impossible writing system. The only way to the language can be beautiful is an incomprehensible system (classical Chinese) which is a foreign language to native Mandarin speakers. Hell, Mandarin is only predominant in China because the government oppresses the hundreds of other languages that people speak on a daily basis.

Re:Stop fighting fate.

[AlterEager]

Yes, but those are black people. They don't count.

Re:Stop fighting fate.

[Mr Krinkle]

<quote>

<quote><p>Dying languages really need to quit pissing in the wind</p></quote>

<p>But FTFS :</p>

<quote><p>French may become the world's most-spoken language by 2050 (due to its popularity among the fast-growing population of Africa)</p></quote>

<p>That's an interesting definition of dying you have there...</p></quote>

The more interesting thing is the numbers in that article... One study (assuming no major famine etc in Africa) shows as many as 750m first language speakers of French by 2050.  I'm not sure what will happen to the current Mandarin speakers since that currently is at 900m.   If you add lvl2 speakers, English and Chinese are still way above it.  I'd see the Africans learning one of those two in addition to French to succeed outside of Africa, so I see those numbers increasing as well.

I just don't get the studies numbers at all.   (But your point about French or other languages dying anytime soon is very valid.  Not going to happen short of a major catastrophe)

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[AK Marc]

US maps don't like islands. That's why Hawaii is always in Mexico. So where are you? Seychelles? Fiji? NZ? Africa?

Better be on the southern hemisphere. My calculations are that the southern hemisphere will mostly survive a nuclear war. The fallout will be mostly gone by the time it passes the equator, and most of the nukes are aimed at Russia or the US, leaving few direct strikes on the southern hemisphere.

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[baker_tony]

Yep, hunkering down in NZ. Hoping the fallout won't reach this far and there's no reason to nuke us, our job in wars is mainly just to patch people up.
P.S. I'm really worried about the US if you don't show Africa on your maps ;-)

French Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix could just add French, German, and Estonian porn. Extra points if it's the politicians fucking over their middle classes -- it'd be a pornumentary. Heck, I'll licence the content to Netflix at a loss.

French will not be the most spoken language in the world 2050, can you say Mandarin?

Re:French Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

French will not be the most spoken language in the world 2050, can you say Mandarin?

And who the hell speaks Mandarin ? Only the Chinese. And they account for shit on the world stage, they're good only for producing garbage to sell on the international markets. That is it.

Re:French Porn

[HornWumpus]

The language you are thinking of is 'Cantonese' not 'Mandarin'.

Make better content then

[pieisgood]

Seriously, what's an even playing field? Being forced to host particular content? Netflix is attempting to make the most money, this means appealing to the most people in order to get more service signups. If european content is what european consumers want; I would imagine the netflix would have taken this into account and adapted to make more money in those markets. Instead, there's a EU decision to force netflix to run this content. This is more a fear of losing their culture rather than a market based decision. Disguising it as evening the playing field is a joke.

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[AK Marc]

The standard US map centers on the US, and to save space, fitting onto a letter (What's A4? Isn't that a car?) sized piece of paper, often shows North and South America, with nothing else, or you just get the USA only maps. Only rarely do you see a world map in the US, and those don't depict the world very well. Last one I saw was in a tourist area, and still listed the USSR, many years after the fall.

I moved out of the US, for the reason that I saw in the election cycle 8 years ago that Trump was an inevitability, not an aberration. The campaigning around Obama was very hateful, and the number of people who worshiped the hate indicated it was quite popular.

Re:Chinese will take over

[AK Marc]

And Trump will punish the whole USA if Trump wins, as he *is* the devil. So do you want to vote for the devil himself, or a servant of the devil? Damned if you do...

Governments without Freedom equals this

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since the Soviet Union fell apart we no longer have any government in the world that supports basic human freedoms. No person should be forced to something that they do not wish to do only for the purpose of another person's wants. If you look at every government today all you see is the Soviet Union in miniature. None will go as far as their socialist and communist neighbors, or so they think to themselves. But in fact they are. Governments are enslaving their populations more and more each day by using fear. Fear of terrorism. Fear of invasion. Fear of (insert one of a hundred things that people fear).

Until the people start standing up and putting down these governments it will only get worse.

So remember, when voting, vote "Military Coup"! At lease in the U.S.

More piracy...

[jopsen]

All you'll see is piracy... which still exists because content providers doesn't have the same catalogs as in the US... It's often very hard to get a show legitimately..
Personally, I gave up piracy years ago, when Netflix and HBO became available in Europe. But if the catalog was to shrink or just not expand dramatically, there is no stopping piracy... People aren't going to buy DVDs...

Just turn off Netflix in France - end it

[Anonymous Coward]

Then tell the French government to fuck off.

Eh, here, I'll do it for you.

Hey yoh, French Government, Fuck Off. You're irrelevant, this kind of "oh my gosh, gasp, our own people aren't smart or talented enough to do this on their own, so fuck it, let's make others smarter and more talented than us into our slaves."

Slavery is forbidden France, go play with matches and short fused dynamite clamped between your legs, we don't need you anymore.

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[quenda]

Hell at least we can still draw cartoons of mohamed

So has it come to the point where the US draws consolation from still being still not as bad as some middle-eastern Shithole?

Or were you referring to France?

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[ArmoredDragon]

No, it's just that in the US, freedom of expression is something we culturally value far more than Europe does. You can express something no matter how backwards the rest of us think it is. For example, in the US, most of us hate communism, fascism, and wahhabism, but, people are allowed to glorify them if they want, or denigrate them if they want, and you won't risk persecution.

In Europe on the other hand, glorifying fascism can often land you in jail, while denigrating wahhabism can in many cases be considered a hate crime and also land you in jail.

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Anonymous Coward]

What fucking map have you seen with north and s America and not the rest of the world ?

America only maps make sense. Every country has country maps. Every country has world maps. Don't be that expat.

Hey - we even have state maps, want to be ignorant about those too ?

- expat for 7 years

Internet Video

[Anonymous Coward]

most of us intelligent humans have forsaken all the pay sites and are watching streaming live for free. Netflix and Amazon (who I subscribe to), will go down hard .
This is ridiculous, we subscribers will have to pay more - and I for one - won't. So BOO HOO

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[AK Marc]

What fucking map have you seen with north and s America and not the rest of the world ?

Every wall-map up in public school. Maybe they couldn't afford the world map, but those are left to tiny representation in textbooks, where you can't read any of the country names.

America only maps make sense.

I wasn't talking about America-only maps. I was talking about international maps where "international" doesn't include the whole world. Outside the US, I see actual world maps much more often than I did inside the US.

fallacies again and again.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is ludicrous to predict the future based on growth rates. For example the growth rate of telephone operator jobs in the 1920's would lead to all of us in that position today. Even the growth rate of bread mold indicates that the mold will consume the earth shortly. So there is a spike of population growth in Africa (probably in response to the many dearth caused by civil wars and aids there). Doesn't predict anything about French usage in 2050. In mathematical terms derivatives are noisy.

block Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it just be easier to block those countries?

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[dunkelfalke]

ORLY? Wasn't the FBI created to hunt communists? Freedom of expression my arse.

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. My kids are in public schools and all maps beyond America, shows the entire world. You must have gone to 1 fucked up school.

Re:Our roads and bridges are crumbling.

[stealth_finger]

Look, isn't god supposed to have this plan? So if Clinton wins it's his fault. Maybe he will have to send himself to be sacrificed to himself to save us from himself again.

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[edittard]

Maybe it was a full world map and somebody tore it as they were putting up?

Overheard in heaven

[edittard]

Overheard in heaven: "Tell you what, pops - either go yourself or send spooky-boy this time. I still can't eat peanuts without using a spoon."

moron

[Tom]

should U.S.-based companies be facing "regional quotas" for the content they're offering?

Yes, you moron. You see, as long as your "US-based" company stays in the US, it can do whatever the fuck it wants. But when you do business in other regions of the world, boom, big surprise, suddenly the rules of those regions are a thing. Who could've seen that coming, right?

It's the Daily Mail

[Pop69]

It's a comic that sells issues by whipping up anti EU hysteria with false claims like the EU legislating how bent a banana can be.

There is plenty of them

[Anonymous Coward]

Look if you think 3 men and a baby came first I have a news for you: there was already a french film with that story 2 years before. Need I mention Leon ? And many other films ? There is already a lot of those film, so the 20% will not be hard to fill. The problem is, culture is not always the cheapest. The company like netflix would rather sell what has to most profit, in bulk, and the expanse of culture. Result : local film industry get shafted because they can never get the rapport price/quality hollywood get due to bulk sales and you get the bland fucking slope we get served remark after reboot. That is why many country impose a minimum of home made film as to preserve their own culture. You may not like it and prefer the mass-bland-average bulk shit which get sold, but I and many other people prefer diversity even if we have to pay a little bit more for it.

Yet another reason to say...

[MitchDev]

FUCK THE EU!

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[ShanghaiBill]

ORLY? Wasn't the FBI created to hunt communists? Freedom of expression my arse.

In the past, America persecuted and arrested people for being communists. But those laws were declared unconstitutional, and we don't do that anymore. If you want to drag up stuff from the past, Europe looks a lot worse than America, so you shouldn't go there. You should criticise America for what it is, not what it was.

In other news, this week a German citizen was threatened with arrest for reading a poem.

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe worse in the past, how so ? We had the holocaust but you had the genocides of countless native nations. Or do native Americans not count as real peoples. Careful your ignorance and/or racism is showing

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro Tip: The President doesn't "run" things.

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Zak3056]

What fucking map have you seen with north and s America and not the rest of the world ?

Probably a map of the western hemisphere, which would neatly explain why things were "cut off."

To the jackass who thinks this is some kind of americacentric view, please rest assured that we do have maps of the rest of the world, and show them to our school children regularly. That's the fun thing about maps: you use different maps for different purposes. We also have running water, indoor plumbing, and some guy down the road has a magic moving picture box in his home that occasionally shows us views off far of Europe, Africa, and other exotic locales.

French: God's joke on the world

[Anonymous Coward]

God created "French" as a joke language on the celestial equivalent of "The Onion".

Unfortunately for the French people they didn't realize it was a parody and adopted it as their own language.

I love foreign TV programmes and films.

[Anonymous Coward]

I love watching foreign TV programmes and films. Of course I also like watching British films as well but there is something special about German, French and Scandinavian TV programmes and films. I've been watching a lot of WW2 films recently and seeing films made by the Polish, the Danish, the Finnish, the French and the Germans really puts things into a different perspective especially when compared with the jingoistic rubbish that comes out of Hollywood sometimes. I'm fed up of being told how the USA won the war for us. The only thing I hate about foreign TV and films is when they are dubbed rather than subtitled. When will people learn that dubbing is the worst thing you can possibly do?

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[yuriklastalov]

Thank you! So much of the handwringing about who ends up being the President of the United States is based on an false understanding of how the office of the President even works. From some comments I've read, you'd think that once Trump got in office there would immediately be pogroms against Muslims, we'd be rounding up every vaguely Mexican seeming person we could find and unceremoniously tossing them over the wall. All women will be required to quit their jobs and go back to the kitchen, and rape will not only be legalized but encouraged!

Jesus fucking Christ people, get a grip. Does Hillary suck? Yep, but she won't cause mass havoc and destruction. Does Trump suck? Kinda, but he won't bring about the anti-Feminist apocalypse (unfortunately).

God damned whining Progressive retards need to come back to reality. Comrade Bernie can't save the world, Crooked Hillary would just be a slightly worse Obama (you could expect relations between the sexes to deteriorate much like race relations have under Obama though) and Madman Trump won't launch nuclear weapons at ISIS, genocide Muslims or whatever other outlandish fears people seem to have about him.

If anything, especially if you think Congress is full of wankers, Trump would be the only one who would be able to say "Congress, you're fired" with a reasonable expectation of having the voting population actually vote the losers out of office. And that kind of directness is exactly why people like Trump. The whole American political system is so deeply lodged up its own ass and everything they do and say is calculated and focus grouped to the point where it barely even approximates normal human communication. So when someone is daring to call bullshit on these assholes, even if he's a massive asshole himself, people are attracted to it. /end screed

implies EU content is bad

[micahraleigh]

If Europe is going to FORCE businesses to carry their content, they are implying people don't want to watch European content on their own.

Even if that is mostly false, that is the message they are sending.

If people wanted to watch European content, why would the governments force businesses to carry it? Wouldn't people pay money to watch it? Why would Netflix turn away people's money to watch European content if they were pushing for it?

The problem with quotas is they imply people wouldn't normally prefer whatever is being pushed.

Should U.S.-based companies face 'regional quotas'

[Anonymous Coward]

If they want to make money in the regions they should at least offer the choice of stuff other than American mass culture - pple need their own stories.

Re:Our roads and bridges are crumbling.

[micahraleigh]

I'm afraid the plan could include the government we deserve ...

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Anonymous Coward]

40% of London is Muslim and you think the US is in trouble?

Have you been following what has happened in Paris and Brussels?

easy fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Find the cheapest French content, steam it at abysmally low quality and charge 10x for it.

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[ShanghaiBill]

We had the holocaust but you had the genocides of countless native nations.

What we did to the native Americans is nothing compared to what you Europeans did to the Neanderthals.

Re:Chinese will take over

[Anonymous Coward]

Ted Cruz is the Antichrist, not Lucifer. Which is to say, he's Lucifer's son. Guess who is the mommy?

Yeah, it's that complicated.

Trump, OTOH? Loki.

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[AK Marc]

Probably were free from another school or library. Educational material was so bad, the teachers spent more time correcting errors than teaching. "Oh, and if you see 'Königsberg' on your map, that's been called "Kaliningrad for about 100 years" Maybe because so many of the world maps were wrong, they didn't bother posting them.

America F*** Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Love the double standards from all the commenters saying Europe should suck it up and create it's own competitive industry.

I guess we can use the same argument now when Americans whine about losing all their tech jobs and manufacturing jobs. Suck it up, just work cheaper and you can create a competitive industry.

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[ArmoredDragon]

Umm...in case you forgot, Europe did the natives MUCH worse than the US did prior to it even existing, namely the destruction of the Aztec and Inca empires via enslavement, disease, and "convert to christianity or die" terms. The US killed them and forced them off of their land, yes, but we didn't commit any form of genocide or enslavement.

But since you asked, let's go on: Even more recent than the holocaust was mass european colonialism that caused a lot of African, Middle-Eastern, and Asian countries to hate the west, which was not only recent but spans at least 400 years. And not only did you start the second world war, but the first one as well, communism, numerous inquisitions, crusades, and the dark ages. There's a lot more I can't think of at the moment or are somewhat localized (i.e the reign of terror) but Europe doesn't have a peaceful past at all, rather this "second renaissance" is only a recent thing, and may end soon thanks to at least 25% of the European population voting for self admitted fascists into office (and no, Trump doesn't even begin to qualify as fascist, even if he does get elected.)

Yet somehow you guys have yourselves convinced that, aside from the holocaust, you've never done any harm to anybody, and when it comes to politics often identify yourselves as "the rest of the world" when you compare yourselves to the US. That probably comes from the fact that you've colonized most of it and installed your own culture, while you just assume that everybody else thinks the same as you, even though they actually don't. Try reading wikipedia in non-european languages; you'll find that most of the world which doesn't speak a European language doesn't think anything like you when it comes to politics.

And I'm not hating on Europeans just to hate on Europeans. Lots of countries are guilty of similar crimes. However, you had to ask, so I told.

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Aereus]

We had these things called globes...

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Coren22]

Because clearly something that happened 108 years ago is the same thing as things are now.

Re:TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Coren22]

Two choices? People believing there are only two choices is part of the problem. In the last two presidential elections, there were at least six choices for president.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If people would stop viewing this as one vs the other, maybe things could be improved.

There are currently 11 parties in the running for the US elections:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

but, because of the media blackout of all but the top two, everyone assumes it is D vs R.

Re:Chinese will take over

[Coren22]

You got me...thanks, now I'm going to lose my job...

FYI, that is a goatse link.

Re: TRUMP IS OUR LAST DEFENSE

[Anonymous Coward]

The US killed them and forced them off of their land, yes, but we didn't commit any form of genocide or enslavement.

Funny, how you manage to contradict yourself so well in one sentence. I don't even have to mention the enslavement of the Pequot, or the Charles Town slave trade, or the Florida Maroons, or the California slavery policies. It may even surprise you to note that many states made no distinction between African and Native slaves, for a variety of reasons, so you can't even be sure any given slave was or was not a member of a Native tribe.

And latter, even after the Civil War, the express policy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs was to destroy tribal identity and eliminate native culture. Which sounds like a form of genocide to me. Maybe you haven't heard of the boarding schools, or their policies, or anything else, but well, I guess that is something you should correct, as you did get around to chiding the Europeans for their ignorance.

Of course, if you wanted to do that, you could have mentioned the Celtic cultures, the Teutonic Knights, or the treatment of the Basques.

But that's another issue. Just get off your high horse, you didn't need to make this claim, and yet you did.