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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[Applehu Akbar]

Attempt no broadcasting there?

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

[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

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Not if they make it unprofitable to do business there.

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

[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

[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

[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.

This is just the best!

[Archtech]

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

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

"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"

[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"

[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"

[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"

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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

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

[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.

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

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.

[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: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: 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: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: Another example of regulatory overreach

[lgw]

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

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.

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?

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.