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Netflix and Amazon Could Face Content Quotas In Europe (dailymail.co.uk) 344

Posted by EditorDavid from the Chateau-de-Cartes dept.
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?
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Netflix and Amazon Could Face Content Quotas In Europe More

Netflix and Amazon Could Face Content Quotas In Europe

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  • Same thing in Canada (Score:4, Informative)

    by innocent_white_lamb ( 151825 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @03:37PM (#52160945)

    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: (Score:3)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      radio stations must play a certain percentage of Canadian music.

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

    • 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 happe

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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        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 station

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by quantaman ( 517394 )

      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 be

      • 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: (Score:3)

          by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

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

          • 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: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Pig Hogger ( 10379 )

      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”

    • 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.

    • 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. Instea

  • How about content providers pull out of Europa (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Foxhoundz ( 2015516 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @03:38PM (#52160951)
    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 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22, 2016 @03:54PM (#52161033)

      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: (Score:2)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        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 Pa

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Europe is too big a market to abandon.

    • Attempt no broadcasting there?

    • 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...

    • Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa (Score:5, Funny)

      by fox171171 ( 1425329 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @09:19PM (#52162275)

      Re:How about content providers pull out of Europa

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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by delt0r ( 999393 )
      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.

  • Barrier to entry (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Sunday May 22, 2016 @03:39PM (#52160959)
    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.
    • No market or too small market to justify the cost or multiple small markets for each national language.

    • 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.

      • 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.

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

    • Re:Barrier to entry (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @08:02PM (#52162021)
      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: (Score:3)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      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 local

      • 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: (Score:3)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      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! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @03:40PM (#52160969)

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

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

  • "even playing field" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dnaumov ( 453672 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @03:43PM (#52160981)

    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.

    • 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

      • 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 m

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by beh ( 4759 ) *

      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.

      A

  • Well (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22, 2016 @03:43PM (#52160989)

    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?

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

  • DONE! "...reserve at least 20per cent share..." (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @03:53PM (#52161027)

    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 (Score:5, Funny)

    by admiral snackbar ( 2559943 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @03:53PM (#52161031)
    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'? (Score:3)

    by grahammm ( 9083 ) <graham@gmurray.org.uk> on Sunday May 22, 2016 @03:54PM (#52161037)

    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22, 2016 @04:01PM (#52161063)

    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.

  • What could go wrong? (Score:3)

    by denbesten ( 63853 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @04:09PM (#52161121)

    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: (Score:2)

      by Zumbs ( 1241138 )
      ... 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? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @05:28PM (#52161485)

        ... 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.

      • 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.

    • their European Catalog suddenly becomes limited

      You make it sound as if that wasn't the case already... [gk2.sk] 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? (Score:3)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @04:25PM (#52161189) Homepage

    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.

  • 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.
  • 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 (Score:3)

    by misnohmer ( 1636461 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @05:21PM (#52161449)

    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"?

  • Stop fighting fate. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pla ( 258480 ) on Sunday May 22, 2016 @05:38PM (#52161523) Journal
    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: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      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: (Score:3)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      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 [wikipedia.org] 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 w

    • 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.

  • 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 d

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