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EU to move ahead with cultural quotas for streaming services (techcrunch.com)
161 points by Kemet on Sept 5, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 327 comments


> The proposals will require that streaming services give over at least 30% of their on-demand catalogues to original productions made in each EU country where a service is provided (individual EU Member States could choose to set the content bar even higher, at 40%)

30% for each country seems really high to me. As usual for regulation, there will likely be high unintended consequences. While in the US and elsewhere there will be thousands of movies available, if Netflix can only get the rights to 90 Belgian films, they aren't going to pay through the nose to create or purchase many more movies. They will just trim down the available movies in Belgium to 300. After all, no competition will be able to do any better.

Worst case scenario, someone may corner the market on digital rights to some country's movies, then they will be the only ones that can provide any sort of streaming service. That country will only have access to an expensive service with a limited selection.

In those cases, the locals will just continue to pirate movies as the only way to reasonable access them online, and the local film industry will be no better off than before as their consumers will be accustomed to getting their movies for free.

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


I'm quite positive what will instead happen is psuedo-companies will prop up in each country, whose specific purpose is to produce a sufficient number of garbage but 'local' film, to license to each streaming provider, to meet the requirement. If netflix has a catalogue of 600, and belgium only has 90 films, then 210 pieces of shit will be produced to fluff it up (and likely explicitly ignored by the recommendation algorithms, with caveats). Eventually, the streaming services will realize its a smaller headache, cheaper, and presumably more profitable, to rely solely on the psuedo-companies for local films (outside of 'hit' local films, or rather, accidentally local), and it will simply become 300 garbage items.

Notably, those accidentally local films would probably have appeared in the catalogue anyways.

In similar fashion, the US gov is required to give a chunk of its business to minority run companies, and so you now have companies whose sole value is having a disabled alaskan female at the head, to land the contract, and then immediately contract out the entire thing to an 'actual' business to handle.

So I expect that it wouldn't be merely as bad as reducing netflix's catalogue. It will entirely cripple each countries local film industries (at least, if they are, or were going to be, dependent on streaming services for income). This can only be good for countries that already have a strong film industry.


For smaller countries, could a service small up exclusive rights to most feature length media, effectiy locking out competitors?


Its more about smaller industries, but in the scenario I described, probably not: there’s no reason that more psuedo-companies wouldn’t spring up, to service the other streaming services.

If you somehow blocked this garbage film industry as well as implemented a minimum requirement rule, such that only “good” films counted to the percentage, and given that “good” is relatively difficult to meet, so supply is severely constrained, then lockout is not unimaginable. But it’d probably still be difficult without additional regulation: prices would simply increase until the strangehold was broken (as a studio, what do I care about netflix’s monopoly if amazon is willing to pony up?). It would still be locked down to a handful of major services, but that’s a scenario that comes about with or without this law

Also an addendum example: chinese actors/directors/producers in film, whose primary value is allowing potential access to china distribution.

When you substitute merit for nationality (or most other things), its trivial to game, and it will be gamed.


Your entire premise is utter nonsense.

Lots of countries have minimum local content provisions. And in none of those countries have their been companies whose sole job it is to produce garbage content. You know why ? Because (a) nobody wants to work or be involved with garbage, (b) the cost of producing garbage is often the same as producing something amazing, (c) its hard for writers to have the motivation to deliberately write garbage.

Often local content (due to their being less money) are really thoughtful, low budget dramas/thrillers which aren't expensive. And contribute greatly to teaching the world how people live. Case in point: Nordic police dramas. They also can be hugely popular/profitable internationally.


What universe are you coming from? I mean hell, just look at porn as a trivial example against all three of your points. Sure, theres some decent porn out there, but by and large its trash. Exactly at the minimum quality required to service its needs, and its a huge industry. And its got the works: directors, actors, writers, producers, all working together to produce a shitshow, because its a profitable shitshow. Distinctly because its cheap to produce shit, and if it sells well despite being shit, theres a lot of money to be made.

Im not saying good things won’t be produced, I’m saying the market will optimize, and theres a very simple, clear and obvious “happy path” that directly conflicts with the spirit and intent of this law. I don’t know of a universe we can live in where money isn’t the primary motivator of a (generally open) market. I also don’t know of a universe where it costs the same to do more work than less, or a universe where people globally refuse shit work, when the price is (more than) right.


Oh as a filmmaker, you might not think you are making garbage. But the studio giving you money to make a film for a quota knows you wont make anything of general appeal. Maybe a few people will like it, but the rest will see it as garbage.

There are dozens of French and German films made under this theory.


This isn't about Netflix. Of the major streaming services, Netflix is the only one that actually meets or exceeds the 30% threshold.

This is about all the other streaming services, like Amazon, Hulu, Disney, etc., which produce almost no shows outside of North America. The EU is trying to force them to play ball.

And they'll succeed...in getting all of those services to add token local crap to the catalog. Expect to see a lot of very low-budget teen dramas and single-set movies if this passes. The EU believes that this will increase funding for EU "cultural" productions, but the more likely result is an entire generation of Uwe Bolls filling up EU's streaming services with utter crap. (Uwe Boll, for those who do not know, was a German filmmaker who took advantage of EU/German film incentives to convince major studios to let him make a number of very bad films, like Postal and the Dungeon Siege movie. Germany eliminated those incentives after a few years almost entirely because of him, and Uwe Boll hasn't managed to make a film since.)


Do you have a source on the Netflix claim? I doubt that 30% of the shows available in Malta are made in Malta.


> 30% of movies in Indiana need to be created in Indiana

Seems like the media production is pretty centralized in the US. It's hard to compare with Europe, where most nations have different languages, their own TV stations (producing their own content) and their own funds to support productions of movies.

It would be a shame if these biotopes of media production would get dried out because of US monopolies.

At least for Netflix I know that they license movies/tv shows produced in my country and they actively recommend it to me.


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

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


For reference, IMDB shows 297 movies from Malta, and Netflix' catalogue in Malta offers 716 movies.

So even assuming the current catalogue is completely devoid of Maltese movies, there is still some margin available to fulfil the strictest requirements. Although I think the actual requirements is to include 30% movies from the EU.


I don't think your interpretation of the requirements is correct. From upthread:

> The proposals will require that streaming services give over at least 30% of their on-demand catalogues to original productions made in each EU country where a service is provided (individual EU Member States could choose to set the content bar even higher, at 40%)


Yes, and my guess is that Malta will implement the law differently from what the EU proposes.

[Edited to fix typo.]


Also * cough * a good chunk of those US shows/movies are made up here in Vancouver anyways.


Or Toronto, aka "NYC on your favorite TV show"


LA is the more frequent stand-in for NYC on TV (e.g., CSI NY, Brooklyn 99, etc.). Humorously enough, Toronto frequently fills in for LA on lower-budget TV productions (e.g., Supergirl, anything on SyFy).


What fills in for Toronto?


Seattle


NYC and LA mostly, not really centralized as much as concentrated


Its not as if Netflix is the creme de la creme of cinema. Netflix already sucks outside the US. Outside the US, there's far less content, and there is either way a lot of filler content anyway.

What is going to happen is that Netflix will get the rights to stream (hopefully quality) local movies and series. That's gonna differ per country in EU. For example, some movies get broadcasted once or twice on public TV and that's it. Youth however mainly or even only stream. So they can get to see the movies they paid for (via tax) but via Netflix now, and Netflix can acquire them [reasonably] cheap. Everyone wins.

Right now, there's a bunch of quality EU series on Netflix already such as Casa De Papel and Dark.


I always find it weird when folks say Netflix sucks outside the US. Much of the library in the US feels like a mish-mash of old television and b-grade movies. When I'm in the UK, I have access to new episodes of television. Shows that you have to pay for on a per-episode, or per-studio basis in the US (Star Trek Discovery; The Good Place) were available in the UK on Netflix just after they aired in the US.


I felt like Netflix was amazing the first few years I had it - first with mail-in DVD service and then the early days of streaming. Once content rightsholders got wise to the idea that they have something to negotiate for, and Netflix shifted to producing their own content, it seems like what I liked about Netflix (large catalog of sometimes obscure movies) mostly vanished. I cancelled my subscription.


The Good Place is just an NBC show in the US.


Right -- and Star Trek Discovery is just a CBS show in the US. When either show airs in the US, the new episodes are available immediately on Netflix in the UK.

If I want to watch them in the US, I either have to pay per-episode/season on Google/Amazon/iTunes. CBS offers access to their entire library, but at $10/mo, it's more than a Netflix subscription.

My point is just that comments about the Netflix library being better in the US vs elsewhere holds true less and less every day.


Actually, Star Trek Discovery does not air on CBS in the US. It is exclusive to their streaming program.


Lack of quality streaming content in US is compensated by the huge DVD catalog though.


Something to think about, if Netflix comes in with their brand recognition and cash and buys the digital rights (more money for exclusive rights of course) to the local movies, this regulation basically locks up the market for them. As long as they have the bigger user base, they can pay more for any new local content, and effectively shut down any competitors. Amazon Prime might not be able to compete, forget about Hulu or whatever. So instead of a few big American companies and some local start ups in the market, you get just one big American company.


> Right now, there's a bunch of quality EU series on Netflix already such as Casa De Papel and Dark.

Just wanna add to this. Babylon Berlin is also shockingly great. Wish Netflix could introduce more series like this to the US market.


Not available for me at Netflix in The Netherlands. And I believe you right away. Everything Tom Tykwer had a hand in which I've seen was ace.


A lot of the removed U.S. content, is usually accessible in other countries (and vice-versa in some cases). I find more blockbuster movies when I am in Europe can be accessed via Netflix than in the U.S. (e.g. Black Hawk Down, House, Brooklyn 99, Lethal Weapon, Mad Max, Star Wars VII etc). There are a couple of search engines specific to find the right region.

Netflix from my understanding can pay less upfront for rights to well known movies outside the U.S. (https://flixed.io/newest-best-netflix-movies/).

The problem with Netflix from a non-U.S. region viewer is its lackluster offering of native language movies.


> Netflix can acquire them [reasonably] cheap

Why would the seller sell cheap, knowing that the buyer is forced by law to buy?


The law cannot force Netflix to not buy the cheapest content offered in a country if the quality is irrelevant. All these countries have their own Hollywoods that takes all the money, and tons of small productions and artists living in poverty; there will always be someone to offer dirt cheap content needed to fill the quota. And Netflix can always make its own local production company, produce some crappy reality TV program and generate as much local content as they want.

It's a problem with TV or cinema, since there is limited space and time on it, but with streaming, Netflix can just put it in the catalog and let everyone not click on it...


Not every place would bother making tons of money off of them because they'd rather have the programming out there. I'm going to guess many weren't making money anyway, since they were only shown once or twice on broadcast television. And overall, some of it might be a bonus for the production of new stuff.


> 30% for each country seems really high to me.

The article misstates what the proposal actually says. It's a quota of 30% on "European works". The term is defined in Article 1 (1) (n) of Directive 2010/13/EU [1], which the proposal seeks to amend; it includes works originating in the member states, works originating in countries that are parties to the European Convention on Transfrontier Television, and works coproduced based on agreements between the EU and third countries. (There is an additional provision ensuring that the movies are actually produced mainly in these countries and not just through letterbox companies having a legal presence there.)

So, Netflix can definitely offer French movies to Belgian viewers in order to fulfill their quota or British movies (even after Brexit, the UK will remain a party to the European Convention on Transfrontier Television) to Irish viewers.

An overview on the state of the legislation can, as with most EU legislation, be found on the European Parliament's legislative train website [2].

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:...

[2] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-connec...


Ok, let's say that any title made in EU will suffice for every EU member. Still, for every 100 non-EU (basically, US) titles Netflix would need to get 50 EU titles. And I don't think that amount of movies/series/etc produced in US is only twice as big as in EU.


Netflix already offers only a fraction of its US titles in EU member states.

And you'd be surprised. The UK, France, and Germany combined already outproduce America in terms of movies [1] (quality may be a different story, of course).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_industry#Statistics


I am indeed surprised, thanks for the link. So, it's definitely doable. But still, it will require investments just to keep existing entries available.


Does the law mandate that the movies be good? Because you can just set up a webcam, chunk it into 2 hour pieces, and call it a movie.


Um. That's already a part of the television culture in some places. Norway has slow tv. I don't watch it, but some folks out there do.

https://www.visitnorway.com/media/news-from-norway/finally-t...


At one point when our son was four, almost five, he loved Slow TV, in particular the 7 hour train journey. (We are in Australia so watching it on Netflix.) We'd just put it on for him and he'd play with it on in the background. It is far less annoying than some of the other things he wants to watch (e.g. Commander Keen playthroughs on YouTube). (But, since then, he has kind of lost interest in trains, so it hasn't been on for a few months now.)


This was a neat story. Thanks for sharing :)


Ideal place for Test cricket ! For those who do not know it is a sport played over 5 days , 7 hours of play each day.


You forgot to mention that is a time limit so that matches don’t drag on too long...


Nice question. Although brand value concerns will trump these problems in practice.


Not if Amazon Prime is anything to go by - Prime Video in the UK at least is full of random Youtube videos (yes...) and bargain basement independent productions. I don't mind most of the time, as the recommendations means they'll mostly surface if there's genuinely little good stuff available in a given genre, but they're clearly not very concerned about it reflecting on their brand.


I'm amazed something this poorly thought out is about to be 'signed off'.

I foresee shrinking catalogues and a massive increase in piracy. Go EU!


Probably going to need a license to pirate soon. That way they can ensure that all illegally downloaded content is culturally appropriate. I am only half joking with this comment, I could see it happening


This model has already be adopted for France for more than a decade for music (and tv + movies ?), I imagine the 40% number actualy comes from there.

The direct effect was a tsunami of money poored into anyone that could produce anything in French, just to meet the quota.

Content is fast to produce and there is no judgement on quality regarding the quota. For radio the impact was bigger, but I think it just accelerated a trend of people moving to on demand music anyway.


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

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


The US is incredibly culturally diverse, it's a nation of immigrants from all over the world. It's just not delineated by state. There are geographic pockets of one culture or another, but frequently a single geographical area has many different cultures in it, so it isn't as easy to draw a line around your culture and make laws to protect it. A culture lives and dies on its own efforts and merits.


It is not as diverse for major film. Most of the film in the US comes from Hollywood.


So? Walk onto a set and I bet you'll find people from every continent except Antarctica there. People born on those continents too, not just descendants.


So?

- What language do they speak?

- What cultural nuances are they bringing to their films? Local food, local culture?

99% of US films have little to do with international perspectives, much less with local cultures.

A black man eating a Big Mac is a person eating a Big Mac, no matter how black he is.


I disagree. This entire line of thought is just ridiculous prejudice. If you think the US film industry is entirely represented by the 20 or so big blockbusters that come out each year, and that somehow the hundreds of smaller and independent movies don't count, that's your problem. Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't mean they don't exist.


To what degree is the regulation about restricting individual's choice vs. forcing corporate compliance? If a European user chooses to access Netflix through a VPN, are they in violation of the regulation, or is the VPN provider, or is Netflix, for not doing sufficient checking?

Frankly, it's amazing that so many regional policies, both regulatory (like GDPR) and policy (region encoding) have survived in the modern internet. Maybe in an IPv6 world we can move towards IP addresses not containing any significant geo-IP information, making such attempts moot. Probably not, but it's a nice dream.


To take the EU's perspective, it's not about restricting individual's choice, but to encourage other local choices as well


I understand the purpose of the regulations -- France, in particular, has had similar regulations for movie theaters since forever, so there would always be some French movies playing. Here it is easy -- consumers are not required to watch the movies, they can do whatever they want, but the theaters are required to devote some theaters and showtimes to support the French culture.

The question is to whom the regulations apply in this case -- presumably Netflix has the primary responsibility, but some regulations are expansive in scope. For example, money laundering regulations require not only that you report certain particular transaction types and not knowingly support money laundering, but that you also go out of your way to monitor and attempt to detect money laundering.

So in theory, regulations for Netflix could also require that Netflix go out of their way to prevent users using VPNs or IP address masking in order to access non-regional Netflix content. Or they could require VPN providers to ensure that they don't allow their customers to do that. Or they could assign criminal or civil penalties for individuals who attempt to circumvent regional restrictions. Or they could just say that Netflix is only responsible for serving content compatible with the user's stated region, and leave it at that.


You've got the wrong impression that the EU and the USA are interchangeable when it comes to national market. There is no such thing as a Federal level market in the EU as there is in the USA. This means that French/German/Belgium/Polish or any of the nation state has a national level market for cultural product that doesn't cater for cultural product from other national market located inside the EU. There have been attempt to get bi-national TV channels (see ARTE), but those a poor response to a need for breaking up the national market. This regulation is hitting the streaming services because those are perceived as less reliant on national market.

The proposition is also to promote production from anywhere else within the EU to 'a' national market, and therefore exposing an audience to TV shows/films they wouldn't have access to through their national broadcaster. I do believe this is unfair on streaming service as the national markets are still closely guarded market, and national network should be made subject to the same constraint. I would even go one step further and break the national airwave license in favor of a European one, but that is going to be another discussion entirely.


But there are only two languages with large demographics in the USA: English and Spanish. If the FCC created a regulation that said streaming services must support at least 30% Spanish, I think that would be an improvement, and it would also be easy for the streaming services to hit that goal.

Perhaps you could argue that smaller language groups should also be supported. According to the 2010 USA Census, there were 2.9 million people in the USA who spoke Chinese. I think proportional representation could be useful, though clearly you could not give each language group 30% of the streaming service. But if the regulation insisted that the movies streamed had to match the languages, proportional to the demographics of the USA, I think the streaming services would be the better for it.


In the US, there are spanish streaming services available and Chinese streaming services available. You can find movies from every country. It's a free market, and services from other countries are allowed. If they did what you said, it would be difficult for foreign streaming services, and even small American services to exist. And it would just concentrate the industry further in a few big companies.


There are some streaming services that are available for the larger language groups, however to depend on the market is to depend on a series of happenstance circumstances that are sensitive to which companies decide to offer what. Only the government can ensure that each language is represented. The smaller the language group, the more that group could benefit from having some support from a legal mandate.


Maybe that's the intended effect, reducing American cultural influence.


I find this understanding unlikely.

One of the rules of EU is that you should as much as possible not treat foreign europeans any differently than national ones. So german, belgian, french, whatever content should pass the bar for local content anywhere in the EU.


Netflix is mostly only good for a handful of TV series outside the US. Sometimes it has movies worth watching, but it's rare. More usually, it has n-1 for the sequel du jour.


Depends on exactly what the rule is. If the rule is something like, “any view where the customer is choosing a movie to watch, you have to show at least thirty percent local films,” Netflix would not need to trim the catalogue. They could just repeat the same ten Belgian films on every page. #ThanksEU


Perhaps the EU should be under anti-trust investigation for actions detrimental to consumers.


I was wondering if this could be applied to music streaming services in the future.

Forcing Spotify or Apple Music to make at least 30% of their content locally produced music seems... Exceedingly high.


Honestly I think that more doable than 30% of movies and tv-shows.


Perhaps. Or they could argue that tweaking their recommendations to always feature 30% locally produced music would fit the requirement, while keeping their entire global catalogue.


I mean, Uwe Boll is European (German, specifically).


Well, he did become who he is exactly because of similar German regulations.


Perhaps a local service other than Netflix can step up then.

It sounds like you are defending Netflix in order for them to continue to offer an inferior product outside of the US.


So to get the same as with Netflix today I now have to subscribe to 50+ services?


Sounds like two, not 50+ unless you live across multiple EU states...


Or they will just buy up a bunch of cheap streaming rights to low budget stuff and older movies. They will the Belgian equivalent of "Who's the boss" or something.

Course that doesn't fit the narrative of "Regulation is bad"


> Or they will just buy up a bunch of cheap streaming rights to low budget stuff and older movies. They will the Belgian equivalent of "Who's the boss" or something.

> Course that doesn't fit the narrative of "Regulation is bad"

I would argue that it does.


Everyone here actively despises the local film industry. We do not need to inflict Dutch television on the world. Thats torture.

Good shows should earn their ratings, not be force fed- if your culture is so great France and Germany you wouldn't need these subsidies. Netflix is not a public broadcaster.


The problem with this line of thinking is that it will pretty much never be cost-efficient to make a German language movie with a limited market compared to a English movie. No matter how great it is. It is even worse for smaller countries like Finland or Netherlands. There will NEVER be comparable ratings for a Dutch comedy show vs Modern Family with a global audience. So unless regulated, investments will shift to the lowest common denominator, ie. English.


On the other hand, it is absolutely possible to create good content with moderate/low budgets. And European local audiences love and watch films or TV series in their local languages... when these are passably good.

But they don't like crap, and most of the local production is, unfortunately, just a shitty version of US stuff. The same bland generic ideas, but with worse acting, scripts, and production, on a lower budget.


But, isn't this literally the point of the European common market? Germans make the best pretzels, Italians make the best olive oil, and French make the best cheese, and all the countries can share their exports with each other with no trade barriers.

Why should protectionism be embraced for cultural exports when the EU was literally established to eliminate protectionism for other exports?


Because "Freedom to speech" and "Freedom of thought, conscience and religion" are basic human rights.


Most of those are not freedoms. How many people actually ask their kids which primary language they want to speak, and which religion they want to follow beforeahead?


Then switch to English. Having multiple world languages is a giant waste of resources on a dubious premise, that slightly different perspectives of speakers bring more on the table.

Not to mention, that this is one of the reasons we still have borders, wars, etc, etc.


Movies might be harder, but I really liked "Dark" which is a Netflix made German show [0].

[0]: https://www.thelocal.de/20171122/netflix-premiers-first-ever...


There's plenty of Finnish TV shows that are popular within Finland. Children and the elderly do not have English literacy rates as high as the rest of the population. Most kids shows are either produced locally or dubbed in Finnish.


When good shows are made, everyone wants to see them, and streaming services jump to offer them. There are a lot of examples of this working, such as Netflix buying Spain's "Money heist / la casa de papel", or german "Babylon Berlin", or belgian "Tabula Rasa".

Also Netflix is actually opening a European production hub thus investing in local culture the good way.


> Everyone here actively despises the local film industry. We do not need to inflict Dutch television on the world. Thats torture.

I don't understand. Do the Dutch hate their own programmes? Why would they bother making shows they don't want to watch?

> if your culture is so great France and Germany you wouldn't need these subsidies.

I'm not sure they need them, just that it helps promote it. These shows might not necessarily be record-smashing-popular, but local film/TV from other countries routinely makes it's way to the US with sizable audiences (despite the US drowning in it's own media). Even childrens shows often have broad appeal. (as just a few examples, see 'Degrassi' from Canada, 'PJ Masks' and 'Miraculous' from France, 'Sarah and Duck' from Britain, 'Octonauts' from Ireland).

Some of those are funded in part from "cultural quotas" (various implementations of similar ideas) such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content . But it doesn't mean they aren't popular or good on their own.


> I don't understand. Do the Dutch hate their own programmes? Why would they bother making shows they don't want to watch?

Same reason any culture creates art, by choice. Not all art has to be accepted (or forced) and many times the value to its creator and/or a small subset of patrons is enough to justify it.

>> if your culture is so great France and Germany you wouldn't need these subsidies. Netflix is not a public broadcaster.

> I'm not sure they need them, just that it helps promote it

I added more context to the original quote. I assume the original poster didn't mean "subsidies" as financial assistance, but instead misused the word to mean restrictions on foreign content. I think most agree grants for the arts have value due to some forms of art being unsustainable on their own.


> I assume the original poster didn't mean "subsidies" as financial assistance I, obviously, have no idea what original poster meant but forcing streaming services to buy local titles is, basically, financial assistance.


> Do the Dutch hate their own programmes?

Yep.

> Why would they bother making shows they don't want to watch?

Subsidies.


So you in support of dumping then?


Protectionism is bad in all its forms. Content providers want to capture the local market and should include local productions -- if that's what the subscribers want. Mandating a quota is backwards.

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

All this does is either increase cost or reduce available selection in the affected markets. If the subscribers don't want the content they shouldn't be forced to pay for it. I live in Austria and do not want to have my selection reduced or more Austrian content.

Countries should try to compete on the global market place -- entertainment is one area where good content easily jumps borders.


  Protectionism is bad in all its forms.
I read a book once that made an interesting point:

1. English-language films make more money than French-language films because there are more English speakers than French speakers.

2. Because of this, an English-language film can profitably have a bigger budget, allowing better production values.

3. Once a film has been produced, the rights will get sold in every foreign market - with the price set by auction, not by the film's production costs. If French broadcasters only bid $15 million for a $150 million film, they get it for that price.

4. The upshot of _this_ is English-language films look 10 times more expensive than French-language films that cost the same.

5. This makes it extremely hard for French language films to compete.

The reason the French are so protective is because they believe, in the absence of such protection, the French film industry would get its ass kicked by the English-language film industry.

Oh, and for 'English-language' and 'French-language' above, you can insert a bunch of stuff about national culture. How do the police and courts act in your film? What food do we see people eating? What attitudes to sex, violence and alcohol do the good guys show? What political systems are shown, and how do characters view and interact with them? What values motivate the lead characters? What sort of things does the military get sent to do? How do employees interact with their bosses? What do roads and cars look like? Is there literally a character named Captain America?


> This makes it extremely hard for French language films to compete.

This assumes some zero-sum level of media the public can support and that money is enough to control it. I don't believe in either of those things wrt the arts and patronage can come in many forms, but restricting amounts of art in any direction by fiat is wrong.


There is a zero sum fight over finite attention and leisure time, and the ability to monopolize distribution channels (as with any other market, there can be monopolies).


The obvious solution is to make a movie in France in English.


Helps, but language has its own nuances that could be lost.


Exactly! I assume French studios could make English language films, and then have access to the same potential market that American films have.


That's a stupid solution.


Yet, I watch plenty of Japanese anime. I watch South Korean dramas as well. Simply saying that your contender cannot face up to the competition is laughable.

If you cannot compete on budget, perhaps you can compete on plot and story lines. One has to remember that the salaries that you have to pay Hollywood actors are much higher than what people in most other countries would make.


As an American who doesn't live in NYC or LA, I sympathize with wanting high quality, contextually diverse films; however, I would never want my (in this case, state) government to try to restrict the market of films available to me.


> Protectionism is bad in all its forms.

Yet it was the basis for economic growth of every developed economy. From the US, Germany, Japan to China.

The only countries that have no protectionism and free markets are poor African ones that find themselves under the IMFs thumb. All of which have stagnating economies.


Can you back up your claims with any evidence?


Here is a starting point for your research.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang

He has written a lot on this subject.

Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs

Jane Jacobs is another who writes very clearly on the role protecting home markets ply in development.

Anecdotally, Victorian Britain was full of indignant stories about Yankees stealing intellectual property. One of the reasons Dickens conducted his US tours was to try and plead the case for payment with folk who were pirating his work.


Again, I see no data that supports rapsey's claims, namely that

1. Protectionism resulted in greater economic growth for the US, Germany, Japan, and China.

The example of China is particularly egregious since it was China's economic liberalization reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, including opening up to foreign investment and lifting protectionist policies, that resulted in massive economic growth and massive poverty reduction.

2. There is a positive correlation between protectionism and development in African countries. This is ironic because protectionism is a major source of harm for African countries. From the introduction of [5]:

In recent years, as African governments and development advocates have stepped up their campaign to reform the trade policies of rich countries, the issue of agricultural protectionism has come to the forefront. This is a highly divisive issue, with rich countries resisting poor countries' demands for major changes... Critics highlight the hypocrisy of rich countries giving lip service to free trade while maintaining tariff barriers and paying subsidies to their farmers. Their argument that agricultural protectionism places an unfair burden on Africa is becoming a mainstream view.

There is a consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare [1][2][3][4], so rapsey's extraordinary claim to the contrary requires extraordinary evidence. As Gregory Mankiw says [6], "Few propositions command as much consensus among professional economists as that open world trade increases economic growth and raises living standards."

[1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/675410

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/upshot/economists-actuall...

[3] https://piie.com/newsroom/short-videos/why-after-200-years-c...

[4] https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2004/09/...

[5] https://www.jstor.org/stable/40209918

[6] http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/05/outsourcing-redux.htm...


> lifting protectionist policies

Not lifting completely, just enough to facilitate economic growth. Importing anything in the US, EU or China is process full of protectionist policies and tariffs that you must overcome.

The proof is in the pudding. The right amount of protectionism has proven to work in every successfully developed country. There are NO exceptions.

> "Few propositions command as much consensus among professional economists as that open world trade increases economic growth and raises living standards."

Economics would not be the first field with a popular theory that is complete nonsense that whenever tried has only resulted in catastrophe. Because it only works well in mathematical models instead of the read world.

Funny how all those economists have not convinced a single developed country to believe their theories and put them into practice.


> Importing anything in the US, EU or China is process full of protectionist policies and tariffs that you must overcome.

What is this supposed to prove?

> The right amount of protectionism has proven to work in every successfully developed country.

Every developed country has different amounts of protectionism. I have no idea what you mean by the "right" amount.

> Economics would not be the first field with a popular theory that is complete nonsense

What popular theory is "complete nonsense"?

> that whenever tried has only resulted in catastrophe

Which catastrophe?

> Funny how all those economists have not convinced a single developed country to believe their theories and put them into practice.

So not convincing someone to implement a good policy means the policy is bad?



Just linking to a book doesn’t help. Elaborate. Be specific.


"Protection is bad in all its forms" is an ideological statement of opinion, but you say it like it's a fact. It's not a fact.

Marketplaces are amoral. They incentivize supply to satisfy demand. There's nothing that ensures that demand morally good or bad, and the intermediation effect of monetary transactions can disguise morally problematic inputs to goods that satisfy demand, so it can encourage immoral production, like polluting industries or child labour.


The principle of comparative advantage is one of the few things in economics that is both interesting, and true.


It is strange for you to think of culture as a commodity to be traded on the global marketplace. British steel and Chinese steel might be effectively indistinguishable, but the same can not be said of British media/values and Chinese media/values.


If you live in a theoretical world with no basis in reality.


Really? Are you saying comparative advantage doesn't exist?


Only maybe in a pre-industrial world where economies are nothing but fishing, farming and mining.

Our economies are largely service and manufacturing based. Is one country better at programming, manufacturing, cooking, etc. then another? All of these things are taught and developed. Any country can become good at any of these service or manufacturing jobs. China is a manufacturing powerhouse, but so is the US, Germany and South Korea.

China and South Korea both had extremely clear strategies set forth by their governments to develop a manufacturing base over the past 30 years. What point in there in some comparative advantage theory? Nothing is innate and unchangeable. Just good economic policy.


Your comment gives me the impression that you don't know what comparative advantage is. Comparative advantage doesn't mean things are "innate and unchangeable". That's nonsense.


Only if there's a single metric for "better".


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

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

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


Culture is not a commodity. Culture is also not simply entertainment. Stories are vehicles for a society's values and values between societies are different. So stories are not exchangeable in the way that you could exchange some steel for some textiles.


Protectionsm is bad in all its forms. USA wants to protect it markets, and English language is one of tools to do that. Same for Russian language. Google forces me to Russian and English sites even if local versions are exist and I explicitly say that I want local version via "lang:Ukrainian". Google just ignores me and my needs and drives traffic to Russian and English sites. Youtube tries to convince me with Russian clips for years. The only tool I have is to ban every Russian clip I saw, but it helps only partially. I cannot do that for English clips, so my Recommended page is 99% of English clips and few ones sometimes in Ukrainian.

I have my own site: Linux.org.ua. At beginning, it was very popular site because it was the top national site about Linux. Then Google turned switch (in 2007?) and redirected all our national traffic to linux.org.ru, because 150M Russians is way more than 50M Ukrainians. Same for other sites, so almost all our niche national sites died.


This is the side of the EU that foreigners usually don't see. This is the reason there are movements for quitting in every member state (with varying levels of success).

The isolationism EU is beginning to display is starting to worry even me and the alternative is a bunch of UKIP-like nationalist which I am not really a big fan of.


> This is the side of the EU that foreigners usually don't see.

FWIW, this is the main side of the EU that I'm aware of: laughably bad lawmaking, based on complete unawareness of (or apathy towards?) the concept that the consequences of policies aren't based on wishing on a star that they be a certain way.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not sure I'd rather live (as I do) under the US's policy regime than I would under the EU's. But our pathologies of governance are different ones.


Don't get me wrong: I'm not sure I'd rather live (as I do) under the US's policy regime than I would under the EU's. But our pathologies of governance are different ones.

You know how the saying goes, you can live under US domestic policy or US foreign policy, but you can’t escape US policy. The idea of the EU was that by working together the member states could get their way in the face of that US foreign policy more often than they would on their own. In the absence of a strong EU, the US and China are pretty much unrestrained in Europe.


"you can live under US domestic policy or US foreign policy, but you can’t escape US policy" - that's depressing.


The EU does a piss poor job of explaining to its constituents what its advantages are, that's for sure.


I'm not sure it's entirely wrong when you have a heavyweight like the US/Hollywood that dominates the global entertainment industry. I don't know about you but the content coming out of Hollywood is depressingly dumb. This may be a hamfisted attempt at addressing that but the problem remains. The loudest voice in the room is US/Hollywood. Entertainment is often our "first contact" with ideas beyond our normal areas of expertise and if you entrust that to Hollywood, you're going to have a lot of misinformed people. I mean just look at how computer scientists and engineers are portrayed in Hollywood... if I had my choice I wouldn't want Hollywood portraying/writing about me and my peers.


What is going to happen is reverse of what you say you want. The big Hollywood blockbusters will be just as available as before, what you are losing is the long tail of smaller independent films that may be more thought provoking or diverse.

If some streaming service has to cut 80% of its offerings, they will keep the Transformers and Marvel movies and cut the smaller ones.

Even if they made more specific regulation to remove those blockbusters, which will annoy the general population, almost all regulation benefits the large incumbents in the long run. They have the resources to figure out how to game the system.


>what you are losing is the long tail of smaller independent films that may be more thought provoking or diverse.

>they will keep the Transformers and Marvel movies and cut the smaller ones.

Most of the bigger franchises have already become "thought provoking" and "diverse" propaganda


EU is slowly cutting away sovereignity of its member states with regulations such as these. This is a very touchy subject for some of the european nations and "Hollywood production is dumb" is just an extremely stupid thing to bicker over at an international level. All it does is increasing political tension until another brexit happens.


Sovereignty? By allowing the US to be the major cultural influence? Really?


You are missing the point. Each member nation should decide by itself about how open to outside cultural influences it is.


The advantage that the EU has in this situation is that it's better able to "negotiate" as a bloc of 450M people, than (to use the upstream example) eg. Malta, with 440,000 people.

If individual countries want to require a local content quota, Netflix/Amazon/etc will simply cut them off. When it's a massive market, that's vastly less likely.

Giving individual countries an opt-out from the EU-wide rules just provides an opportunity to divide and conquer.

Australia has similar content quotas for broadcast television, but hasn't tried to apply them to streaming services yet. Of course, for 25M people, our leverage is substantially less.


Here we see a naked call for content-based suppression of speech, so that the EU government can shape how its citizens think.


> I'm not sure it's entirely wrong when you have a heavyweight like the US/Hollywood that dominates the global entertainment industry.

And it's getting worse.

Hollywood is "pre-sanitizing" its movies for China because of the increasing revenue there from secondary release.


But will you leave others the choice to watch what they want?


Yes. I think the local content should be available and accessible. But beyond that, it's up to the studios to fight for viewers.


>>> I'm not sure it's entirely wrong

>> But will you leave others the choice to watch what they want?

> Yes

Can't at one point say it's not wrong to restrict content and at another point say you support people watching any content they want. Either you're for laws on amount of content or you accept that there is no ceiling/limits which includes what you subjectively perceive as dumb.


Who is paying for the content? If you're promoting some content its at the expense of another set of content.


Exactly. The EU has lost any contact with reality and is drowning in their own ideological echo chamber.

It seems that fear is making them adopt such a defensive approach that it is stopping them to see how their efforts are actually sucessively destroying any remnant of representativeness they might still have.

If this trend (which started with the financial crisis in 2008/9) continues, the EU might end up being France and Germany alone in a few decades.


This isn't all that different from the "Canadian Content" regulations in Canadian broadcasting, which is probably a contributing factor to the disproportionate number of Canadian popular music artists.


It probably has more to do with the fact that Canada is close to the US, so Canadians have plenty of opportunities to mingle with the American cultural players.


There are parts of the US that are in the US and don't produce quite as many actors and music artists. Though there are some other factors (e.g. Vancouver's generous film subsidies and variety of cool-looking architecture to use as outdoor film sets), there seems to be way more Canadians in entertainment than you'd expect, and I wouldn't dismiss the influence of Can-Con regulations.

Of course, it probably helps that Canada has plenty of cultural and linguistic similarities to the United States. Preserving the native culture of, say, Denmark through Danish Content regulations on popular entertainment means producing content that isn't easily consumed outside of Denmark, whereas a ton of Canadian Content can be easily marketed in the United States.


This is not something that comes (only) from the EU; at least France and Spain have similar local "cultural protection" laws that were not imposed by EU. So it is more of a European, rather than Europeanunionean, way of thinking: local "culture" (as in, cultural product industry) is a public good and thus needs to be protected by the state.

Not that I agree with it...


> So it is more of a European, rather than Europeanunionean, way of thinking

If one appears to beget the other they might as well be the same. I sympathize with countries desiring sovereignty on these issues that should remain at the country level.


You can't have your cake and eat it too: either you want sovereignty, or you want to be part of a bigger system in which you cannot always get your way. This happens at EU level, at country level, at regional level, at city level, and a district level. It is part of how societies work.

But more specifically, what I was arguing is that these kinds of decisions are not why people want to leave (sannee's point above). People want to leave due to poor people not having had adequate political representation for a long time, thus begetting populism when the financial crisis hit us. Not because of TV rules being agreed with other countries (sorry for the strawman, but it makes the point).


> You can't have your cake and eat it too: either you want sovereignty, or you want to be part of a bigger system in which you cannot always get your way.

I'm not sure that's true. I think the EU, as a non-political economic union gives you that cake. It's the political side keeping you from eating it. I think there are many financial policies that can be properly disentangled from political beliefs and the ones that can't should be deferred.

TV rules are a microcosm of the real issue: a political union making political decisions when some of its less influential members would prefer such not-purely-economical decisions be delegated. (at least this is what it looks like from the outside)


There's no economics without politics, and vice versa.

The EU as a single market has great potential. But that needs uniform and standardized access, which is politics.

And no, it wouldn't work without the political overlay (or foundations), because member states are already each in a non pure market state, and it would take a very long time for those politically disjoint markets to standarize and uniformize.

And there is power in numbers. The EU is relevant. England will soon find out how irrelevant it is alone.


> There's no economics without politics, and vice versa.

It's not absolute and binary, and the inability to recognize that and delegate on issues which are more political than financial is what causes issues. Passing laws on streaming providers in England based on French ideals of cultural protection is exactly the issue. This should remain a nation-level issue yet the legislators would way rather use the leverage of the super-nation since they can as opposed to whether they should.

> The EU as a single market has great potential. But that needs uniform and standardized access, which is politics.

It doesn't need 100% uniform and standardized access. There are limits to standardization. If they really wanted to be uniform, they'd do so in the language, but clearly the goal is not absolute uniformity. It is uniformity within reason and delegate to nations for other aspects (such as language). It's what is chosen to be delegated that is the issue.

> And there is power in numbers. The EU is relevant. England will soon find out how irrelevant it is alone.

Meh, as relevant as before and many other nations. Self determinism is where real power lies as it is obvious that one's own house should be clean before projecting. The EU can increase its influence and delegate its cultural rulemaking at the same time but it seems that the approach of individual governments, such as those that believe culture should be enforced via legal restrictions, reign.


As irrelevant as Australia, Japan, Canada, South Korea?

I think I could handle that.


> [Australia et al] ... I think I could handle that.

Fair point. Though the future might not be so rosy. But in an unfortunate timeline those countries are likely to quickly align with some others anyway.

However, deals made in peace are usually better.


Exactly - the UK currently has comparable GDP per capita to tiny middle of nowhere commonwealth economies like New Zealand.

Yet they have the fundamentals to be at least at Australian and Canadian levels of prosperity.


I hope you're right and the UK will prosper, but so far it fights imaginary enemies instead of conducting well thought out reforms.


> so far it fights imaginary enemies

Too many politicians in the UK are trying to ensure the economy tanks when the UK leaves the EU.


Internationally, there is a lot of concern over US cultural imperialism.

This appears to be an outgrowth of that.


It's anti-majoritarianism.

There's economies of scale to producing products addressed to the majority, and minorities suffer as a result. This doesn't just affect cultural products. Who wants the high street in their town to be filled with chain shops, identikit and no different from the next town over?


The alternative is voting for people who support your viewpoint in the upcoming European Parliament elections next year, not quitting.


The push for forced support of local tv production on the big streaming services is coming mainly from leave type right-wing parties though.


Interesting. What are you thoughts on DIEM 25?


"This is the reason there are movements for quitting in every member state "

No, totally not.

Promoting national and regional content is probably something that the populist anti-EU types would support anyhow.

I understand the EU has woes, and some rulings might cause problems ... but this ruling isn't an example of that.


Anti-EU types usually base their rhetorics on globally enforced regulations coming from "Brussel bureaucrats".

Sure, I would not be surprised if this concrete instance of such a regulation was welcomed in these circles (consistency isn't strong suite of some), but the more broad point stands.


I'd rather EU forces stream providers to have one account valid for the whole of Europe. I'm French, lived 10 years in England and now in Spain, I want one iTunes account to give me access to the full EU library and not needing 3 seperate accounts. Same thing with Netflix and Digital TV. That would also help Europeans understand their neighbours better.

These region-restricted distribution contracts should not exist anymore in Europe. It's from the video tape era, it belongs in a landfill.


That was the plan as a part of the Digital Single Market (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/digital-single-ma...) but they settled on, essentially, roaming for digital services for now: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4681_en.htm


I haven't used Netflix in a few years so I don't know if it works the same now, but the region restrictions were based on your IP address, not credit card info or anything. That meant you could easily turn on a VPN and easily access the worldwide Netflix library.

They would blacklist IPs from public VPNs like Private Internet Access, but you could easily just set up OpenVPN on a Linode to get around that.


It seems to me that this will make that problem significantly worse. If at least 30% of content in an EU country is local to that country then this local content cannot be available in every EU country. The percentages simply wouldn't add up.

I would bet that the majority of this local programming will only be available in the country where it is produced.


I'd be fine with "30% from any country in the EU", but "30% from my country" is torture. I mean, have you even seen what movies Germany produces? If I could stand any of that rubbish, I'd be watching cable TV, not Netflix.


You mean "The lives of others"? "Run Lola Run"? "Goodbye Lenin"? "Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo"? "Fack ju Göhte"?

I know there are bad German movies. But with the biggest film studio in Europe being right next to Berlin, I think saying "there are no good German movies" it's a bit too much. The fact alone that there are decent German movies for children seems to me like a plus - I probably won't go see "Das schönste Mädchen der Welt", but I'm not opposed to it.

Disclaimer: I liked Danni Lowinski, and would like to watch Deutschland 83.


>Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo

You had to reach back 37 years to fill out your list of... five movies. That's a bit telling, no?


I thought it was clear that those are the top movies I could think off the top of my head while on the bus. It was not intended to be a comprehensive list of the achievements of modern German cinema.

Sorry for not making that point clearer.


Ok, but then I don't see how that's a very good argument at all. You thought of a few movies you like; that doesn't mean Germany consistently produces good cinema.


That is less than 10 movies and Wir kinder.. is old enough that my mother saw it in the cinema as a youngster. You might find a few more, but "Der Untergang" is on Netflix, not because they were required to, but because it is good.

I fear for the same as a Dane, Danish movies are crap.


Danes made The Killing, though.


Yeah, I mean it is supposed to be really good, but I never got around to see it, partly because it is Danish.


I didn't say there are no good German movies. I said I don't like most German movies. Logically speaking "30% German movies" means that for every German movie there can be only 2-3 movies from _any other country_ (including UK, France, Spain, or other countries that aren't the US).

I'd be fine with a restriction like "30%+ EU movies" or even "50%+ EU movies" (or even "50%+ EU movies, including at least 10% German"). But _German_ movies specifically? That's pointlessly nationalistic.

There isn't 1 good German movie for every 2-3 good international movies. Even personal preference aside the numbers simply don't add up if you assume that there at least two other countries producing as many good movies as Germany does.

So this won't mean more "Goodbye Lenin", it will mean more "Hui Buh, das Schlossgespenst". If we're lucky.

If we're not lucky, it won't mean less Hollywood blockbusters, it will mean less international non-Hollywood movies. Because the Hollywood blockbusters are reliable money printing machines.

So instead of having a lot of Hollywood movies and also a lot of international movies (including several movies from Asia and South America) and a select few German movies, we'll end up with a lot of Hollywood movies and a lot of German movies, basically the same thing you see on regular TV.

Just look at it from Netflix's perspective: you want to add Black Panther because people will want to watch it. To keep the quote you'll have to add another German movie but you can also fit in another international one. Which international movie will you pick? Another Hollywood superhero movie or a lesser known French movie?


I'm regularly watching new German movies and they are quite often good. And certainly not worse than Netflix originals. Cannot say anything about TV shows, though.


Growing up in the EU, pretty much all german content we saw was porn. And pretty much all the porn we saw was german.

Looking back, I’m morbidly curious what sort of weird chain of events lead to this.


That says more about your porn preferences than about German cinema, though.


Out of curiosity as an American looking to learn more about European cinema, which countries in continental Europe would you say produce the best movies?


Frankly, I don't know which ones produce the best movies in general as this is somewhat subjective. There are gems from all countries and often there is a co-operation between countries.

However, since I especially like Swedish crime drama, I can give you specific recommendations of crime drama movies and TV-series from Sweden and other countries.

  * Snabba Cash I, II, III ("Easy Money" I, II, III)
  * Wallander (yeah, the original Swedish one - there are many)
  * Beck (there are many)
  * Jägarna ("The Hunters", there's two)
  * Midnight Sun ("Midnattssol"; TV series taking place in Lappland)
The latter is a French-Swedish production which is, I think, a good example of what the directive of the article intends to create more.

In addition to watching a crime drama of the kind which you might not have not seen, you get to sight-see places as they are. I especially liked the visual appearance of The Midnattssol since it takes place in Lappland, which I think is beautiful in a rugged way.

Also, you may have seen Hollywood remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. There's a Swedish original which can be interesting to watch.

A Swedish-Danish series called "The Bridge" (Bro) is very good, but I have not seen it.

An Italian (actually Italian-German) series called "Gomorrah" is very good too, I heard. I have not seen that either, though.

I have yet to fully explore all the crime drama from other European countries; I've seen some Finnish ones (like "Vares") and they were OK too.

Hope this helps.

Edit: forgot Snabba Cash III!


Not a direct answer, but for TV (serialized crime/police) shows it's the Scandinavian countries. Then the US comes and makes a usually far inferior copy of it.


Also UK?

Luther, Cracker, Broadchurch come to mind. Even the UK version of Law & Order was surprisingly watchable.


That's just the thing. IMO there isn't one best country as far as movies (or TV shows) go in the EU.

I would say the UK is a strong contender but mostly because BBC and Channel 4 produce pretty high quality straight-to-TV movies.


I also feel like this isn't a good idea but who knows.

In 2009 the Portuguese government introduced a mandatory quota of 25% Portuguese music in all radio stations. It was absolutely terrible at the time as all Portuguese music was invariably shitty. Flash forward 9 years and, in my opinion, things are much better. We still have a bunch of bad music but meanwhile a lot new quality artists appeared and became popular. Maybe it has nothing to do with the quota's but take it as you will.


The EU make a lot of stupid decisions, this is definitely one of them. All that happen is streaming providers will just shrink the catalogues massively for non-US customers. 30% is easy to achieve when the subscribers only get about 50 items to choose from in total.


> The proposals will require that streaming services give over at least 30% of their on-demand catalogues to original productions made in each EU country where a service is provided

Not possible and for sure nothing people even want. We have two or three channels in Sweden that makes original content that could go up on Netflix. And they don't really have more than one or two series (10 episodes max) running at a time per season. Two of the channels have their own streaming service (C-More, Viaplay), the third is public service who also puts it up there (SVT Play) for a good long time.

There is plenty of really bad content that the tv channels can sell to Netflix though. A good way for a traditional tv company to stay alive a bit longer. But then there's HBO and others that needs exclusive rights to the content so probably still not possible.


Well, TechCrunch says "made in each EU country where a service is provided"... but every single other report about this, including the Variety article that TechCrunch linked to and is simply repeating, says differently.

https://advanced-television.com/2018/04/27/svods-set-for-eu-... > at least 30 per cent share of European content.

https://www.neweurope.eu/article/eu-council-raises-eu-conten... > to buy European content for the European market

https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2018/04/27/eu-bodies-agree-3... > a quota of 30% for European works on their platforms

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/26/eu-third-... > will have to dedicate 30% of their output to TV shows and films made in Europe

etc, etc.

Unless TechCrunch has some new inside information, this article is wrong. And given that it's TechCrunch... it's probably wrong.


The 30% quota is ridiculous. What this will lead to is either providers shutting down the service for that country or just buy the cheapest, most available content they can get from some indie movie publishers and pushing it in one carousel on their site. This will not lead to bigger local productions or a bigger support for local film makers...


Well I for one am looking forward to hearing of the production of the 200 episodes of "Norwegian log pile drying" and such (eg https://www.netflix.com/title/80119345 ?).

Presumably that's what will happen -- unless they mandate hours viewed and then we in the UK will have to watch an hour of "puddle drying in Stratham" before we can watch a foreign movie.

Of course the metric could be "catalogue hours", in which case one 500 hour showing of "Silence, a tribute to John Cage" might satisfy the requirement.

TL;DR how will they define the quota, what constitutes a TV programme.


How can this work in practice? Can the 30% be from any EU country?

I'm Irish, we don't produce that much stuff. If it has to represent 30% of the catalogue, that catalogue is going to have to shrink massively.


Yeah, I'm failing to see the practice behind this as well.

It was big news in Croatia that Netflix got a local TV show available in its catalogue a few months ago (The Paper, AKA Novine in Croatian). As far as I can tell, it remains the only one.

In practice, does that mean that Netflix would have to reduce their Croatian catalogue to like three shows until they purchase the rights to reproduce additional domestic ones?


The source[0] for the info just says "local content" (unlike techcrunch which adds "made in each EU country where a service is provided", but I can't find that detail anywhere else) and also says that Netflix is already close to this percentage, so I think it can be from anywhere in the EU.

[0]https://variety.com/2018/film/news/netflix-amazon-local-prod...


Perhaps Netflix can just hire some people to produce some documentary content about Ireland? But then, this will have the adverse effect of having a large part of Ireland's film and television industry controlled by Netflix et all.


It can't work mathematically unless it is from any EU country. There are more than 3 EU countries, which means that eventually you will get some great content from some other country that you are not allowed to access. That is 30% Irish, 30% French, 30% German, and 30% Italian content already doesn't add up, meaning some things that you personally might want from a different country are on the list of things you are not allowed to access even though the streaming provider you are on has all rights.

If it can be from any EU country, then the country will be France. France already has laws like this and has historically invested in their content industry, so it should be (should) fairly easy to license that content and fills the requirements.


Once you have an amazon.com account, you magically also have an amazon.de account, and an amazon.it account... and it's a few clicks to switch in the app. Maybe that's how it'll go?


maybe. However in most countries the courts tend to see through such things. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon doesn't risk this loophole. If they do (even accidentally) I expect some lawyer will sue - there are a bunch of EU countries to choose which to sue in, the results might be different in each.


I interpreted it as saying that, if you are in a specific European country, 30% of the content must be from that country you are in.


Meanwhile, nobody will force this 30% limit on pirates, who will, yet again, provide what consumers actually want.


This does not read as neutral reporting. Consider phrases like:

> cultural difference risks being steamrollered before it until nothing but tedious superhero tropes remain.

> And, frankly, if you’ve seen one superhero movie you’ve seen them all. So the move — which will probably draw loud and hair-raising screams from U.S. commentators — is, nonetheless, A Good Thing.

> rather than just doing the easy thing of fencing yet more Marvel superhero movies.

In fact, it seems so amateurish that I wondered if this was even real. Sadly, I see it reported by multiple sites.


> So the move — which will probably draw loud and hair-raising screams from U.S. commentators — is, nonetheless, A Good Thing.

Wow. I’m suprised TechCrunch actually published this. Has their quality dropped that dramatically?


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

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


I live in Belgium and was surprised to find out how regulated our media is. However, it is mostly for linear media (i.e. a single continous stream like traditional TV channels). The law is somewhat vague, requiring that "the largest portion of broadcast time be dedicated to European productions".

Rules for nonlinear media like Netflix basically state that they have to promote insofar possible European productions, but without hard numbers. I can imagine that these vague rules are blatantly ignored by modern streaming providers, so at least in Belgium you could see this as simply a more specific wording of already existing rules.

(I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this btw, I'm just providing some context for those interested.)


Great, now Netflix in Sweden will have about 5 movies, unless they count painfully bad Swedish series as movies, then it will be a billion or so.


Äkta människor was fun(ny).


I am regularly defending the EU here on HN, but this is a stupid idea.

I wouldn't argue with a much smaller quota, like half a percent or so, but this is not helpful.

I'd be surprised if this didn't originate in France, they have always been concerned about English influence, and I think they already have such a quota for their radio programmes.


Question - how would this even work in small countries with limited local content? Is Netflix Latvia going to be just a small handful of movies/TV since they can only add 60% international content (aka a tiny part of their catalogue) to whatever few movies/TV get made locally?


Follow up question: Doesn't this just screw over Latvians by limiting their content over other European countries?


So every EU country can demand 30% (to 40%) of content is local to them.

There is 27 countries in EU, so how the hell will that work.

Not only will Netflix have to produce local content but will have to hide. French stuff from Germans to keep 60% of the prime Holywood stuff.

Unless I'm missing something - the maths seem off.

Another plus for Brexit. We have BBC for local stuff, give me back Futurama.

(that being said, there is a great none English football team owning drama.. Plus that French secret service drama/comedy.. Good netflix original stuff I watch with subtitles)


> Netflix attempted to challenge the Commission’s support of Germany’s move to support its local film industry in the courts, arguing it countered EU law on state aid. But in May the European General Court dismissed its appeal against the EC decision — saying its action was inadmissible as Netflix has no legal standing to challenge the decision.

It seems patently ridiculous that Netflix does not have standing here. The law directly affects Netflix, in a negative way. How could they not have standing?


What's to prevent streaming services just underfunding projects to tick the boxes of getting the catalogue to 30%?

Producers can secure rights to a movie that in order to retain the rights, the must produce a film - of any quality. That's how 1994 version of Fantastic Four was made. A low budget B-movie to prevent the rights being transferred back to Stan Lee.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrbFLJHeX8w


So the prospect of shoestring country news channels or 24/7 streaming of a local clocktower as way to `statisticaly` claim compliance, cannot be ruled out.

So this regional 30% could be just as riveting as a watching a chimney stack. Though may work in parts of Italy.


I, for one, welcome a future of 24/7 streaming of yule logs.


I'm not an expert in media laws, but my understanding from the broadcast days was that TV broadcasters got access to radio spectrum for effectively zero or peppercorn rates and in return were required to broadcast a certain level of local content. Broadcast licences were also limited in number by the available spectrum.

An on-demand catalog is also quite different from broadcast, being measured by content availability rather than transmission time, and a 30% (or higher) local content bar seems to me to be a rather high level for an on-demand service, however, I read elsewhere [0] that Netflix is already close to meeting this, so the restriction is not likely to be too onerous for them at least.

[0] https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/04/eu-will-force-netflix-and...


Don't worry comrades, it's for the greater good


THE GREATER GOOD!


Realizing too late in the game that the US is going for a cultural victory


Everyone is going to be wearing those pesky American blue jeans soon


This quota sort of work for movie theater (and radio/TV) because offering crappy content makes them miss out on some money. This is not the case with Netflix. Netflix will be completely OK with serving locally produced content that nobody watch because it will only cost them a couple of hard drive that won't ever be used.

So Netflix will just end up licensing the cheapest locally content to meet their quota. This content will also be the poorest, which will turn people away from locally produced content.

Another job well done by the EU.

PS: If any Netflix exec sees this, I'm available for creating french films at the rate of 200 EUR / hour.


I've said this before, but the EU overstepped their intended mandate the very moment they decided that they were more than the ECSC.

It is beyond me how those numbnuts in Brussels keep thinking up more stupid and useless plans each time. Not only is it completely up to streaming services what they do and do not offer in terms of content, now you force those services to split up what they show per country, decentralising their services, since it's not possible to adhere to the 30% rule otherwise.


I like the GDPR, I like many other EU rules. In short, I am quite in favor of a big EU.

But this is simply stupid. This is straight-up protectionism / weird national pride.


Its also going to completely kill narrowcast specialized channels- trying to sell an Anime channel? Sorry, no can do. I assume BBC is going to be unable to sell their channel in European countries as a streaming service if the local to country restriction is real. No Canadian specific channel.

You HAVE to have a wide based supply and therefore you have to be a large international company, likely American, since they will be the only ones who can source the most desirable content.

This is going to be a disaster that will have consequences directly in opposition to the publicly intended ones.


>It is beyond me how those numbnuts in Antwerp keep thinking up more stupid and useless plans each time

You may question your sources of information.


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


Yeah, stupid mistake. I meant Brussels.


Also the EU wants Netflix to offer the same content anywhere, so 30% of it will have to be from Germany, 30% from France, 30% from Belgium, 30% from Spain etc.

EU, ‘this one goes to 360%’


> Also the EU wants Netflix to offer the same content anywhere

Literally the only way to do that would be for Netflix to take down movies for which they haven't secured the rights in every EU country. That'd mean they have to drop a massive chunk of their catalog, because media rights are sold piecemeal, so there are very few things for which they have distribution rights in every EU country[0].

[0] Ironically, this includes Netflix originals.


Couldn’t the EU just require distribution rights be sold for all EU countries collectively?


Not if the EU invalidates provisions in contracts that state it is valid in one member state and not in another.


> Not if the EU invalidates provisions in contracts that state it is valid in one member state and not in another.

I look forward to the EU suddenly telling the current rightsholders that their distribution rights have been seized by the state.


I wish there was more regulation that was positive instead of negative. Here for instance imagine that if instead of punishing Netflix for not providing an arbitrarily determined sufficient amount of local content, why not provide positive incentives for other companies (or Netflix as well) to do just that.

For instance for each 10% of your catalog that is made up of region local content, you get an 8% tax deduction. As companies adjusted to the new incentives, these values could be gradually lowered over time. This would help spur on new competitors as well as give established players a great motivation to not only provide a sufficient amount of local content, but also heavily promote it, in efforts to try to drive demand make it commercially viable to make even larger chunks of their catalog local.

Instead we get this, which is going to do little except encourage the bare minimum under threat of penalty. Just doesn't seem very logical.


Sounds like the kind of pointless law that streaming services can easily get around by just buying the rights to super cheap movies from the country. Although apparently "streaming services will also have to ensure visibility and prominence for local content," not sure how that will be enforced.


Doesn't something like this already happen with TV shows in Canada? I recall quite a few unpopular TV shows (like Johnny Test) basically kept running purely because of some Canadian TV show quota the country had going, despite people's reactions to them being generally meh at best.

Either way, it's not a great idea, because... well, some countries simply make more/better shows than others. It's like in any other area of business, where some countries more representation in each industry, like how America's done well with films and tech because of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. All this sort of setup does is encourage streaming services to run poor quality, disliked shows to fill a quota at the expense of what's actually best or most appreciated by its audience.


One interesting way to look at it is if some service wanted to provide access to all content they could only do this in countries which produce 30% or more of all content globally. I would assume that this means that no country in the EU would be able to access all US content.


Does this affect other "streaming services" like Bitchute, Steemit and D-Tube?

For them to evade this proposed regulation, is to ensure that they don't produce "THEIR" own content to sell?

I suppose YouTube Premium falls under this?


Will we see an equivalent of Second City TV's "Great White North"?


Could they also require English subs then? Because for pretty much everything that is not originally English, my subtitle choices are between German and whatever the original language is.


I generally applaud the European Union's efforts to make things better for their citizens. However, this is just so easy to circumvent by using a VPN.

Furthermore, this does not solve the problem of having strong EU contenders to Netflix, Hulu and whatever else is out there. It is better for the EU to fund something that can fight on its own two feet rather than using these punitive measures that prevent people from watching things that they _paid_ for and _want_ to watch.


Can this be easily gamed by just uploading a boat load of local, public domain content and burying it in the depths of the catalogue?


Sure, but then the regulators will be back with more stringent regulations, for example requiring a certain amount of spending or streaming time be spent on local content. I would expect the big players (Netflix, Hulu) will want to avoid angering the regulators. Smaller players may play games, but regulators probably aren't as concerned (for example how would a niche service like Crunchyroll that focuses on anime comply?).


> And, frankly, if you’ve seen one superhero movie you’ve seen them all. So the move — which will probably draw loud and hair-raising screams from U.S. commentators — is, nonetheless, A Good Thing.

That argument is so silly and reductionist that, to me, it invalidates the rest of the opinions expressed in this article.


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

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


From the article "The proposals will require that streaming services give over at least 30% of their on-demand catalogues to original productions made in each EU country where a service is provided".

Presumably, that means they would only have to have 30% of content be from one's own country, the rest can be from anywhere.


If I am a customer, and a person from France is a customer, and a person from Germany is a customer, and a person from Spain is a customer, how can they possibly satisfy that requirement?

30% from the UK, plus 30% from France, plus 30% from Germany, only leaves 10% left for Spain.

EDIT: Are they saying they only want French content to be available in France, and they only want German content available in Germany, etc.? That seems nonsensical.


> Are they saying they only want French content to be available in France, and they only want German content available in Germany, etc.? That seems nonsensical.

That's what techcrunch says but I think they misinterpreted the Vanity article they used as their source.


This proposal has a very French flavour to it.

Hopefully it won't affect us in the UK, but my fear would be that it leads to more walls being put up around content and services for EU Internet users, as has happened with GDPR.


This seems similar to CRTC programming rules in Canada which apply to cable. Also it may shed some light on Netflix developing relationships with the government in Canada.


No thanks. I wish bureaucrats have limited their ideas to their own lives. Fascism is creeping in from all sides in the EU, but people seem to live in denial.


This sort of thing is the reason there are so many Canadian channels on satellite radio in North America, and also why there are so many Canadian-produced shows on pay TV channels like HGTV and Food Network.

It's also why the version of Dire Straits' Money For Nothing that plays on most SiriusXM stations is the sanitized, politically correct Canadian version, not the real version that was played on American radio in the 1980's. Though that version does play occasionally on channels like Deep Tracks.


There are numerous Canadian-produced shows on cable TV because Canada costs about 50% of shooting in the US. This makes the financials pen out for lower-budget shows that would otherwise die if made in the U.S.

Generally, the higher-budget shows are shot in the US. Largely, because the cast members on higher budget shows are less willing to move to Canada for half of the year. Compare, e.g., Suits and other USA shows (ironically, now all filmed in Canada) with Better Caul Saul/AMC shows or Mayans MC/FX shows (generally, filmed on location).


While I don’t disagree that many shows are made in Canada because it’s cheaper, the fact remains that the CRTC requires something like 30% “CanCon” in order to permit carriage (TV) or coverage (sat radio) in Canada.

Canadian-focused channels were a specific requirement for Sirius to sell radios in Canada. Before that, there were no Canadian channels, and people would import Sirius radios from border towns.


What is it with Europe and hare-brained stupid internet ideas lately.

They pushed through GDRP and are now on a regulation high or something...


Imagine that Netflix in order to be accessible in Ohio had to have 30% content (of its Ohio edition) produced in Ohio.


This seems like another excuse to go after US tech companies. Why does the EU hate US tech so much?


> So the move — which will probably draw loud and hair-raising screams from U.S. commentators — is, nonetheless, A Good Thing.

I'm in EU. A Good Thing is letting me watch whatever the fuck I want. It's a real dystopia if the state decides which movies you should or shouldn't watch.


I'm also in EU.

An Even Better Thing is to not have whole generations conditioned from childhood (by a system that distributes predominantly Hollywood movies for them to watch), to believe that those are "whatever the fuck" they actually want as free agents to watch.

An Even Better Thing is to introduce people to multiple cinematic cultures (and multiple cultures in general), not just the global monoculture that pushes the cultural and political agendas of the country that makes it, and expresses its own preoccupation and worldview as if the rest 95% of the world doesn't matter.

Especially since there are tens of different cultures and perspectives within the EU to represent. Not just the global fast food movies that are cheap to purchase and project because EU distributors only pay for screening rights (and not for their production costs).


> conditioned from childhood

That's parents job. Just as it is important that you give healthy food to your children and don't just let them eat fast food even if they would prefer it, same goes for entertainment. But the state shouldn't set a limit on burgers per month for you.


>That's parents job

Kids aren't solely cultivated (not sure if that's the best term) by their parents (unless in Deliverance style situations).

They are also cultivated (and even more so) by school, tv, parents friends, their friends, the internet, social media, advertisement, society at large, and so on.

>But the state shouldn't set a limit on burgers per month for you.

No, unless I vote for it to do so. As a European whose not afraid of the term "social democracy" I don't believe the state is necessarily some "other", an "enemy", etc.

It can be that but it can also be a mediator for things people want in aggregate and vote to make sure they happen.

So, if we wish we had less fast food, we can very much vote to e.g. heavily tax those burger joints. Especially when they knowingly peddle poison for our health...

In any case it should mandate that other foods are also made available at the school canteen. Which is what it does here.


Here's the problem: if you believe that what you watch have an impact on how you think, and you believe that the government should decide what you watch, then this democracy is less than ideal. Because the government then decides how masses vote. It's not a theoretical problem, it's a real issue in many countries, many people still watch TV to get their news and to decide who do they want to vote on.

You heavily tax burger joints and then suddenly some homeless or very poor person becomes more hungry, taco business blossoms, and some other restaurants with poor quality food become more common because there's unfulfilled demand for cheap food. Society is a very complex system and it's hard to make it stable if it's not self-regulating. You can do a lot of harm having the best intentions in mind.

Even with perfect, uncorrupted, most well meaning, very intelligent and highly educated government (hah), just the amount of information about all different complicated cases, latency of it becoming available to it, time needed to process it and implement necessary changes makes it very hard to provide sensible regulation in today's very quickly changing word.

I'm not even going full Friedman here, I see what you mean, I just don't think this approach works well on the long run.

Instead of taxing burger joints, maybe include more education about balancing healthy diet in place of shellfish classification in the school.

But if you want to move forward, you must let people who make good choices be rewarded and those who make bad choices be punished. That's why you give them access to libraries, fast food joints and alcohol. And any site on the Internet they want to visit. If you force your wisest part of society to act with what you decided is best for the majority, they will flee the country or just die there without fully exploring their potential.


>* Here's the problem: if you believe that what you watch have an impact on how you think, and you believe that the government should decide what you watch, then this democracy is less than ideal. Because the government then decides how masses vote. It's not a theoretical problem, it's a real issue in many countries, many people still watch TV to get their news and to decide who they want to vote on.*

Well, the government in this case is not deciding what the people should watch. They're deciding that they should not just be offered to watch stuff that comes 99.9% from one country, but that they should also have the chance (not the obligation) to watch their own content.

If the tables were turned and Americans suddenly had 99% e.g. EU content in their TV programming and online video services, there would be riots.

While Europeans watch tons of American movies, the US watches a tiny number of EU movies (and even those found tiny audiences). If it wasn't for anime (which is still a niche when it comes to mainstream audiences anyway) what Americans consume in foreign films would be a statistical error.

>Instead of taxing burger joints, maybe include more education about balancing healthy diet in place of shellfish classification in the school.

That doesn't have a chance with ads that hits people directly on evolutionary irrational parts of the brain -- or the abundance of fats, sugar, salt, and other substances in unheard of amounts (historically speaking) that directly create craving and addiction. Trying to get a kid to respond to healthy foods when they see a burger ad and taste a burger is like trying to talk logic to someone that tried a first hit of heroin.


The last part is interesting, you could make a point that some form of entertainment or junk food are a light form of drugs. And those are illegal.

Almost any substance can be abused though. Where would you draw the line? Should we ban (or put more tax) on candies? Soft drinks? Salt? Carbohydrates?*

Personally I probably draw the line quite far from you, I think many drugs could be legal and it wouldn't shatter society, maybe it could even improve it. But that's disagreement about the line.

My general point is that even if we would agree that people should watch more EU content, then forcing it on them is like when you have some complex algorithm (like in these coding contests), and some test cases fail. And instead of trying to rethink the algorithm, you add a few IFs, to make those test cases green. You can find examples of workarounds that would have the opposite effect (like netflix providing less content so that % matches) that people came up in minutes after reading about it. And in case of legislation it's much harder to get rid of those unnecessary IFs later on, than it is to add them. Anybody who's trying to innovate then has to navigate around them. Law is already so complex that everyday citizen can just hope he doesn't break any. He cannot be sure, because it gets created faster than you can read and understand it, even if you would make that your only hobby.

It's like with cookies in the browser, yes I don't like tracking. But having to click a banner that I accept cookies on every website is not helping anybody.


I remember living under communism (the logical end-road of your "social democracy"). The state would decide how many products to build and what kind. In the end we didn’t have any toilet paper so we wiped our asses with cultural newspapers. It was ok, because we didn’t have any food either...


> An Even Better Thing is to introduce people to multiple cinematic cultures (and multiple cultures in general), not just the global monoculture that pushes the cultural and political agendas of the country that makes it, and expresses its own preoccupation and worldview as if the rest 95% of the world doesn't matter.

An Even Worse Thing is when we allow a super-governmental organisation to dictate what they deem to be acceptable level of non-culture to be forced upon us.

Yeah, globalism sucks, and preserving your own culture is generally a good thing, especially in a day and age where Americana is encroaching so heavily on every aspect of life. But this is not the way to do it.

> Especially since there are tens of different cultures and perspectives within the EU to represent.

These can be added, or fail to be added, to streaming services, on their own merit. Have you ever seen films from your own country? I, as a Dutchman have, and I can say that most of them suck and there's a very good reason you don't see them on stuff like Netflix.


> Have you ever seen films from your own country? I, as a Dutchman have, and I can say that most of them suck and there's a very good reason you don't see them on stuff like Netflix.

This also seems like a recursive problem. US/Hollywood have huge marketing power, thanks to this, they can ensure that the movie they produce should make a decent profit, they can then invest more money to make better production.

On the other end, local european production don't have that marketing power, most "local" movie will fly under the radar, whatever they quality might be. They sometime make it to the box office in their country but there is just not enough interest to adapt it for other country. Due to this, it's also normal that local production tend to have less production quality.

But if you look, a lot of actor, director, etc, involved in hollywood production come from other countries. So there is talent everywhere in the world, it's mostly a money problem.

If this protectionism result in more diversity in movies, it might be a good thing.

Also, let's be honest, it shouldn't be that hard for Netflix&co to comply. They will just buy the rights to a shitload of shitty TV-movies that nobody wants and be done with it. It's already what they do in France, you would be surprised by how much crap that you never heard about is produced.


> This also seems like a recursive problem. US/Hollywood have huge marketing power, thanks to this, they can ensure that the movie they produce should make a decent profit, they can then invest more money to make better production.

No, it's a problem of target audience. If you produce films for a Dutch audience, you have two options: either appeal to a sense of Dutch pride or history, or go for something so generic that a decent swath of the population will like it; otherwise you won't have enough of an audience to make a profit. This is what they do, so Dutch films are generally about about our navy in the 16th to 18th century, about WWII, a romcom or some adaptation of a Dutch Children's book. You cannot locally produce a film about something which lies outside of the realm of interest of most Dutch people; Hollywood can, since they have a larger audience, and therefore do have the ability to target niche markets.

> On the other end, local european production don't have that marketing power, most "local" movie will fly under the radar, whatever they quality might be.

There's more than enough marketing power; you don't need to market these films outside the country they're produced in, so you can keep the marketing campaign fairly lean and targeted.

> Also, let's be honest, it shouldn't be that hard for Netflix&co to comply.

My stance is not on how hard it is or is not to comply, it's about the audacity of governments to demand this in the first place.


>No, it's a problem of target audience. If you produce films for a Dutch audience, you have two options: either appeal to a sense of Dutch pride or history, or go for something so generic that a decent swath of the population will like it; otherwise you won't have enough of an audience to make a profit. This is what they do, so Dutch films are generally about about our navy in the 16th to 18th century, about WWII, a romcom or some adaptation of a Dutch Children's book. You cannot locally produce a film about something which lies outside of the realm of interest of most Dutch people; Hollywood can, since they have a larger audience, and therefore do have the ability to target niche markets.

Well, EU has 400 million people. One can very well create a movie that appeals to EU audiences. We have lots of shared sensibility and modern problems and history (and it doesn't have to be BS like "16th century dutch navy" or "17th century french villagers").

Movies like Blow Up or Dolce Vita or For a Fistful of Dollars etc where shown successfully all over Europe at one time (and we still have films by people like Lars Von Trier, Almodovar, and so on).

Just because you make something that has a Dutch or Swedish or French etc sensibility, it doesn't mean it can't have pan-European (or even global) appeal. Trainspotting is as British as it gets, for example, but hit Europe big, as did La Haine, La vita e bella, Amelie, and others.

Besides, not all movies have to be blockbusters and multi 100 million dollar productions. Even from the US, I'd rather have the chance to watch some Hal Hartley or Jarmusch, or Cronneburg, that barely pushed 5-10 million dollars in the box office than the nth repeatitive formulaic shit from Hollywood.


India managed to overcome this allegedly insurmountable American influence and have "the world's largest film industry in terms of film production"[1]. European countries would just rather take the easier route and bully companies into trying to force the matter instead of creating conditions that would allow it to happen naturally.

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


>India managed to overcome this allegedly insurmountable American influence and have "the world's largest film industry in terms of film production"

India never had that American influence problem because it's a much more insular culture, and had many illiterate people in the near past, who wanted to just relax with a movie that shows people in their likeness and plays some nice local songs. Their average popular movies are even more formulaic and explosion/romance driven than Americans. They're also quite large. This created and maintains a stronghold against foreign movies. African countries have also managed the same feat (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nollywood ) and for much of the same reasons.

>European countries would just rather take the easier route and bully companies into trying to force the matter instead of creating conditions that would allow it to happen naturally

In Europe we don't consider companies "people", so we don't believe in "bullying" them. Seems that some cultures care for companies and their profits more than they care for culture and people.


> India never had that American influence problem because it's a much more insular culture, and had many illiterate people in the near past, who wanted to just relax with a movie that shows people in their likeness and plays some nice local songs

This is a pretty ridiculous and off-the-mark assertion about both the nature of Bollywood cinema and its popularity within India.

> In Europe we don't consider companies "people".

Also completely wrong. Corporations retain the rights of the persons that comprise them, both in the US and in Europe. In some European countries, this is literally written into the constitution.


>This is a pretty ridiculous and off-the-mark assertion about both the nature of Bollywood cinema and its popularity within India.

I welcome a fact-based counter-argument.

What is exactly ridiculous? That India had many illiterate people in the past? India is at 72%, below Bangladesh, and slightly above Rwanda and Yemen, far below all western countries. And that's the median, there are provinces like Bihar with sub 65% literacy (of ~100 million people). And that's today. In decades past it was worse.

Or that most Bollywood movies are song-and-dance simplistic affairs? Let me quote Wikipedia on the lemma Bollywood:

"Bollywood films are mostly musicals and are expected to contain catchy music in the form of song-and-dance numbers woven into the script. A film's success often depends on the quality of such musical numbers. (...) Indian audiences expect full value for their money, with a good entertainer generally referred to as paisa vasool, (literally, "money's worth"). Songs and dances, love triangles, comedy and dare-devil thrills are all mixed up in a three-hour extravaganza with an intermission. "

>Also completely wrong. Corporations retain the rights of the persons that comprise them, both in the US and in Europe. In some European countries, this is literally written into the constitution.

This is not about retaining some rights. This is about having the rights of natural persons. Referring to this:

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


> This is not about retaining some rights. This is about having the rights of natural persons. Referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

Yes, this is about retaining the rights. That's exactly why corporations have rights of personality, both in the US and in Europe. It's not some unique facet of US law; it's literally written into the constitution in multiple European countries.

> I welcome a fact-based counter-argument

I'm not going to engage on this, because it's clear you're not particularly familiar with the topic at hand either. Claiming that illiteracy in India is somehow the reason that Bollywood has been successful despite Western influence is the sort of argument that no historian would actually make - and if they did, they would certainly provide more evidence than naively citing the literacy rate and literally no evidence and analysis linking literacy to cultural influence in cinema.

Between this and other comment threads, it's also clear that you're not interested in having a good faith discussion, because instead you're spending your time listing Orientalist tropes.


>I'm not going to engage on this, because it's clear you're not particularly familiar with the topic at hand either. Claiming that illiteracy in India is somehow the reason that Bollywood has been successful despite Western influence is the sort of argument that no historian would actually make - and if they did, they would certainly provide more evidence than naively citing the literacy rate and literally no evidence and analysis linking literacy to cultural influence in cinema.

This is what people call a discussion, where they exchange arguments. I don't throw pre-digested ready-made conclusions at the other and call it a day. If you're interested in what historians say on the matter, go read them.

I gave my argument, and pointers to any raw facts used in it (e.g. literacy rates). You can evaluate it on its own merits, or leave it.

I, furthermore, have witnessed the connection with poverty/illiteracy and own-language song-and-dance movies from my own country, which for a large span until the '70s had a similar film industry, and for very similar reasons (and I have read local academics and cultural workers come to the same conclusions). But I don't just spew ready-made conclusions when it comes to soft sciences (as if they were physics), I prefer to process things with my own arguments.

In any case, here's another link between illiteracy and Bollywood:

https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2012/02/22/let-a-billion...


With a population of 1.3 billion people, India has a greater population than the combined total of the European Union (500m), Russia (144m), the United States (320m), Mexico (127m), Australia (24m), Canada (36m), NZ (3.6m). No wonder it can sustain it's own independent thriving film and television industries.


>An Even Worse Thing is when we allow a super-governmental organisation to dictate what they deem to be acceptable level of non-culture to be forced upon us.

Only if what that "super-governmental organisation" dictates something against the wish of the people. I'm not a huge EU commission fan myself, but I surely do. And I'd bet at least the French, for one, are equally delighted with this (and I'd say Italians as well).

Unlike Americans who leave it all to the invisible hands of the market, and its "free" movements (easily distorted by all kinds of monopolies, power imbalances, private interests, foul play, cartels, and such), many Europeans (including me) believe in deciding as societies, and forcing our decision onto the corporations peddling their stuff.

And since you propose people to "vote with their wallet", so to speak, for that to happen people must have the option to do so, e.g. a variety to choose from. With these laws such services will be forced to give European people the option to watch EU content as well.

>I, as a Dutchman have, and I can say that most of them suck and there's a very good reason you don't see them on stuff like Netflix.

Well, there are people in EU who are hot on US culture and think that their own cultural production "sucks". But there are also people who think that its Hollywood films that suck, have naive simplistic plots and world-views, too much spandex and explosions, and so on.

When US films didn't dominate the market, we had lots of excellent European directors that have heavily inspired US filmmakers as well, as admitted by Coppola, Tarantino, Scorsese and so on.


But Netflix or any other streaming provider does not take public space. It is a private, paid service. The existence of Netflix does not stop any European company from offering its own private distribution service with exclusively EU content, or Indian content, or whatever content they think people will pay them to offer. Hell, the existence of Netflix even does not stop EU from creating a publicly funded streaming service... but anyone want to guess how watchable that would be?


We're working on a project to let people discover multiple cultures/areas besides "bestsellers", but with books.

May I ask you a few quick questions on how you see that happening? There's no email in your profile, mine is marius@booxia.com

Appreciate your thoughts!


>May I ask you a few quick questions on how you see that happening?

Sure, fire away here too, I'll try to answer as best as I think it.

(Also in what sense do you mean "how I see that happening"? Technically? Legally? UI-wise?)


How do you see that happening, experience wise.

Say one is in a bubble of Hollywood action/romance movies, or NY Times bestsellers. When this person hears about something different from somebody else, he thinks Meh. What/how would they need to be introduced to a new movie/book that is outside their culture, but several people thought it was good?

Any other thoughts? Thanks :)


- The presentation should have to be up to 2018 standards, e.g. not like Project Gutemberg or some relic from the past. Nice photos and illustrations, quotes, etc.

- Leverage the hits: e.g. Joe Nesbo has had his books made into major movies, Uberto Eco is famous worldwide, European TV series have been remade for the US market (e.g. Forbrydelsen -> The Killing), people know Fry and Laurie, and so on. One could promote those works at the first level, point to the originals, and then expand the recommendations of other works by the same authors, and then of similar authors and directors.

- Hijack on the popularity of certain themes in general (even Hollywood-inspired) culture. E.g. the recent remake of "Murder on the Orient Express" (not the best example popularity-wise, but will do for now), could be leveraged to promote works by Agatha Christi(and expand to more European crime fiction writers).

- Build the recommendation engine with a knowledge of mainstream/US/best-selling content as well -- not to promote it, but to let someone say e.g. "I enjoy John Grisham, what EU stuff should I read" and have the system recommended the relevant authors. Or "I enjoy this and this mainstream US comic" and they get a recommendation for some French graphic novel, for example.

- Excerpts and quotes from the works could be used in campaigns in places like Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, etc to hook people in.

- It could start by building critical mass by appealing to and connecting the European and american more intellectual audiences who already consume these works in some kind of social media for smarties.

- Play into the "hipster" aspect of it, e.g. embrace smart/multi-cultural/open ended, as something cool to be (in an advertising perspective).

- Have content made by featured authors and directors directly for the website,

Some ideas from the top of my head


Awesome ideas coldtea, thanks for taking the time to share them!


Can I sign up somewhere for news about that project? I am always interested in Good Book recommendations.


Yes please: https://booxia.com

Note we're in heavy development and research. Any feedback is welcome!


My grandparents were all in for watching Danish movies, so I watched too many of those growing up.

It didn't convince me of another world view, except that Danish movies sucks and Americans are great.


I, as an EU citizen, have the exact same reaction.

If the EU wants original cultural content, subsidize that content, and perhaps use anti-trust law or direct subsidy to coerce Netflix to license this content. But there is no active harm done in Netflix et. al. choosing what is popular. Unless they actively work to keep cultural content off their platforms, this kind of hard requirement is simply outrageous.


It's hard to watch a movie that never gets produced.

Let's not pretend there aren't strong tendencies towards centralization and homogenization in media. (That we could, most charitably, ascribe to efficiency and risk management)

On the other side, yes, protectionism leads to a lot of otherwise unmarketable things being produced (looking at you, France).

But balance doesn't seem like too much to ask. Because Hollywood is doing fuck all for diversity.


> But balance doesn't seem like too much to ask. Because Hollywood is doing fuck all for diversity.

Six million Wakandans might disagree with you...


That's the token diversity movie that doesn't move one iota the cultural representation of how people in Africa feel, what they think, how they live and so on.

Not to mention that without the token gestures to american black rights references, it's a totally sterotypical superhero movie, with the same cliche manifested destiny for the hero, the same cliche choices, etc.


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



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


>Loads?

He means in movies, and especially Hollywood movies.

Besides concerning just comics (and including titles that have insignificant circulation) the list is from all over the world. You thought Brazil and Mexico don't have their own superheroes in comics? That's not really what was asked.


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


Given a choice of dystopias, I would also prefer to avoid the one where "the market" decides what I should or shouldn't watch.

You really want the state deciding what you watch?


No, I want the state deciding that people with minority interests still have the possibility of watching what they want alongside all the more commercial offerings. And I want the state providing those who don't think they like those minority offerings with an opportunity to experience them and be pleasantly surprised.


Aka striving for "equality of opportunity, not outcome"


BBC and Channel 4 both make excellent content.


And both show quite a bit of content made elsewhere in the EU.


I want the state telling companies that they need to operate within some constraints. We do this all the time, for all kind of industries.


Rather than some American corporation, yes.


Cut off your nose to spite your face.


I'd prefer the state forcing companies to provide the widest possible range of choices to me, which is the case here.


Luxembourg, with their population of 590,667 people produced 5 movies in 2016 according to this source [0]. Extrapolating that production rate out 50 years gives them a whopping 250 total movies meaning Netflix could have a max possible of 833 movies assuming they leased every single one. How is that choice?

[0]: https://www.the-numbers.com/Luxembourg/movies/year/2016


Ah, I see that the techcrunch article actually says different things than its own source[0].

Nowhere do I see in the source that "local content" is determined per country instead of EU-wide. It also says that Netflix is already close to 30%.

Also, 833 movies is more than what is available in most of Europe, already (but I'm not sure about Luxembourg specifically, obviously it's an outlier).

[0]https://variety.com/2018/film/news/netflix-amazon-local-prod...


But if Netflix already has exclusives (I don't know if this is the case or not) on most of the good EU produced content, it is going to be a major barrier to any potential competitor.


All of us are the market.

The market just means that you personally decide what you watch, by choosing what to spend your own money on.

You'd rather have that decision made by someone else, instead of by you?


Australia has similar laws for showing a certain amount of Australian content on TV and on Radio. This has certainly been a good thing and means that many local talents are discovered and content is shown where it might not be shown otherwise.


I don't see much value in using protectionist policy to prop up entertainment that can't compete on its own. Is this content even any good?

It's not like content can't come from Australia that can compete on its own, like AC/DC and The Crocodile Hunter. If anything this policy is probably holding back such greats from happening because it's easier to just meet the lower bar of participating in the Australian content quota.


Yes, a lot of it is pretty good. There isn't the same industry and money behind the productions that the US has so there isn't always the same quality. I think we get a lot of good productions out of the process. Australian bands are able to be played on the radio and the film sector can support actors that even go on to Hollywood. Australia is not a big country, there isn't a ton of money and specialised skills are not easy to come across. We'll never develop industries if we don't give them a chance. This EU legislation isn't as dystopic as some people in this comment thread seem to think.


I don't think I've ever watched 30% locally produced TV content or movies in my entire life. (really can't tell for music - maybe that works out, but also usually not, per year)

Not that I care a big time, but I'd be on board with a 10% quota, but in general I don't really like the idea either.


It's a real dystopia if the state decides which movies you should or shouldn't watch.

Agreed, but fortunately this isn't that. Although the big the question is if this will lead more EU content being added to the services or more non-EU content being removed from the service to make the quotas. The other risk is that Netflix etc. will basically just say "go out and find me 150 hours of EU made content, I don't care what it is, for as little money as possible so we can fulfill our quota" and that this will do little or nothing to promote actual quality or interesting work.

Either way though it's still the services and not the state that decide which movies "you should or shouldn't watch"


"go out and find me 150 hours of EU made content, I don't care what it is, for as little money as possible so we can fulfill our quota"

Good news, Netflix already do this.


I don't think anybody's proposing a quota on individuals. You can watch whatever you want.


Well, they effectively put a cap on available foreign content to 2.3 times what's available domestically. If there's, say, 300 movies produced in your country, you will have to limit the selection of foreign movies to 700.

Numbers picked from thin air as an example, but I still say that it quite severely limits my choice as an individual.


I'm not sure how this is any worse than limits providers already put on the movies and television shows that they make available in different regions. Except this one aims to promote local material vs just locking certain content away for various other reasons (copyright, studio or provider marketing decisions, whatever). It's not like you had free choice of material before this, if Movie X isn't available in your region for any other reason you'd still have to find it elsewhere.


> A Good Thing is letting me watch whatever the fuck I want

While I disagree in part with this, it is not forcing you on the chair and autoplaying a cult movie. You still watch what you want.


You still watch what you want out of what's available to you. The question is, what is this going to do to what's available? Will it result in more local content, or less non-local? One of those increases your options; the other decreases them.


This type of trade protectionism I'd expect from Trump, and as we've seen the past year and a half, ultimately hurts consumers.


I wish this was only protectionism and stupidity, but you can bet that big producers have been lobbying for this to get more visibility on their shitty content.

If there's one thing where the German TV industry equals the American one, it's being corrupt pieces of shit.

Source: German who pays about 20€ of media taxes and fees for services I don't need or want, every month.


One of the dichotomies they're maybe missing is that Americans love their TV. There are a billion channels in the US. In Europe, it's more like 5.

So just the sheer lack of content relative to the US makes 30% quite a high and problematic number.

15% locally, 30% from the entirety of Europe. Maybe.


Extremely good news: left unchecked, the "market" would let minority communities behind.


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


Not even close to the truth. What you are describing is a perfect functioning market, with producers just interested in serving the needs of the customers. In reality, things are way more complex:

- producers try to reduce costs

- producers ignore customer demands as long as they are able to do it. In particular when the customer has no option because competitors are following the same cost-saving approach.

- customers give up and start watching second-best options, and get used to them (tragedy of the commons)

- there are synergy effects which allow producers to get away with sub optimal options: I will use my Amazon Prime account to watch videos, even if I am not entirely happy with the offer, because I am already paying for Prime for delivery.

- the world is complicated, and consumers have little time and power, while producers can spend time writing 30 pages contracts. The only way to balance power here is to associate, but citizens are quite bad at it. The EU is an association, and I am happy that they are taking into account the consumer's interests.

I wonder when will this fallacy of "the market works to fulfill the interests of the customers" die out ...


All of these things are true, but that still doesn't make what the EU is doing, good. They're just forcing the providers to spend money in Europe. What makes you think European productions won't fall prey to exactly the same problems?

This is purely an exercise in the EU seeing that it can control foreign companies using GDPR and thinking "hey, why don't we use this to force companies to give us money".

Also:

> I wonder when will this fallacy of "the market works to fulfill the interests of the customers" die out ...

Just because it's flawed, doesn't mean it isn't mostly true. The market is far from perfect but that doesn't mean it doesn't still fulfil customer needs. It just doesn't fulfil all of them, fulfils them in an inoptimal way, and so on.


> if the demand were high

Culture is not just about satisfying demands, it's also about giving people the opportunity to stumble across things they weren't even looking for, and so enrich themselves in unexpected ways. As a teenager I had no particular desire to go looking for ancient harpsichord music, difficult jazz, sombre poetry, magnificent choral worship or even five-minute recordings of nothing but church bells ringing. But I found them just by twisting the radio dial late at night and discovering things that would never get airtime in a purely commercial setting. The fact that these things are paid for by a "tax" that many are still strongly opposed to, is something I would strongly support in a more modern media context.


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


Nice utopia you are describing. The reality is that without rules, neither the 30% local culture nor the non-local culture gets offered.


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


Yes that is all well and good, until that "content" and its message also starts being dictated by whomever is in charge of the government.

All of these things always sound like a great idea when you have good people in government. However almost everyone seem to forget that bad people do get into government too.

Having governments dictate or force quotas and determining content always ends up biting the people in the long run.


Not just minorities, but also anything that might enrich or challenge the mind in any significant way. BBC Radio 3 [0] would not exist in a free market, only dumbed-down 'pop classics' stations. The world would be significantly more stupid as a result.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_3




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