EU content quotas for Netflix and Amazon to become law

[atemporal]

What EU culture? There isn't one - just a group of individual countries with their own diverse cultures.

ah Peter, that depends on whether you do or don't read the daily fail and do or don't believe what they say doesn't it? Of course the EU has a culture. It's out to screw us over at every turn, and the EU/Brussels/them unelected lot over there are incapable of doing anything good, right or proper. It says so on page 5. Meanwhile on page 6... "Data roaming fees abolished - great news people - new laws coming into effect across Europe..." And people can't see the irony...

[peterb]

ah Peter, that depends on whether you do or don't read the daily fail and do or don't believe what they say doesn't it? Of course the EU has a culture. It's out to screw us over at every turn, and the EU/Brussels/them unelected lot over there are incapable of doing anything good, right or proper. It says so on page 5. Meanwhile on page 6... "Data roaming fees abolished - great news people - new laws coming into effect across Europe..." And people can't see the irony...

There is an irony, and accepting one benefit while rejecting others as interference is indeed cherry-picking!

Of course you could argue that the cost of providing a service across European countries is negligible as the borders are artificial constructs and borders are not respected by radio waves!

But then the EU directive that restricted the sale of vacuum cleaners to below a certain power consumption was a piece of ill thought through legislation legislation!(Well, at least the justification for it was not thought through)

[LSG501]

The EU wants to force a subscription-based service to include a large chunk of "local" content, whether subscribers want it or not.

Then, they want to impose a surcharge, which of course, gets passed right on to subscribers, to fund local content?

But they have to make up their budget shortfall somehow....the EU already heavily subsidises tv and film in the EU so this is likely another way of 'topping up the bank balance' like the recent influx of investigating and fining (not saying all bad admittedly but am curious where said fines go...) large financially wealthy companies for various reasons.


As to the topic... it's almost like the EU and the copyright holders are working together to make life harder or less 'enticing' for the legal streamer, first it's lets spread everything round as many services as possible and now it's lets force a quota of 'local' things which will ultimately need to be paid for by the streaming company who will pass it on the viewer. Oh the joys of doing things legally....continually increasing costs (we know this will increase prices eventually) plus the need to manage multiple services... and they wonder why illegal streaming isn't going down when you can get it all from one place for 'free'....

[philehidiot]

Conspiracy time.

The EU puts funding into local broadcasters. There is almost always a clause in the contract which comes with EU funding (the CBI has this issue) where you may not say anything against the EU or its aims. The EU funding makes up less than 1% of the CBI's funding, yet they are bound by this. This explains a lot of the "bias" you see on TV - they will have to exclude anything overtly editorialising against the EU.

Streamers do not receive EU funding and aren't influenced by this. The EU is well aware that many younger people are ditching conventional broadcasting for streaming and as a result aren't getting the EU message. As a result, they force the streaming services to serve local content which is influenced (one of the easiest things to do would be to stream the local news) and thus the message continues to get out.

You have to remember that the EU commission at one point had about 10 ex communists in it. Barroso was an advocate of Chairman Mao. These people believe in big government and that the executive knows better than the people. Which leads directly to a lot of the democratic deficit we see and explains the unwillingness to devolve power down to the smallest local unit and instead we're seeing more centralisation of power to a supranational level. There are pros and cons to this approach but it shows the political mentality of the EU and explains why they simply MUST poke their noses in where it is not wanted. This lack of ability to let the markets do what they do is another reason why growth in the EU is so stagnant.

I digress, that's my barmy conspiracy theory for the day. Alex Jones style. It's probably not true but it wouldn't surprise me if it was a consideration.

THE FROGS ARE TURNING GAY!

[Corky34]

The EU puts funding into local broadcasters. There is almost always a clause in the contract which comes with EU funding (the CBI has this issue) where you may not say anything against the EU or its aims. The EU funding makes up less than 1% of the CBI's funding, yet they are bound by this. This explains a lot of the "bias" you see on TV - they will have to exclude anything overtly editorialising against the EU.

According to the CBI that's not the case..

Does the CBI get money from the EU to promote it?

No. We are funded by subscriptions from our membership and do not have to promote the EU. In fact our members expect us to speak out against harmful European legislation on business, as we often do. We regularly represent our members in Brussels and occasionally cooperate with our equivalent sister federations in other European countries.

How true that is could only really be assessed if we looked at the basis of the original claim, unfortunately it seems the VoteLeave page that i suspect it originated from has removed/deleted the full research notes.

[deadstoned]

Politicians doing favors for their media mates. Continuing the ongoing trend between the incestuous relationship between media and politicians.

[peterb]

Conspiracy time. snip--->

Conspiracy - that tends to suggest something clandestine - and the EU tends to be openly interventionist, which is a tendency of left of centre politics. Itt was (for me) one of the key points in the EU referendum.

The European Commission is intent on taking more powers for itself away from individual nations. And that bureaucracy needs to be paid for, and that is by the member states.

Yes, some members benefit from EU membership in terms of hand outs, but the EU has never balanced its budget, and if

cash out = cash in - the cost of running the machinery

then this isn't really surprising.

Any Government is a consumer of wealth - it doesn't of itself generate anything tangible. It may create the conditions for wealth generation, but protectionist policies rarely work well in the long term.

It then becomes the discussion point - which has been done to death in other threads - whether the long term the ecomomic benefits of being in the EU will be bettered by leaving - and that is a question that no-one knows the answer to, and no-one ever will, because you can't run the two systems in parallel to see which one works better!

[atemporal]

It then becomes the discussion point - which has been done to death in other threads - whether the long term the ecomomic benefits of being in the EU will be bettered by leaving - and that is a question that no-one knows the answer to, and no-one ever will, because you can't run the two systems in parallel to see which one works better!

WARNING! WARNING!

TAKE EVASIVE ACTION NOW>>>

[Iota]

Guess which shows will be the bottom 30% by views?

Probably about right, I don't have Netflix for watching local content.

(snip...)whether the long term the ecomomic benefits of being in the EU will be bettered by leaving - and that is a question that no-one knows the answer to (snip..)

Studies for both sides of that argument suggest otherwise, although it's a bit of a moot point once someone leaves the EU. You make the best of things whichever way, there is definitely an argument to be had for leaving bringing the benefits of easier trade relations that are not quite so protectionist, although with the current plans afoot by our lovely prime minister, it's yet to be seen if we'll actually gain that particular benefit. The EU is only a fraction of the market available, which in context makes you wonder if Netflix or Amazon would decide to pull out of the EU completely if the rules do not suit their business model. Much like certain press sites decided to no longer serve the EU with the GDPR rules coming into force.

It's a very fine balancing act to try to force non EU entities to abide by EU rules.

[peterb]

Probably about right, I don't have Netflix for watching local content.

I don't have Netflix.

[Iota]

I don't have Netflix.

I only got the free trial to binge watch all the Marvel series and The Expanse at the time, decided it had moved on since the last trial I had of Netflix and had more content I wouldn't mind watching, so kept it. It's easy enough to dip in and out of though, but worth more to me than a terrestrial TV license with all the terrible stuff I never want to watch (or isn't on at a convenient time). It may change, my tastes may change, but I know I definitely don't care about "local content" being shown.

[philehidiot]

According to the CBI that's not the case..

How true that is could only really be assessed if we looked at the basis of the original claim, unfortunately it seems the VoteLeave page that i suspect it originated from has removed/deleted the full research notes.

Indeed. I stand if not entirely corrected, indeed suspicious.

And whilst the CBI may say that, I'm pretty sure the broadcasters part was still correct.

Peterb - I honestly suspect we're in for no deal (in which case we'd better not pay them a PENNY more than we owe for our budget commitments) and we're in for a few years of termoil. The problem is that any success after that will never be measurable against a baseline as we'll never know what would have been. People on each side will be arguing moot points about which way was better just so they can claim they were right rather than just putting that effort into making things better. The problem we have now is that the EU actively want to make things worse. They want this to be as bad and chaotic as possible as otherwise others will leave.... like Greece which has been devestated by EU policy. Politicians should be aiming for the highest possible good for the people they represent but instead they are just actively trying to ruin anything they can. Frankly, they're just bad human beings who are just out to destroy at the moment. Farage said one good thing in his leaving speech which was asking for a "sensible, grown up discussion" and he got jeering and booing from a bunch of children who don't get what's good for us is also good for them.

It's going to be no deal and it's going to be bad for a few year as the economy recalibrates. I hope that after that, things pick up.

[spacein_vader]

I tried to access a website for a large US newspaper yesterday (can't remember which one) and there was a block page saying that they could not show their content in the EU due to all the regulations. All this regulatory burden is NOT HELPING CONSUMERS. Since when did anyone mess with their cookie settings for individual sites? It's just another annoying warning message that most people don't understand and everyone just clicks "okay" to but costs websites a fortune in compliance. Utter nonsense.

While I agreed with you in the first part of your post I disagree with this bit.

They regulation in this case is GDPR. They can easily comply with it and most US sites do. They've chosen not to because it means they'd have to ask your permission to track your usage of their sites and sell that information in to advertiser's or anyone else. There is a very small one time cost for implementing this consent check and nothing else.

What they are essentially saying is that your privacy means less to them than their ability to snoop on you and then sell the information to anyone and everyone they want without having the courtesy to ask you first. I'd choose another news provider if I were you.

[kalniel]

They regulation in this case is GDPR. They can easily comply with it and most US sites do. They've chosen not to because it means they'd have to ask your permission to track your usage of their sites and sell that information in to advertiser's or anyone else. There is a very small one time cost for implementing this consent check and nothing else.

There's a lot more to GDPR than a consent check - lots of additional rights for a user to access and remove their data for eg, the need for a data controller etc.

[spacein_vader]

There's a lot more to GDPR than a consent check - lots of additional rights for a user to access and remove their data for eg, the need for a data controller etc.

Apologies. I meant in terms of their web design. Beyond that the rest could be done manually, just ask them to contact a certain email address if they want to make use their rights. Unless the volume is particularly high it shouldn't be too taxing.

[Saracen]

Not sure what principle set for public broadcasters you're referring too, is it the fact that public money is used to fund them à la the license fee?

If so that leaves out all the non-public broadcasters who depend on advertising revenue, The Cairncross Review is looking at skimming off some of the license fee or some kind of tax on the big tech companies to fund the ‘high-quality journalism’ produced by the likes of The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Guardian, The Mail, etc, etc. This EU thing seems to be taking a different approach in that they want to force the online world to carry 30-40% 'local' content so they get a fair crack of the whip.

The principle that, by definition, a broadcast is available to all, but a subscription service is only available to subscribers, who choose to subscribe in order to receive what THEY want.