I wish they would clamp down harder on advertising directed at kids.
Yeah, targetting advertising is good. But this is not much.
Regarding the “local content” regulations. I’m unsure, but it basically feels like they are pushing France’s model on the rest of the EU. Not a stupid move (France audiovisual segment is as big as it is thanks to this kind of “cultural protectionism”) but one bound to be polemic. It’s certainly better that directly financing audiovisual production by the state through grants and other help, as happens de facto with much of it.
Since in Spain block booking is still legal (which is to say our laws in this regard are pretty underdeveloped) I have a soft spot for some protectionism of the local cultural industries. The “theather share” moving to online services is problematic (as any force offer share), but since online services are not limited by number of screens (and similar laws exist regarding theathers having to have a percentage of local production in some countries) I think it’s pretty minor.
Forcing multinationals to reinvest some earnings in local production is totally A-OK by my book.
Isn’t a decent portion of Netflix and the like already EU produced? At least until March 2019. :D
Assuming the law is EU works and not French / Polish / Spanish / etc.
Wonder how something like GoT is classified, taking into account where it’s filmed and who stars in it, would it be a EU work?
I mean I would imagine that, like many things, there are ways around it. Including X actors or locations. Pretty standard practice. I’d imagine GoT can probably qualify since almost entirely all filming is done in the EU.
I think it’s EU works, without discriminating between countries.
Classification depnds on co-production status. If it’s a co-production over a certain threshold of EU investement I don’t know the exact number) it classifies. Edit: yes, number of actors and key crew members also matters, but co-production status is the most important part because it’s the hardest (but far from impossible) to fudge.
Stuff produced by American companies but shot in the EU does not, unless they bring a co-producer to get the classification (very, very common in movies). I know GoT does post in the EU, so maybe they are getting some co-production status through that.
Ah, ok. Hmm, wonder why coproduction is the standard rather than location, crews, and the like. You’d think using local film crews and such would be more beneficial, since it more directly creates local jobs than the investment angle.
I think so that revenues go back into the local industry. Tthey still require local talent, so that angle is covered, but (quite logically) they want production involvement for EU production status (note that this is different than tax breaks and other advantages that foreign productions might qualify for based on crew memebers and such and not requiring co-production status). What defines a co-production is very open, though. It’s not about investment necessarily (things can be fudged in value). There’re a lot of tricks people use.
Also a lot of this stuff changes from country to country. It’s good to establish more common ground.
I thought the second part was already mostly the way things are in the EU, but maybe it wasn’t a directive?
Honestly, I don’t find that as relevant as promoting the interesting cultures of Europe. Just like everyone else, we just consume what’s available in the local language or English because subtitles are annoying, but the times I’ve seen something like Black Book or Malena or Un Village Français make me realize how much I’m missing.
But then the most important factor would be key people involved, not production. Directing revenue into cultural industries is a big part of these laws.
I think you are right that the objective is to promote European culture. But the best way you do that is by injecting money into the industry so it can produce new works.
New proposed regulation:
Not EU (any more), but we’ve discussed the digital services tax here so I might as well mention that the UK is going ahead with its own digital services tax from 2020. Modality largely unspecified, but will target profitable companies with revenues from UK customers of over GBP 500m. Estimated to raise GBP 400m a year. Unlike Tang’s version of the EU bill, it explicitly excludes the sale of goods.
Edit - Full details so far:
Ecofin has shelved the digital services tax plan until 2020, calling for action at OECD level instead.
Parliament committee adopts online platform transparency regulation:
Still trying to find the text of Annex 1.
By the way, most of you probably already realised this if you use it, but Instapaper is working again for Europeans.
One possibility of ugliness- the tech giants get together (Facebook Google Twitter etc), say ok , we’re all losing too much money from this- tell the EU either this stops or we all simultaneously block the EU.
That’s a scenario I’m afraid of happening, and it would probably fracture the WWW for good if it did, because I think the tech companies would miscalculate.
True classic.
I’ll say one thing for GDPR. It really has laid bare the staggering amount of tracking cookies sites expose you to, and the impossibility of getting a handle on privacy/security while internet advertising is structured the way it is. I just had to manually disable vendor cookies one by one to read a Vice article. There were 479. And that’s on top of Vice’s own cookies.
Ad-blocking and the like, and for that matter the lack of credibility of ad view numbers, is a problem entirely of the internet content industry’s own making. They’ve got to stop this bullshit and host ads natively and take responsibility like a traditional publisher.
Never going to happen. No tech giant is going to abandon 30% (or whatever percentage the EU is) of their revenue in the vain hope that they can pressure the EU. Because that is what would happen: companies that are willing to accommodate European concerns would jump on the chance offered, and take over the market faster than you can spell Margrethe Vestager.
Not sure it would be a bad thing either. The hegemony of Google and Facebook are not only a positive.