|
Contributors | Messages | Polls | Resources |
|
EU, Paramount Agreement to Hit Geo-Blocking ModelsThe European Commission has been investigating film licensing contracts for pay-TV between six major Hollywood studios and Sky . These contracts deny access to movies licensed from these studios to users anywhere except the UK and Ireland. Today, it announced it has accepted certain concessions offered by Paramount Pictures Corp. The studio had agreed not to enforce the geo-blocking clause in any existing contracts within the European Economic Area earlier this year. It was the first among the seven companies being investigated to do so. A formal "statement of objection" was announced by the commission in July, accusing Sky, Disney, NBCUniversal LLC , Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Digital Inc. , 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. of conspiring to use geo-blocking to prevent Europeans from accessing Sky's pay-TV services outside of the UK and Ireland. The commission is also investigating other TV services, including Canal Plus, DTS, Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia. The commission listed specific clauses in these licensing agreements which require Sky to block access to films offered online or via satellite, to consumers outside of the UK and Ireland. Clauses also gave Sky "absolute territorial exclusivity" for some films, which the commission deemed anti-competitive. Paramount's commitment to disregard this clause will apply for five years, and the studio will not add this clause in future agreements. It will apply to pay-TV services and subscription VoD services distributed via the Internet or satellite. Geo-blocking or regional exclusivity is a fairly common component of TV licensing contracts. Broadcasters and pay-TV providers are often willing to pay substantially more for content their local competitors don't have, and use it as a differentiator. And studios have been able to sell the same film rights in multiple countries, with an exclusivity premium attached. This can be frustrating for consumers: Many have signed on for Netflix in the UK and found that the selection of titles is limited compared to the US, for example. Even within the US, sporting events such as baseball games are sold exclusively and have to be blacked out on other networks and online in those cities. And we have all clicked on a video at some point, only to see a screen saying "This content is not available in your country." The commission has decided that these clauses are a "breach of EU rules," in accordance with its plans to develop a single digital market, and facilitate competition across the EU. The Digital Single Market strategy was outlined in an announcement last June, where three main objectives were identified: improve access to digital goods and services across Europe, create the best environment for digital networks and innovative services to develop and maximize the growth of the digital economy. (See Eurobites: EC Plots Its Digital Single Market.) Geo-blocking and copyright reform were specifically mentioned, so it's no surprise this was the first area the commission has gone after. But it is worth noting that the commission accepted that "sometimes these restrictions on supply and ensuing price differentiation can be justified," which does confuse the issue somewhat. Perhaps this is meant to allow the commission to create safeguards for local players in small markets, which would struggle to compete with pan-European streaming services from major media companies in other countries. The concessions offered by Paramount suggest it saw no better option, and this will likely hold true for the six others involved as well. The commission has been aggressive in pursuing perceived anticompetitive behavior by digital companies more recently, targeting Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Qualcomm Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM), among others, so it is unlikely to back down. But its own statements suggest that this is not a full-blown attack on territorial exclusivity, and the commission accepts there may be justification for geo-restrictions. So it's not entirely clear what the commission has in mind. It's also important to note that Sky's UK services may not even be subject to European laws in a few years, depending on the nature of the eventual Brexit agreement. This makes it still more difficult to analyze the impact of this announcement. Still, the striking down of geo-blocking is a major event in the TV/film business. For decades this kind of restriction has frustrated consumers and has been impervious to market forces. This announcement may result in a steady erosion of territorial segmentation and simplification of content licensing rules, which can only help consumers. — Aditya Kishore, Practice Leader, Video Transformation, Telco Transformation |
Contentious issues that are likely to fuel lawsuits and angry blogs in the coming year.
Content producers are unhappy with the advertising approach and revenues they are getting on Facebook Watch.
OTT video usage is driving the penetration of various Internet connected devices to help view online streams on the larger TV screen.
Major Hollywood studio to trial 'virtual' movie theaters using head-mounted displays.
Network technology vendor Sandvine has found that piracy isn't only hurting network operator profits – each pirated set-top box is also using up 1TB per month in 'phantom bandwidth.'
On-the-Air Thursdays Digital Audio
ARCHIVED | December 7, 2017, 12pm EST
Orange has been one of the leading proponents of SDN and NFV. In this Telco Transformation radio show, Orange's John Isch provides some perspective on his company's NFV/SDN journey.
Special Huawei Video
Huawei Network Transformation Seminar The adoption of virtualization technology and cloud architectures by telecom network operators is now well underway but there is still a long way to go before the transition to an era of Network Functions Cloudification (NFC) is complete. |
|
|
||
Telco Transformation
About Us
Contact Us
Help
Register
Twitter
Facebook
RSS
Copyright © 2024 Light Reading, part of Informa Tech, a division of Informa PLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy | Terms of Use in partnership with
|