14 April, 2017

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Apr 14th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

Brought to you by:

John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

The big news this week in enforcement against illicit streaming devices (ISDs) is that two major e-commerce platforms have implemented programs to weed out sales of blatantly infringing devices from their user postings. Amazon, which has been a major route for ISDs shipping to Europe and America, added a paragraph on streaming media to their seller policies, and said “Products offered for sale on Amazon should not promote, suggest the facilitation of, or actively enable the infringement of or unauthorised access to digital media or other protected content.” There was no big announcement, but the piracy press certainly noted. With respect to box sales on Asian platforms, we also learned this week that Alibaba says it is implementing a parallel policy. I couldn’t find any public discussion of this in the press (yet), but member company Irdeto confirms they’ve now seen a very substantial reduction in numbers of blatantly infringing boxes on the Alibaba and Aliexpress platforms. All of that is great news…..but we do have to temper our joyful reaction just a bit – there are still plenty of sales of empty boxes on the e-commerce sites. (Those are streaming boxes that haven’t yet been loaded with the piracy software apps.)

Mark Lay

Vice President, Singapore

I ONLY listen to “people familiar with the matter” and especially so with rumors and conjecture. This week they tell us that Comcast Is Planning a Netflix Rival Using NBC Shows. The service could include programs from the NBC broadcast network as well as Comcast cable channels Bravo, SyFy and USA with a launch anywhere in the next 12-18 months. Sorry, not a lot of hard facts here folks. Though with comedy streaming service, Seeso, and a sports package with cycling and rugby, called NBC Sports Gold, more VOD services in the future seem consistent.

Kevin Jennings

Vice President

Chinese cable television companies have cut off access to South Korean programming in a move by Beijing to punish Seoul for installing a missile defense system aimed at North Korea, but which China says threatens its own security. As well as boycotts of South Korean goods and services that have spread across China in recent weeks, authorities have blocked access in China to South Korean television channels. In cities like Yanji and Jilin which have large ethnic Korean populations, people are now installing satellite antennas to receive the South Korean channels. While drama and other entertainment shows are popular with Chinese viewers the channels also carry news programmes.

Andrew Lin

Regulatory Assistant

During the past weekend, PCCW-owned operator Now TV was able to provide live coverage of the Hong Kong Sevens through virtual reality, jointly with NETVIGATOR. Now TV is always trying to adopt new video technology to improve the viewing experience for their customers says Janice Lee, managing director of PCCW Media Group. With the addition of VOD, recording functions, and much more, Now has offered enhanced convenience for customers to view the event.

Mark Lay

Vice President, Singapore

My favorite streaming stories of the week. “Let’s not pretend that this is a consumer-wins-all race to the top — it’s a way for struggling media businesses to pivot their revenue strategies, for agitators to disrupt existing verticals and it’s a way for large media players to lock-in their supremacy for the long-term. And on the same theme, As The Digital Streams Become A Gushing River, Who Stays Afloat? For those of you that have “run through all of Netflix’s programming” you can find out Where the Best Television Online is Hiding. And to top it off, The Billion-Dollar Race for Streaming Supremacy, Amazon Prime to spend $4.5 billion on video content this year…Netflix to spend $6 billion.

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