Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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Here in Hong Kong, a four-way meeting between copyright owners, internet activists, government officials and legislators to discuss the stymied Copyright Bill accomplished nothing but another stalemate, particularly over amendments covering “fair use”. It’s been difficult for CASBAA and our allies to get a nuanced discussion going over the whole thing, but finally, the South China Morning Post has warned HK’s copy-left groups to be careful what they ask for, pointing to a submission by PwC to the Australian Productivity Commission (which is looking into economic aspects of IP reform) on the costs and benefits of introducing a fair use exception to copyright laws. The report cites the closures of a publisher and copyright collection agency in Canada, and a 50% decline in growth rates in Singapore’s creative industries which accompanied adoption of such provisions in those markets, and says such data needs to be considered when looking at moving to a “fair use” system. “There is no firm evidence supporting a direct causational relationship between fair use and improved economic outcomes…” Let’s see if this helps push things along in HK… (breath not being held). |
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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The hot news for this week is that Singapore’s courts issued the first copyright-related site blocking order,
ordering that access to solarmovie.ph be blocked. The request for blocking, brought by the MPA, was the first test case under site-blocking provisions enacted in late 2014. Within days, Australian film distributor Village Roadshow announced that it would be bringing a test case against the same site, under Australia’s new copyright site blocking law. (It’s already blocked in the UK.) It took quite a bit of preparation to bring the first cases (nobody wants to cut corners and lose a test case!) but now that the path has been cleared, expect more petitions to the courts in Singapore and eventually Australia. Aussie torrent fan sites declared their “disappointment” at the block, but were happy that efforts seem to have foundered to implement graduated response (3-strikes) for piracy downloaders in Oz. |
Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
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Wait a minute, if “The future of TV is apps”… then what is Apple doing getting into original TV production with Dr. Dre? Oh, wait a minute… Dr. Dre is behind Beats, which Apple bought, so it’s really just about promoting Apple Music. And yes, the rumors from last summer turn out to be true, Apple apparently does have a lot of music video projects in the works — and if you are among those who feel slightly urky when you watch that Drake video “Hotline Bling”, yep, you have Apple to blame. |
Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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More changes at the BBC, with reports in the UK press about a radical management overhaul, designed to streamline and simplify the org structure at Auntie. This comes just a week after a scathing report from the Commons Media Select Committee, which called for scrapping the BBC Trust, among other things. Of course, it’s the Beeb, so there are plenty of divergent opinions on this whole Charter business; expect the governance tug-of-war to continue right up until the current Royal Charter expires on December 31st. |
Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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Meanwhile, youth-oriented channel BBC Three has gone online only, following a plan announced back in 2014. The move was not without its opponents, who mounted a protest campaign (online, no irony there) and got more than 300,000 signatures on a petition to save the channel, to no avail. CBS talk show host and BBC Three alumnus James Corden introduced the final programme broadcast on the linear channel, an episode of his show “Gavin and Stacey”, before the feed was turned off for good. |
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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Censorship issues reared their head(s) in three disparate jurisdictions this week. In Japan, the Communications Minister got into hot water for threatening to revoke licenses for TV stations that are insufficiently balanced in their reporting. An industry observer told Mainichi that the Minister was “creating a mood that will reduce the degree of broadcasting freedom.” The focus in the UK was more prosaic: regulator Ofcom announced it was going to – well , not censor, but require porn websites to implement firm age verification technologies. Keeping children off the porn sites is a good thing – pay-TV operators with adult programming have been implementing age/parental controls for years. But can Ofcom get the online industry to comply? We’ll see… sanctions for violators could include civil penalties, ad blocking and even site blocking. |
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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But the real controversy of the week arose in Indonesia, where the regulators at KPI continue to provide plenty of fodder for critiques. This week’s initiative came under the camouflage of “child protection,” and involves a ban on “promotion” of LGBT activities (which means depiction of LGBT people). It’s really part of an ongoing demonization of gay Indonesians by religious activists. There was an immediate wave of criticism from Human Rights organizations, who pointed out that UNICEF and the UN Committee on Rights of the Child call for “raising the awareness of the public on equality and non-discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.” Indeed, when KPI promulgated their 2012 broadcast standards, they prohibited programs that stigmatize “people of certain sexual orientation and gender identity.” Guess they changed their mind. |
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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How to pivot your business from a “traditional” media company into a new digital player? Well, nothing could be more “traditional” that an old U.S. terrestrial broadcaster catering to an older demo. There is a lot to learn from the story of CBS’s move into digital video. Get this, CBS All Access (their OTT service), “… not only puts $6 per month per subscriber in CBS Corp.’s pocket, but also brings in some advertising dollars as well — about $4 a month per customer.” Two great stories for you, “Here’s Why CBS Is The Future Of Television No One Saw Coming (Except Les Moonves)” and “Exclusive: With full power at CBS, CEO Moonves sees more aggressive move to digital”. |
Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
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Notwithstanding the social churn taking place in India, the PM Modi-led government has been trying to ease some norms for doing business in India. Even if they may be small steps. Rajyavardhan Rathore, junior minister for MIB, said the government has done away with the requirement of taking security clearances from the Ministry of Home Affairs for existing broadcasters during launch of new TV channels from their stable. Well done and we hope the good intentions don’t get tripped by bureaucracy. |
Yegee Chun
Regulatory Assistant
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Indonesia’s leading telco, state-owned Telkom, has decided to block Netflix for noncompliance with local regulations and concerns around “porn” and “radicalism”. Officials claim the ban will be lifted once Netflix obtains the appropriate permits and meets censorship requirements. This surely does not come as a great surprise, after prior clashes between regulators and foreign TV channels over similar issues. But so far it’s only Telkom doing the blocking; competing telcos are racing to promote Netflix access on their networks. Meanwhile in Australia, there’s no question of blocking, but the Federal Treasurer wants to make Netflix pay its taxes. Now, about the pirate sites? |
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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In India, the TRAI came out in the name of net neutrality and banned zero-rating services, like Facebook’s “Free Basics.” Net activists were jubilant, saying India was leading and the US and EU would inevitably follow. (We’ll see if that happens – in the USA the FCC is agonizing over what to do about several zero-rating services, including most prominently a T-Mobile service called “Binge On.”) Anyway, the TRAI decision got a lot of international media attention, featuring lots of comment about how it was a big setback for Facebook. And indeed Facebook had spent big to try to mobilize Indian opinion to support them. The Sydney Morning Herald called the company’s miscalculations “Silicon Valley ignorance.” When Facebook then announced their India country chief was stepping down and relocating back to Silicon Valley, it occasioned a lot of invidious comment, and the company had to issue a release saying no no no, the two things were not related, and she wasn’t involved in the Free Basics campaign. (Huh? Are they so busy diddling their devices they didn’t think about what kind of comment the timing of that personnel announcement would generate???) Meanwhile, it seems like India will resemble the US in one way at least: litigation is going to follow. |
Yegee Chun
Regulatory Assistant
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Musicians and the music industry have been making increasing noise about how the internet “culture of free” is destroying artists and creators. See for example, this column from Forbes magazine. But for a viewpoint that has real impact, see this video, drawn from a forthcoming documentary on what happens to artists (and authors, journalists, academics and video producers) in the Internet Age, where only aggregators make money. “They came for the musicians first, and then the filmmakers, and the writers, and the journalists…” Watch it; it’s good! |
Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
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It was the BAFTA film awards on Sunday. As predicted by many Leo won for The Revenant which may set the stage for the OSCARS. The BAFTA’s wasn’t without its own controversy with the inclusion of Kisscam (Leonardo Di Caprio and Dame Maggie Smith, wait…what?) and one or two remarks that perhaps predicably set the easily offended social media ablaze including Stephen Fry comparing the winner of best costume design to a bag lady and Rebel Wilson discussing the diversity of BAFTA membership and saying she liked chocolate on Valentine’s Day (I shan’t elaborate, but you can watch it here). |
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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To continue on with my theme this week of listening to what old guys have to say, Michael Eisner Predicts the Future. You can hear what he has to say about “gut calls”, “Bojack Horseman” and ‘what’s going to happen to the thousand channels that I can currently cycle through on my TV?” Then there is this 3-minute CNN clip of Barry Diller, Chairman of IAC, talking straight. “Cable companies are now much more interested in data and broadband.” Apparently, “‘Data systems’ is the new word for ‘cable’”. |
