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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| All the talk about the TVAddons case continues, in North America. (That’s the group that was pumping out addons to the otherwise-legitimate Kodi software, that enable millions of people to access pirate content.) So the pirates are devastated that their easy-go-to source for infringing software is on the run. The tekkies are sympathetic, complaining that the “community” has been muzzled by telcos. The chief pirate is seeking donations from the public, to fund his legal expenses (but he doesn’t seem to be succeeding too well, having raised only 5-10% of the money he needs.) And in an interesting exchange in a Kodi forum, the directors of XBMC Foundation (legitimate owners of the Kodi brand) accused TVAddons of ruthlessly abusing the Kodi brand: “We are tired of you using our name to further your own ends, besmirch us, and make money, and as such, I would like to see every instance of the word Kodi removed from your site immediately or as soon as can be achieved.” Well, I guess if your business is stealing other people’s content, then misusing a few trademarks is right up your alley….. Meanwhile, in Europe the Dutch content association is taking other enforcement action against some of the notorious addon builders.
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President
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| Sighs of relief at the BBC as their correspondent Jonathan Head has the criminal defamation suit against him dropped in Thailand. A Thai lawyer has dropped his criminal defamation suit against the BBC journalist who investigated foreigners being scammed out of their retirement homes in the country, particularly in Phuket (which is a firm favourite amongst many CASBAA friends). Jonathan Head, the BBC’s south-east Asia correspondent, faced up to five years in jail after his 2015 report detailed how a network of criminals, aided by corrupt officials, stole properties from foreigners by forging land title transfers. Rights groups have said the case highlights how Thailand’s broad defamation and computer crime laws scupper investigative journalism and make it difficult to uncover wrongdoing in a country where corruption is endemic. The story is far from over with a joint defendant still facing charges
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| This week’s OTT news stories started off with a bang as iflix announced they will start airing Disney films including Guardians of the Galaxy, Monsters Inc and Frozen, with plans to roll out a much bigger inventory from January next year. OTT seems to be one of the causes for Turmoil in TV in Malaysia, with Astro seeking a level playing field against OTT players. In the TV streaming players market, Apple TV is slipping against Roku and Amazon. To finish, last month at the Global Sports Summit, Rich Greenfield gave a fantastic presentation on The Future of Sports Media – The War for Consumer’s Time and Attention. Everything he talked about is applicable to anyone navigating this changing TV business. A bit of a paraphrase, but a line that jumped out was, “the one thing holding this entire TV thing together is sports…and if that changes, TV as we know it is done.” More OTT related news at CASBAA OTT Group Newsfeed.
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Cathryn Chase
Regulatory Assistant
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| In a letter of intent signed on Tuesday, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) made an agreement to deepen their bilateral cooperation. The agreement is meant to promote the exchange of information and regulatory best practices in the telecommunications and broadcasting industry by committing both parties to jointly conducting capacity building exercises, collaborating in various international forums, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and exchanging and deploying industry experts between the two countries.
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President
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| Owners of high-end Samsung Smart TVs are crying foul after a software update which has left many of them with blank, or unusable TV screens. Despite TV owners protests both to Samsung and to the press the company has still not fixed the problem – but seven days in (the glitch started to appear last Friday), Samsung still doesn’t have a timeline for when a fix will arrive. The problem appears to affect the latest models as owners of older Samsung TVs are not reporting the issue on Samsung Forums and it also seems that the problems are only affecting European models; there’s no widespread chatter about similar issues on forums or Samsung community boards in other territories.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| As OTT becomes increasingly popular in India’s cities, people are starting to wonder where will all the content come from, to fill the new pipes? There’s certainly lots of interest in content in unconventional languages. The CEO of AltBalaji speculated that by 2020 only 5% of content delivered by OTT platforms would be in English. Hindi is of course the big language, but other platforms were reporting that 30-40% of viewing is in regional languages.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| Elsewhere, a battle has broken out in the Indian TV industry, and one clear symptom was this week’s complaint about one broadcaster having too many cricket rights.
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President
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| Japanese television is known and loved for having some of the oddest shows and commercials. But one particular tourism ad has been in hot water recently, and is being removed as it was deemed too suggestive. The commercial was made for the Miyagi Prefecture and starred its official mascot, the anthropomorphized rice ball Musubimaru. The video contains suggestive and provocative lines, while there are repeated close-up images of the actress parting her lips and rubbing the head of an animated turtle… but the main problem seems to come from whispering “Miyagi, I-cha-u?” to the above-mentioned anthropomorphized rice ball. In Japanese pop culture, slowly spelling out the syllables of a word would often connote something sexual. This is further amplified by the word play involved. “Miyagi ichau” would generally mean “Let’s go to Miyagi.” However, “ichau” also means something else entirely. Who knew.
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