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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| This week, we held the fourth iteration of the CASBAA OTT Summit, bringing together almost 300 delegates, speakers, panelists, and media as we explored the trends in digital delivery of video here in the region and around the world. This afternoon, our inaugural CASBAA India OTT Forum kicks off in Mumbai. Check out the Twitter feed at #casbaaott17 — which was in the top five trending topics in Singapore this week, btw!
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| There were some seriously big numbers in the Frontier Economics report on the cost of counterfeiting and piracy that was released at the recent Hong Kong conference of the International Trademark Association (INTA). Some headlines put the cost of piracy to “content owners” in the trillions, but those huge numbers aggregated counterfeit goods as well as pirated content (to the tune of $1.13 trillion in 2015). Most of that was goods. (How many movies can you buy, for the cost of one Louis Vuitton bag?) But even so, the cost of digital piracy of videos in 2015 was estimated at $160 billion….not exactly small change! And it’s growing rapidly.
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Andrew Lin
Regulatory Assistant
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So here’s what the other shoe dropping sounds like — 40 channels for US$35 a month. That’s what YouTube’s long-rumoured live TV bundle will look like in the US. It will purportedly include ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and ESPN, and while there might be notable omissions from that list, let’s not ignore the real motive — extending Google’s reach in advertising to include (at least) free-to-air TV. Perhaps underwhelming, but actually cable-killing? Let’s see… it’s
definitely an open question. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| Net neutrality continues to be a boiling topic, at least in the US and India. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai explained to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona why he thinks old-style telecoms regulation should not be applied to the modern internet (saying essentially the same thing he told the CASBAA Convention in 2015). Back home, the issue continues to be very polarizing. Meanwhile, there’s some possibility that the Congress could actually do its job and set policy, by revising the Telecommunications Act (but don’t hold your breath…). And in India, the head of the Broadband India Forum, T.V. Ramachandran, published a very cogent comment, observing that India needs a policy tailored to Indian conditions, and theological approaches that push hard-coded net neutrality risk having the poor subsidize the rich.
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Jane Buckthought
Advertising Consultant
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| Knowing where your on-line advertising is being placed is difficult to manage, but horrifying some advertisers as their ads are appearing on terrorist-supporting content. This affects brands based in Asia as well as in the UK. Jaguar Land Rover has said it was “very concerned” with online ads being used on extremist sites and it had stopped all UK digital advertising until an investigation had been completed. Ads for the Jaguar F-Pace appeared on YouTube next to a pro-ISIS video that had been viewed more than 115,000 times, but have since been removed. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the government is giving advertisers real reason to be alarmed; it’s accused many big brands of allowing their ads to run opposite “offensive, violent, and subversive” videos on YouTube. “The fact that these enterprises do not manage where their products are being advertised violates the Law on Advertising,” said an official. And a different ministry threatened to impose heavy fines on YouTube for not complying with the law.
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
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| Facebook Live has become a serious piracy problem. We reported on the surprisingly large audience a guy in Australia generated with his Facebook Live stream of a boxing match. Now, Spanish newspaper El Pais has published a report on huge piracy of soccer matches, with dozens of Facebook pages streaming the matches, which are then linked by for-profit piracy websites. A most unholy alliance; I bet many of those live streams are part of a for-profit conspiracy. Elsewhere, I doubt there was any profit motive for the Welsh bloke who’s just gone to jail for a month for streaming a court hearing live (which is not allowed in England and Wales). |
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| Recode has an article this week with a play on the old adage, “content is king”, Audiences no longer care about platforms. The content creator is ‘king.’ For the most part, recode is right. There has never been a better time for creators to create and distribute content. Hence the gazilion videos available on YouTube by creators of all types. But they only get the chance of views because they are on a platform. In todays world of “simply too much TV” people will gravitate to a platform that suits their budget and viewing preferences, especially if the content is fungible. A testament to this is Fox’s planned new app that will give U.S. consumers access to programming from all of its U.S. networks.
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Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
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| Those who follow Indian communications issues know that CASBAA has for a decade been pushing for better management of India’s satellite services market. At a recent conference in Delhi, the matter was re-hashed again, focusing on the country’s need for wireless broadband capacity, the satellite industry’s ability to meet that demand, and the obstacles posed by too-rigid regulation. This article sums up with a pretty good analysis of the landscape, the history, and the problems posed for a growing India. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| In Thailand, the fight over which government agency gets to tax satellite operator Thaicom continues (it has been going on for more than two years). Satellites Thaicom 7 and 8 were licensed by the NBTC (and its predecessor the NTC), with license fees of 5.75% flowing into the NBTC’s coffers. But the Digital Economy Ministry wants those two satellites – and any new ones – brought under a concession regime where the license fees will flow to – guess who? – the Ministry. And the Ministry’s preferred skim is – get this – more than 20 percent! Perhaps not surprisingly, Thaicom is raising the possibility it just won’t launch any new satellites of its own.
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| If you don’t closely follow developments in the satellite industry, here’s something you should remember: the industry is morphing and innovating. Expanding from traditional reliance on geostationary satellites (GEOs), there are now growing networks of vehicles in low earth orbits (LEOs) and medium earth orbits (MEOs) which can have high capacity and flexible targeting to deliver broadband. And the commercial spread of these new technologies is affecting satellite companies in a big way; this week the big news was the merger between Intelsat (a huge operator of GEOs) and OneWeb (which is launching a fleet of LEOs to offer satellite broadband). This has some competitors worried, but others, including SES, Eutelsat, Telesat and Skyperfect JSAT, already have their own LEO strategies.
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| What a difference an election makes. Before Philippines President Duterte took office, it would have been unthinkable for the Filipino government to sign a deal for collaboration in news and information dissemination with China. The agreement will see Chinese staff employed at public information agencies in the Philippines, and vice versa, Filipino journalists working in China. The arrangement is to be coordinated by Duterte’s office directly; no involvement is reported by the Philippines’ large and influential private broadcasters.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| Blocking of the biggest pirate websites is moving forward briskly in Australia, while Italy seems to be way ahead in getting ISPs to ban access to hundreds of sites. In the UK, there’s a lot of talk about a police campaign against sellers of ISD “black boxes.” This produced warnings that a lot of people (who knowingly bought dodgy devices to engage in piracy) could lose the money they paid if the transmission networks stop operating. Tsk, tsk…..doesn’t your heart just bleed for them? |
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
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| Last week, Google and Microsoft announced a “voluntary” agreement to downgrade links to pirate sites. It now seems this came about because the government threatened stiff legislation if they didn’t do something on their own. In Moscow, nobody’s bothering with such niceties: a piece of legislation moving through the Duma would require the search engines to totally delist pirate websites, period. Hmmmmm……Russian subtlety on display? |
