6 October, 2017

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending October 6th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

Kevin Jennings Vice President Rupert Murdoch has stepped up his attack on tech companies such as Google and Facebook over their increasingly dominant market position, which is eating into the revenues of traditional publishers such as News Corp. and undermining their business model. In a message to shareholders published in News Corp’s annual report released on Wednesday, the media tycoon vowed to continue to contest the “abuse of the marketplace” by some big tech companies “wherever possible”. Without naming the companies, Murdoch said the tech giants were “using their dominance to the detriment of many”. Meanwhile, apparently in an effort to defend itself against such allegations, Google announced that it would end a controversial policy that required publishers to make available for free three articles daily, or see themselves demoted to Farbackistan on Google’s search pages.

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

There’s been a lot of back-and-forth about Kodi boxes this week. (European and North American discussion of ISDs is dominated by references to Kodi, as use of that software is much bigger in those regions than here in Asia) You may recall that the Kodi “add-on” domain TVAddons is under legal pressure in Canada and the USA. For their part, the actual developers of the Kodi software (and owners of that trademark) say they wish TVAddons would shut down because “it brings misery to everyone”. (Especially those trying to do a legitimate business, which includes Kodi) Of course, the online piracy community didn’t like that. The legal actions against TVAddons have begun to attract denunciations from Big Internet’s mouthpieces, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who say notice-and-takedown should be sufficient to deal with piracy. (And….didn’t ya know? The TV industry is waging “war on general-purpose computing”. Gag.) Interestingly, the Silicon Valley commentators pretend that the majority of the plug-ins on TVAddons were “completely legit”. Ha! We’ll see what the courts have to say about that.

Clare Bloomfield Director, Policy & Research

In Thailand the NBTC continues its work whilst also undergoing the selection process for new commissioners, as the term for the current ones expires on 6 Oct. The current focus of the NBTC, which will be taken forward by the new commissioners, is on the auction of the 1800- and 850-megahertz spectrum licences which expire on 30 Sept 2018. As yet, however, there is no word on when the new NBTC will be in place. For now, the existing Commissioners continue in office, except for Chairman Thares Punsri, who has turned 70 and has to retire.

Mark Lay Vice President, Singapore

Way too many great stories in the OTT realm this week. Take a look at what Disney is doing with its new DisneyNow app that combines live TV, on demand, games and music. A fantastic story about FloSports…I see a buyout here. Hollywood Reporter has an in-depth piece on Youtube and how it plans to take on Netflix and Hulu. The always vocal Chief of FX, John Landgraf, responds to Wall Street’s “irrational exuberance” over platforms like Netflix and Apple with a prediction that the future of content will reward artists, not algorithms. Pundits posit about How Netflix, Amazon Could Really Disrupt Legacy Networks: Buy Sports Rights. And, closer to home, the ever likeable Cam Walker will be leaving iflix in mid-October. These stories and tons more at the CASBAA OTT Group NewsFeed.

Cathryn Chase Regulatory Assistant

In the US, a study commissioned by the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) has found that anti-piracy measures taken by members of the digital advertising industry have reduced ad revenue for pirate sites between 48% – 61% over the past year. The study, conducted by Ernst and Young’s Media and Entertainment Advisory, estimated that digital ad revenue linked to infringing content was about US$111 million last year, but that without industry efforts pirate site operators could have potentially earned $102-107 million more in revenue. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong an alliance of the creative industry announced launch of an Infringing Website List designed to hit piracy revenues in the SAR.

Clare Bloomfield Director, Policy & Research

In India, a recently published report by KPMG indicates the strength of the OTT market which will challenge the approaches of both content providers and enablers in order to embrace the potential. This will involve looking at revenue models to capture the shift to mainstream consumption as well as a need for the industry to develop better measurement of the digital business.

Jane Buckthought Advertising Consultant

India is not the only one to see an increased consumer embracing of the digital world, a recent report found that online TV episode and movie revenues for 138 countries will reach $83 billion in 2022 and whilst the US remains the clear front-runner, its market share will decline as China’s rises by 2022.

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

After Fake News, now in the government relations arena we have Fake Comments. Following reports a couple months ago that more than a million of the pro-net neutrality comments to the FCC were likely fakes (from addresses in France, Russia and Germany linked to the email domains Pornhub. com and Hurra. de), now there’s a study that 80% of recent comments were generated by bots, and they were anti-NN. Maybe the idea of internet-based comments needs to be discarded, with a return to pen and ink. That will certainly reduce the numbers to more manageable levels. (Full disclosure: I’m also in favour of paper ballots (only) in elections, as they can be secured and re-counted)

Cathryn Chase Regulatory Assistant

Issues related to tilted playing fields keep arising around the world. In India, regulators complained that OTT operators were not following anti-smoking rules, according to which licensed broadcasters and cinema operators are required to insert anti-tobacco spots into programs that show smoking. In Thailand, regulators said they wanted to know more about a telco’s joint venture with Japanese social media platform Line, which sees Line-branded voice and data service exempt from data caps over the telco’s network. (But Line has no licence) And in Canada, Netflix announced it would make a big investment in Canadian content. (Ostensibly, that has no regulatory motivation, but you can be sure that one of the move’s main purposes was to head off regulations that would subject it to the same type of local content requirements levied on other operators in Canada)

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

And finally, it seems Kim Dotcom is not happy this week. The US Supreme Court declined to review the government’s seizure of his assets. That makes three levels of the US courts that have ruled against him. No wonder he’s fighting extradition as hard as he can…..