Digital Peripheries

This chapter raises the question of how to think about the impact of global streaming video on demand platforms on local and national audiovisual markets. It suggests that many studies of media-related markets—particularly in countries identified as “small”—are often understood in generic terms. Using Canada’s experience with Netflix as a case study, this chapter explores how the study of VOD would change according to three different conceptions of Canada as market for media products. If thinking of media markets as big or small encourages relational and defensive thinking and leads toward questions of sovereignty, and if considering media markets as “middles” encourages ideas of circulation and brokerage, then understanding media markets as testing grounds can encourage ideas of experimentation and adaptation.

This chapter offers a conceptual framework for analyzing market boundaries, using the EU’s Digital Single Market strategy as an example. It builds on recent work in sociology, geography and political theory to explain how market boundaries are drawn—politically, discursively and institutionally. A vital insight from the social science of markets is to always consider the messiness and friction built into markets. In other words, we must think of markets as social spaces constituted by history, politics and culture rather than abstract spaces constituted by exchange. This involves paying attention to how official market boundaries interact with—and inevitably conflict with—consumer preferences, practices, activities and institutions that may or may not respect those boundaries. The effect of this thought experiment is to pluralize the idea of “the market” by acknowledging that there are, in fact, many different kinds of markets. More to the point, each market comprises a palimpsest of layers that interact in complex ways.

Jurisdiction (from Latin iuris dicere) is the general authority of a sovereign to implement legal rules that normatively affect the behavior of individuals. The scope of jurisdiction of a particular sovereign is traditionally delimited in law on a territorial basis. On the Internet, however, territory plays a significantly different role than in the offline environment, and this difference represents an evolving challenge for legal scholars as well as for practicing lawyers. In this chapter, we discuss the territorial scope of the application of copyright law on the Internet. We analyze the concept of the territoriality of copyrights as such and discuss particular regulatory paradoxes that arise from a strictly territorial application of various components of copyright law on the Internet. We also focus on the concept of the place of use of copyrighted work and the related concept of the place of damage (locus delicti), and we consequently discuss the legal nature of geoblocking tools and question their understanding as specifically legally protected “technical measures.”

This chapter explores the effects of geoblocking on consumers, as well as the friction between this practice and the idea of European integration. Drawing from my experience as a Member of the European Parliament involved with legislative initiatives to address geoblocking from 2014 to 2019, I find that the European Commission’s proposals to abolish geoblocking that were announced by Commission Vice-President Ansip at the beginning of the mandate left geoblocking practices mostly intact, due to fierce opposition from the film industry. Even the modest proposal for a regulation on online broadcasting modeled after the 1993 Satellite and Cable Directive, which would have reduced (not abolished) the geoblocking of video content, was altered substantially through the negotiation process, largely to accommodate lobbying from the film industry. While politics have thus failed to abolish geoblocking, new online players, such as Netflix and Amazon, have reacted to consumer demand to be able to access video content anytime and anywhere, regardless of location. These companies were only able to grow thanks to the large single market in the USA where they got their start, and have since been able to establish themselves in the EU thanks to their substantial resources when entering the EU market. Now, the multinationals are large enough to finance their own productions, which are available to all users worldwide simultaneously. To many consumers, the issue of geoblocking therefore seems less pressing now, because they can watch content produced by streaming services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime instead of the independent productions that are unavailable to them legally in their countries. By opposing any solution to the geoblocking problem, the European film industry has thus contributed to the rise of new, powerful competitors and is now threatened by technology companies that are better at meeting user demand for non-geoblocked films and TV series. Only a decisive effort to abolish geoblocking can prevent the gradual development of a film production duopoly of Netflix and Amazon. Eventually, abolishing geoblocking will be in the interest of both consumers and a diverse film production market.

This chapter reconstructs and compares the attitudes of Czech distributors of premium audiovisual content (films, television and Web series) toward reform measures proposed by the European Commission for the introduction of a Digital Single Market in Europe and explains the basic operating mechanisms of the business model for audiovisual content in small markets. Based on the lessons learned, the chapter offers a reflection on the sustainability of the online business model of the film industry in the EU with respect to consumer demand and European Union competition law.

In an increasingly platform-dominated media environment, the production and distribution models of legacy players, and their economic profitability as well as original content production, are challenged by new business models. The advent of innovative platforms and shifting business models has not only instigated new forms of competition but has also forced media players to explore different forms of collaboration and co-option. In this chapter, we discuss the disruptions and consequences for legacy media players by centering our attention on the different answers given by media managers regarding the strategic distribution of audiovisual content in small markets. We thereby focus on three core strategies: scale, collaboration within domestic ecosystems and diversification of offerings and valorization. The chapter presents evidence from Flanders, but also provides a broader view by discussing shifts on the level of small markets in Europe and by addressing the challenges and concerns in other small media markets. The chapter investigates media companies’ strategic responses to specific challenges from 2016 to 2019. Evidence is derived from observations, interviews with the media managers of private media players in Flanders and from insights from recent research looking into the sustainability of content production and delivery in Flanders.

This chapter focuses on the mutual relations and influences between the VOD market and traditional cinematic distribution in the case of the local Polish market. The main topic is the separateness of both fields in the aspects of business logic and corporate control. According to these factors, the VOD market is much closer to traditional TV and cinematic distributors are cut off from the main flow of revenues from VOD. They are selling rights at cheap prices or are forced to sell large packages of numerous films. The current growth of profits in Polish cinematic distribution is caused by the expanding traditional market. The Polish VOD market is more concentrated around the most powerful players and has much higher barriers to entry than the traditional cinematic distribution market. The revenue stream is more tightly controlled by the entities dominating the VOD market, acting mostly in the interest of their own and their superior corporate structures, unwilling to share it with outside content providers. Therefore, the traditional cinematic market players—distributors and, indirectly, producers—are largely cut off from the stream of VOD revenue and are looking for alternative development models.

This chapter looks beneath the purely quantitative data on cross-border availability by investigating audiovisual industry practices of online distribution from a peripheral, small-market perspective, using the example of export from the Czech Republic. Its key research question is: How have transnational VOD services integrated into the local industry ecosystem and to what extent have they changed the circulation trajectories of Czech films and TV series? First, it places online distribution within the local industry ecosystem and reveals the systemic barriers that discourage producers and distributors from strategically focusing on foreign markets. Second, it identifies the key intermediaries and practices of cross-border online distribution, focusing on the approach of global VOD services to distributing small nation content across borders. The chapter concludes with a typology of cross-border online distribution to distinguish different strategies and tactics employed by key players when approaching foreign markets. Thus, it calls for a more nuanced perspective on the position of “digital peripheries” in cross-border cultural networks and flows.

The chapter offers a critical overview of the media ecology of film and television distribution in Greece by the middle of 2019. It maps out the stakeholders engaged in delivering professional audiovisual content online and highlights some of the ways in which residual and emerging screen media have intersected in creating the contemporary digital landscape in the country. The chapter positions distribution in the broader context of the audiovisual industry and policy developments in Greece in the decade since the financial crisis, while also exploring the impact of global disruptors, such as Netflix, on the national media ecosystem. Drawing on a conceptual framework provided by research on “small media systems,” as well as the work of Amanda Lodz and Ramon Lobato on Internet-enabled distribution, the chapter uses data from policy documents, press reports and content analysis to assess whether digital technologies can help stimulate a virtuous cycle of production–distribution–consumption in the country’s audiovisual sector.

Addressing a concern about the absence of Vietnamese migrants in the Czech media landscape, this chapter first reviews various life contexts of the different Vietnamese populations in the Czech Republic (CR) and then discusses how they have generally lacked participation in the Czech media landscape because of their adoption of transnational media practices. This study also demonstrates how the diasporic community has failed to establish a conventional form of diasporic media but instead has found new translocal information outlets on social media. While the old and new first generations have relied more on media outlets from their country of origin, young migrant children have explored media markets beyond the binational border. However, Vietnamese migrants have recently begun to use social media platforms as networked information outlets, reaching a variety of communities and media outlets located in the CR, Vietnam and their own diasporic community.

This chapter tracks the awareness and consumption of, engagement with, and attitudes surrounding new, digital, “configurable” cultural forms and practices, using data from surveys conducted across a diverse range of nations. Respondents included English-speaking, online adults in the USA, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, South Africa and the UK. These data are analyzed to examine the correspondences and differences between media consumers living within different cultural, technological and legal regimes. The analysis pays special attention to demographic factors such as age, and geographic divides such as the delta between “advanced economies” and “emerging markets and developing economies.” The data show that these factors have significant, measurable consequences for access to knowledge and cultural participation, in ways that threaten to compound these social inequities in the future. In fact, the data show that user age and national wealth are far greater factors in personal use of digital culture than the size of individual markets, the prevailing copyright law, or the overall level of engagement with digital media among the population at large.

In today’s media cultural environment, audiences seem to have access to virtually any movie at any time, going beyond the traditional restrictions of windowing, programming and broadcast schedules. This chapter goes into the question whether this increased accessibility has resulted in different film-consuming practices and preferences, through a survey of contemporary film audiences and their individual feature film preferences and consumption practices among 1015 youngsters in Flanders aged 16–18. This study comes to the conclusion that structures in film consumption prove to be rather traditional in terms of screen size choices and preferences for local and global media products. In our assessment of these results, we discuss the importance of a political–economic perspective on audiences’ structured practices and preferences.

This chapter tackles one of the main methodological and conceptual challenges to current audience research: fragmentation of viewers’ practices of reception. The use of digital and networked media and the consequent multiplication of screens, distribution channels and content sources have further complicated the notion of “watching television” and, along with that, academic and applied audience research. The chapter reintroduces Maria Bakardjieva’s concept of uses genres and connects it with the concept of media ensemble, suggesting that for research on the domestic consumption of films and TV series, the application of these concepts in qualitative (ethnographic) research and in audience surveys comes with strong advantages. Firstly, the concepts help to identify distinct types of consumption practices linked with specific technological objects, with specific audiovisual content and with typical everyday situations, and they enable us to analyze consumption explicitly within the contexts of the spatiotemporal and social organization of everyday life. Secondly, in cases of small- and peripheral-market audiences, the concepts enable us to identify specifics in audiences’ practices linked with the characteristics of these markets (e.g., with localized and non-localized content, with domestic and global production, etc.). And thirdly, the concepts explicitly acknowledge power both involved in and shaping the analyzed practices by emphasizing the “generative process of technology,” i.e., the transformative role of users’ practices in shaping technological and economic systems.

In the last two decades, it has been difficult to enforce exclusive rights in the “digital realm.” This chapter discusses an alternative to copyright enforcement: copyright compensation systems (CCS), which (a) provide end users with legal certainty when using widely available online resources to access and use creative works, in return for (b) a surcharge on Internet subscription, the receipts of which are disseminated among rightsholders. The basic idea is not to establish exclusive rights, but to compensate creators and those investing in the production of creative works. Arguably, the use of CCS is particularly promising in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries within the European Union. CCS can ensure that low-income households enjoy affordable legal access, foster cultural diversity and domestic production in smaller economies, maintain competition between online services disseminating creative works, become useful tools to conduct cultural policy, and help realize the promise of wide participation in cultural production with user-generated content. It is high time that policymakers explore this option by extending the system of copying levies to cover Internet subscriptions.

Whenever a film is produced and distributed, a license to use the music and sound recording may be needed. While the film producer usually owns the copyright in the film and underlying works or actors’ performances, responsibility for the clearance of rights in music and sound recordings remains largely on the shoulders of users (broadcasters, cinema operators, VOD platforms). They usually need to get a license through a CMO or directly from the rightsholder. In the case of musical works, the procedures are largely standardized, mainly in offline use. When it comes to licensing the rights for cross-border use online or when phonogram producers and performers are involved, the licensing situation becomes messy which introduces significant uncertainty into the market. Instead of advocating state regulation, the author pleads for the development of cross-border industry standards and procedures, good practices and reciprocal agreements between CMOs to be developed in a collaboration of global organizations representing rightsholders.

The approach of each European country to the Digital Single Market strategy from a film industry perspective is not just a response to the technological and commercial transformation of recent years, but is based on concepts of the film industry and the willingness of the state to interfere and support. Therefore, in monitoring current attitudes and identifying future strategies, it is appropriate to recall the development of the legitimacy of the institutionalized film sphere within a wider national cultural policy. It is also essential to keep in mind that the existing organization of the production side of the film industry is in a fragile equilibrium of market-based solutions and state intervention which is vulnerable to rapid change.