Look! a Netflix tax!

While headlines spoke of another big tech tax (a Netflix Tax to add to your iPod tax, Google tax and YouTube tax - see “Fair Remuneration is not a tax”), last week reporting on the new AVMS Directive to be presented by the European Commission on 25 May failed to lead with the fact that the future of TV in Europe is more advertising. With the new “flexible rules”, product placement and sponsorship are encouraged on all audiovisual media services and broadcasters will be able to cram more advertising into primetime (when there are more eyeballs) and advertising for programmes from the same media group don’t count.  Advertising during films used to be limited to every 30 minutes, but even that has been cut down to 20 minutes.  It’s a massive shift.  The Commission claims that the competition in the sector will prevent any excesses and that more money will flow into production – we’re not convinced.  What we do know is that the integrity of an authors’ work will be put under even more pressure from advertising and that media services’ attractiveness to consumers will decrease. But of course, don’t worry about that. Worry about the already-met 20% European content quota and the optional financial contributions services like Netflix might have to make. And definitely don’t look at the new definition for video sharing platforms – responsible for the organisation of the stored content, but with no editorial responsibility over this content to maintain the liability exemptions of the E-Commerce Directive…

JT