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Netflix's stock price surged after they released a strong quarterly earnings report this week. However, KitGuru spotted another interesting bit in that report: the EU has plans to institute content quotas, and Netflix isn't particularly happy about it. According to the company, being forced to produce some arbitrary amount of European media would limit the creativity of their producers, even if they can meet the quotas in the short term. It's possible, if unlikely, that similar legal requirements could spread overseas.
The European Union is currently rewriting its audio visual rules, which will eventually require subscription streaming services to devote a minimum of 30% of their catalog to European works. In addition, some member states are looking to require services like ours to invest some portion of local revenues into European works. We anticipate being able to meet these requirements by evolving our content offering. We are heavily investing around the world to share stories broadly and to strengthen local production capacity and opportunity. We'd prefer to focus on making our service great for our members, which would include producing local content, rather than on satisfying quotas, but we anticipate that a regional content quota which approximates the region's share of our global membership will only marginally reduce member satisfaction. Nonetheless, quotas, regardless of market size, can negatively impact both the customer experience and creativity. We believe a more effective way for a country to support strong local content is to directly incentivize local content creators, independent of distribution channel.
The European Union is currently rewriting its audio visual rules, which will eventually require subscription streaming services to devote a minimum of 30% of their catalog to European works. In addition, some member states are looking to require services like ours to invest some portion of local revenues into European works. We anticipate being able to meet these requirements by evolving our content offering. We are heavily investing around the world to share stories broadly and to strengthen local production capacity and opportunity. We'd prefer to focus on making our service great for our members, which would include producing local content, rather than on satisfying quotas, but we anticipate that a regional content quota which approximates the region's share of our global membership will only marginally reduce member satisfaction. Nonetheless, quotas, regardless of market size, can negatively impact both the customer experience and creativity. We believe a more effective way for a country to support strong local content is to directly incentivize local content creators, independent of distribution channel.