[Bp_localcontent] Existing policy measures and private sector initiatives, impediments

Wed Jul 23 06:36:29 EDT 2014

Michele,

The content owners don't make more money with these rules, they simply lose
money.  Kenya is a country where it's so impossible to pay for content that
it's virtually all stolen.  That can't be good for rights holders.

-Adam

--
Kili - Cloud for Africa: kili.io
Musings: twitter.com/varud <https://twitter.com/varud>
More Musings: varud.com
About Adam: www.linkedin.com/in/adamcnelson

On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 12:57 PM, Michele Neylon - Blacknight <
michele at blacknight.com> wrote:

>  Adam
>
>
>
> The licensing issue is a pain.
>
>
>
> I can't see it changing any time soon, as the media companies still make a
> LOT of money from selling the rights in various markets ..
>
> The funniest one I've run into is where t-shirts and other goods weren't
> available to me here in Ireland due to licensing :) So it's not just
> digital ..
>
>
>
> But I know what you mean ..
>
>
>
> We all see stories in the media about new products / services etc., being
> launched that allow for cheap (inexpensive) legal consumption of media eg.
> Kindle unlimited, but rarely are these services made available outside the
> US and UK.
>
>
>
>
>
> Regards
>
>
>
> Michele
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Mr Michele Neylon
> Blacknight Solutions
> Hosting, Colocation & Domains
> http://www.blacknight.co/
> http://blog.blacknight.com/
> http://www.technology.ie
> Intl. +353 (0) 59  9183072
> Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/mneylon
> -------------------------------
> Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty
> Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,Ireland  Company No.: 370845
>
>
>
> *From:* Bp_localcontent [mailto:bp_localcontent-bounces at intgovforum.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Adam Nelson
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 23, 2014 10:13 AM
> *To:* Deen, Glenn (NBCUniversal)
> *Cc:* bp_localcontent at intgovforum.org; Susan Chalmers
> *Subject:* Re: [Bp_localcontent] Existing policy measures and private
> sector initiatives, impediments
>
>
>
> I'd like to jump in here and make a few points.  To make Susan's life
> easier, I'll break them into sections:
>
>
>
> ------Technical Infrastructure---------
>
> I'd like to second Michael's statements.  I'm the founder of a cloud
> infrastructure startup in Nairobi (i.e. hosting) and we're just now getting
> off the ground.  Aside from us and one other company which started last
> year as well, there is no modern local hosting capacity for Internet-facing
> services in all of East Africa.  Virtually all content consumed by Kenyans
> is hosted abroad.  This isn't just an academic issue - the Internet is
> literally slower here because of the distance all that data has to travel.
>  Aside from Google which has a POP on the coast, most streaming video
> doesn't work properly - it's a real problem not just for local content
> consumers, but also for local content producers.  A major hurdle to the
> production and dissemination of local content is the lack of local hosting
> solutions.
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Regulatory Infrastructure---------
>
> I'm going to spin this one on its head.  I'm an American living in Kenya.
>  Local content to me includes both content for Kenyans (because I live
> here) but also American content for Americans (because that's my identity
> and I enjoy American content).  Ironically, most American content is
> unavailable here or can only be gotten by technical deception (vpn) or
> outright theft (torrent).  I think the issue here is that the licensing
> environment defines which countries have access to content as opposed to
> which ones do not.
>
>
>
> I would love somebody to clarify whether this is the case but it seems to
> me that when content is produced, it is licensed to distributors based on
> blocks of countries and therefore, most content isn't available in smaller
> markets at all.  This drives piracy but also makes certain content
> unavailable by any means.  For instance, 'Nairobi Half Life' is a great
> Kenyan movie and can be gotten either on the street for $1 on DVD or
> torrent, but nowhere else.  When distributed properly by an entity like
> iTunes, the rights to the movie may not even be available in Kenya.
>
>
>
> The solution I would like to see to this would be to make all content
> default to a global license.  Then, rightsholders could 'exclude' certain
> regions from the global license in order to maximize their income.  In this
> scenario, a movie made by a US company would get a global license as soon
> as it hits broad distribution but there would be carve outs for major
> markets like the US or Europe or China (or all of them) in order to get
> proper distribution.  This would allow local content producers using
> foreign channels to re-access local content consumers in smaller markets.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Adam
>
>
>    --
>
> Kili - Cloud for Africa: kili.io
>
> Musings: twitter.com/varud <https://twitter.com/varud>
>
> More Musings: varud.com
>
> About Adam: www.linkedin.com/in/adamcnelson
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 4:56 PM, Deen, Glenn (NBCUniversal) <
> glenn.deen at nbcuni.com> wrote:
>
> Should local language search and metadata be added to the list of
> technical barriers  ?
>
>
>
> This is the question of metadata which describe the content - simple
> things like title and author, but richer fields like description, location,
> date, other related content etc - and what fields will be in the local
> language , what fields will be in english(because a lots of metadata is in
> English so that search engines can ingest easily) and where it might be
> possible to have fields that support multiple languages to be
> simultaneously present in the metadata, and for both to be ingested by the
> search engines that users will use to find the local content.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Glenn
>
>
> Sent from my iPad, please forgive any tpyos or auto connections
>
>
> On Jul 21, 2014, at 2:40 AM, "Michael Kende" <kende at isoc.org> wrote:
>
>  Hi Susan,
>
> Many thanks again.  I will focus here for the most part on the technical
> infrastructure issues, for which I would include data centers, hosting,
> content delivery networks, and IXPs.  At one level, there are no
> impediments, as someone developing local content has access to very
> inexpensive hosting offers in the US, Europe, and elsewhere, enabling them
> to make their content available globally, particularly to expats from their
> country as well as locally within their country and region.  However, as
> discussed elsewhere, this access will be slow and require expensive
> international capacity to ‘bring it home’.  This will in turn limit usage,
> and my hypothesis is that it would impact the amount of new local content
> that is developed as there is no large market, or interest, in local
> content given the cost and latency.  We will try our part in testing this
> hypothesis, and would be interested in other thoughts on the subject.
>
> At the local level, there clearly are impediments to the technical
> infrastructure, both actual and perceived.  In terms of actual impediments,
> based on my experience (unfortunately I do not know of any data on this)
> there may either be no data centers for hosting, or they are owned by the
> ISPs and thus not neutral.  There may also be frequent power outages.
>  Further, the pricing may be very high, based on high costs (e.g. For
> power) and/or low scale.  On the other hand, there also seems to be a
> perception about low quality (in terms of security) which may or may not be
> true.
>
> One initiative to take would be to bring together the industry, convened
> either by an industry body or by government, to address perceptions and
> then the remaining actual issues – so for instance, discuss security issues
> (during the one we held in Rwanda someone told a story of their US hosting
> company crashing and wiping out most of their data, while no one had a bad
> experience with a local company), and pricing issues – whether the offers
> are addressing the needs of the local providers.
>
> I heard of such a meeting in Nigeria, where an owner of a Nigerian video
> streaming company, hosted in London, complained that no one in Nigeria
> could reliably stream his movies from his site, and could not understand
> why the same movies could be watched from YouTube – that is where he
> learned about the Google local cache and the impact of the IXP, and focused
> on putting in his own server to increase his local market.
>
> Governments that host their own data locally also may help to create a
> local industry.   We would be interested in learning more about other
> initiatives that may have been taken elsewhere to address this issue.
>
> Thanks
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> *From: *Susan Chalmers <susan at susanchalmers.com>
> *Date: *Sunday 20 July 2014 23:32
> *To: *"bp_localcontent at intgovforum.org" <bp_localcontent at intgovforum.org>
> *Subject: *[Bp_localcontent] Existing policy measures and private sector
> initiatives, impediments
>
>
>
> Greetings all,
>
>
>
> It's now time to move on to the third area of our discussion on local
> content best practices, and that is identifying existing policy measures
> and private sector initiatives & impediments for the creation of local
> content.
>
>
>
> I'd like to remind the group of the tripartite structure we've adopted,
> and invite all to make contributions under this framework. For example,
> please note measures and initiatives under these categories:
>
>
>
> Area 1 - Human Capacities
>
> Area 2 - Technical Infrastructure
>
> Area 3 - Legal Frameworks
>
>
>
> Many thanks!
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Susan
>
>
>
> --
>
> Susan Chalmers
>
> Consultant, Internet Policy
>
>
>
> +1 269 324 4101
>
> www.susanchalmers.com
>
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