A view from a Brit who's lived happily in Brazil for 16 years (caveat: my opinion is based on one person's observations not research or hard evidence).
A. I don't believe the proposers of the bill are worried about a threat to local media production.
1. Brazil has an extremely strong domestic media industry. There's a vibrant music scene, producing both international and local styles of music. The TV and film industry is technically and artistically strong with well paid professionals.
2. Although Brazilians adore foreign films and TV, they are proud and happy to watch locally produced material.
3. Actors and TV presenters in Brazil can become very wealthy; there are at least 2 dollar-billionaire TV personalities. Lesser known artists make a good living from their profession.
National sovereignty
This is just a tick-the-box oratorical statement. The "threat to national sovereignty" card is often played. It's as frequent and as meaningless as the "threat to our way of life" card is in the US or the "threat to our children" card in the UK.
I believe the issue is that the "importers" of foreign media don't wish to lose a very lucrative cash-cow.
Foreign movies/TV are seen as luxury products for high earning professionals such as doctors or lawyers. And as such, the re-sellers expect a massive profit margin. This also applies to books, toys, games and educational products. (Although the free TV channels do have the most popular first-run US series as part of their program line-up.)
To expand on this point. A trip to the cinema for a family of 3 costs a lower middle-class at least half of its' monthly entertainment allowance and is out of reach for most working class families. The same applies to a recently released DVD (even though the DVDs are physically made in Brazil). The same applies for a basic package cable subscription (which have US TV series and re-runs).
Until recently, people could get hold of the films and series from the black market stalls for almost nothing. But this has ended now.
B. To reinforce their market position, local resellers get exclusive distribution rights. Indeed, most films and series cannot be legally streamed into Brazil; Hulu, Amazon, the BBC etc. block much of their content from Brazilian ISPs.
If the resellers priced the media to be within the easy reach of the lower middle-class or the working class, they would have to sell a substantially higher volume ant a much lower profit margin.
For some reason, selling this sort of product in small quantites at large margins is better business than selling large quantities at low margins.
So, in my view, the bill isn't to protect Brazilian content providers but to preserve the profit margins of the content importers.
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A view from a Brit who's lived happily in Brazil for 16 years (caveat: my opinion is based on one person's observations not research or hard evidence).
A. I don't believe the proposers of the bill are worried about a threat to local media production.
1. Brazil has an extremely strong domestic media industry. There's a vibrant music scene, producing both international and local styles of music. The TV and film industry is technically and artistically strong with well paid professionals.
2. Although Brazilians adore foreign films and TV, they are proud and happy to watch locally produced material.
3. Actors and TV presenters in Brazil can become very wealthy; there are at least 2 dollar-billionaire TV personalities. Lesser known artists make a good living from their profession.
National sovereignty
This is just a tick-the-box oratorical statement. The "threat to national sovereignty" card is often played. It's as frequent and as meaningless as the "threat to our way of life" card is in the US or the "threat to our children" card in the UK.
I believe the issue is that the "importers" of foreign media don't wish to lose a very lucrative cash-cow.
Foreign movies/TV are seen as luxury products for high earning professionals such as doctors or lawyers. And as such, the re-sellers expect a massive profit margin. This also applies to books, toys, games and educational products. (Although the free TV channels do have the most popular first-run US series as part of their program line-up.)
To expand on this point. A trip to the cinema for a family of 3 costs a lower middle-class at least half of its' monthly entertainment allowance and is out of reach for most working class families. The same applies to a recently released DVD (even though the DVDs are physically made in Brazil). The same applies for a basic package cable subscription (which have US TV series and re-runs).
Until recently, people could get hold of the films and series from the black market stalls for almost nothing. But this has ended now.
B. To reinforce their market position, local resellers get exclusive distribution rights. Indeed, most films and series cannot be legally streamed into Brazil; Hulu, Amazon, the BBC etc. block much of their content from Brazilian ISPs.
If the resellers priced the media to be within the easy reach of the lower middle-class or the working class, they would have to sell a substantially higher volume ant a much lower profit margin.
For some reason, selling this sort of product in small quantites at large margins is better business than selling large quantities at low margins.
So, in my view, the bill isn't to protect Brazilian content providers but to preserve the profit margins of the content importers.