Iluminace 2018, 30(3):23-48 | DOI: 10.58193/ilu.1575

The Digital Single Market Strategy as a Threat or an Opportunity? A Reconstruction of the Czech Distributors' Attitudes toward the DSM Strategy

Pavel Zahrádka¹, Petr Szczepanik²

¹ Univerzita Palackého

² Univerzita Karlova

In the present study, we focus on local distributors operating on the small national market, whose voices were rather missing in the pan-EU debates or under-represented in the policies of international interest groups (i.e. professional associations) and national political positions. The aim of the study is to reconstruct and compare Czech distributors' attitudes toward the Digital Single Market strategy (DSM) and its individual regulatory initiatives, starting from May 2015. First, we situate the DSM into the wider cultural-political context, marked by tensions between basic principles of free market in the EU and the territoriality of copyright, the latter being a fundamental component of European audiovisual distributors' business models. We also introduce three legislative proposals that are the most relevant from the perspective of audiovisual industries' functioning and audiovisual content's cross-border availability. In the analytical part of the study, this is followed by a reconstruction and classification of our respondents' attitudes to the DSM strategy and their views of the current problems of digital distribution, with particular attention to the reasons for the poor cross-border availability of audiovisual works in the EU.

Keywords: Czech film industry, online distribution of audiovisual content, Video on Demand, Digital Single Market strategy, small media markets

Published: September 1, 2018  Show citation