The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> PAOLO LANTERI: Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this session on Local Content and Sustainable Growth, coordinated by the World Intellectual Property Organization, represented by my several, Paolo Lanteri, and International Federation of Film Producers Associations. As you know, local content is a popular content within the IGF in recent years. A number of activities we organize and also specific best practices forum on creating an enabling environment for development brokered content was established.
From that experience, we learned that reaching a common understanding of all the issues related to local content is not an easy task. Even agreeing on the clear cut definition seems very complicated and perhaps undesirable.
What are the key defining elements of local content? Is it the language? Is the cultural infinity? There's no clear cut answers to all of these questions to today, we are not here to reopen the debate or try to redefine local content. We have a much more modest target today. We are trying to understand and recognize the complexities of the matter and what can be encompassed by a wide definition. We are trying to look at one specific piece of the puzzle, which is that high quality, individual creations that are local, in terms of mark, place and production.
We are also aware of the fact that the vast majority or an important share of the local content on the Internet is, in fact, noncommercial in nature and we recognize the importance to provide the right infrastructure, guaranteeing easy and speedy access to that content, to the widest number of individuals around the globe.
As you all know, WIPO is deeply engaged in enhancing access to information and creative content through a variety of initiatives undertaken, including the IGF. But on a parallel track, it is clear that access is directly impacted by pow the content is created and distributed. So for this reason, we have brought here today, a list of outstanding professionals that will share with us the firsthand experience in the creation of our beloved and local content that we all want to enjoy.
So before passing the floor to Bertrand, let me highlight something that you might not have noticed yet. For the sake of geographical balance, we have selected speakers from Africa, Asia, and, of course, Latin America which means that none the panelists is actually representing the so‑called dominant markets. No one of them. This is particularly remarkable since we are talking about the movie industry, a sector that often has been criticized for being highly globalized or even colonized.
We have done so because we believe that the creation of local audio/visual content is not only desirable but is also possible and viable if we achieve the technology works hand in hand with the creative sector. Bertrand, it's yours.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Can you hear me? Hello? Good morning.
Well, I have very little to add to this extremely good introduction of the panel. Thank you. I want to thank WIPO for partnering us on this historic workshop, because this is the first time that IGF will hear directly the perspectives of working film producers and TV producers, content producers, that ugly word, in terms of how they want to insert themselves in the global narrative of the Internet, socially, economically and culturally.
I just want to say that to reemphasize the point that Paolo made, that we are here to talk about the professional film content industry and we are make no apologies for that. It doesn't mean that we have no respect for the phenomena which is important. We are here to talk about the people who are trying to make a living out of a creative endeavor.
It requires immense dedication and skills.
We think that there's a profound reason why this sector should survive and thrive as a creator of jobs and harbinger of innovation and as a contributor to GDP growth and culture. Our industry is both about industry and culture which is what makes it endlessly fascinating to me, dare I admit it.
Where culture is concerned, I think we fall into the main theme of this panel which is how to make sure that there's an infrastructure, both legal and economic to support locally relevant content being made by the people around this table.
And we think we need for this stable legal framework which includes communication and albeit, copyright wall and incentives and in order for that to happen and for people to have the dignity, to have their own local culture reflected back at them through the talent and the dedication of filmmakers.
And we help that we are in a paradigm shift and all the panelists are concerned and kind of are surfing in that transition between legacy media and what internet players can offer them, and I think the key word or the key vision where you all seem to agree on, is the idea of partnership. We are not here to talk about piracy. We are here to adapt to it. And to bring our creativity and skills to contribute to the growth of broadband Internet and the dividends that give socially, culturally to people around the globe. And so this is really where we are at and we are very interested in your opinions, your feedback and whatever, the consummate professionals will have to say. Without further ado, we will see an extract from the work of our next speaker, our first speaker, Cristina Gallego. She's a producer of high quality films based in Colombia. And this is an extract from a film, which is a Columbus nomination to the Oscars last year. It's a glorious movie. If you haven't seen it, rush to legitimate sited to watch it.
Sorry there is simultaneous interpretation available. It's spoken in Spanish.
(video).
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Thank you, and without further ado I will hand it over ‑‑ sorry.
(Applause).
I will hand it over to Cristina, she will talk about what it takes to do what she does and explains some basic notions about how independent filmmakers make their films and also specifically the making of this master work.
>> CRISTINA GALLEGO: Hello, thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Cristina Gallego, I come from Colombia, a team with 45 million inhabitants. The history cinema in our country is very short. We have produced about 350 films. 70% have been produced over the last 14 years thanks to the act on cinema that was enacted in 2014.
Bringing about the possibility of producing cinema. Things such as this, we haven't been financing cinema, thanks to the participation of governments and investors. We have agreements with America and Europe so films can be nationalized and sponsored by a number of countries with different distribution, presale rights, professional cinema requires a legal framework, private and public investment. It all depends upon the type of cinema that you are making and the type of budget you've got.
The average cost is $175 million. Blockbusters and big films in comparison to them, we are farmers, organic farmers in a multinational market. Our production is not industrial. We are hand crafters. We make two or three films a year with lead up time of about two or three years with the participation of musicians or artists, the signers, the technicians, builders and long list of professions, the films generate about 800 jobs only for the production, and when we bring together different productions we produce more than 1,000 independent films every year without taking into consideration shorter films at ‑‑ of their income stays in the chain of distribution, generating an endless amount of jobs.
Cultural industries are based on different cultural and artistic pieces. They are not industrially produced, and the result is ‑‑ depends on the style of other producers and that's how we got to the market, a market that privileges blockbusters from whole goods over local productions. And we need to find new distribution channels.
Just like farmers having difficulties bringing the productions to city, most of the cinema that we produce is not shown on big cinemas and so the penetration of Internet and the growth of audio visual products on the net is for many people the alternative to keep sustainability.
A clear example of how distribution is changing, the market of music in the '90s, we had piracy. And now we have ‑‑ it has become a digital platform with endless lists of music by means of affordable fees, making this possible for the music industry to have an income. Many films in the market need to have distribution and financing mans. It was thought that distribution was only to take place on home video, television or cinema theaters. We have got more distribution channels but thanks to Internet and the Pape per view, this is affecting the production chain in some countries, more in some than in others. Internet platforms are important players in the production of films when it comes to the production of creative contents.
Many people recover their investment in local markets in Colombia and in a number of other countries, comedies are produced this is local comedy. It works in our countries but it can not go abroad. There are some other films that need to find an audience and they need to travel to other lands by different means of distribution.
Allow me to give you a practical example. My film, the raise of the serpent, we have a black and white film. It has been nominated to the Oscars. We have nine languages in the film. Five of them in indigenous languages. It took us five years to produce this film. One year for the thinking process and four years for the production and this is the biggest film for the Colombian cinema industry. If it were not by the coproduction system that we have in Colombia, this would only represent a loss, but it has generated revenues for our investors and it generates income for my company, four‑employee company, after 15 years of producing, after six films in different festivals, this is the first market success we had.
The production cost was $1.4 million with a 30% of private investment.
It has generated value for the whole chain, the distributors, the agents. It has generated $4 million in sales, but the written investment is nor more than 10%.
One single sale for Amazon has generated the greatest revenue for the film and this is going to generate the highest or the biggest audience. Had we live in a world of piracy and we want to protect the copyright of producers. We do believe that people need to have access to cultures but this is not feasible if the ecosystem is not economically feasible. We cannot produce locally if we do not have our revenue produced by the market and the revenue is related to the copyright. We are not big studios. We are not part of the distribution channel. We don't have another line of business. So we have to respect the legal framework in order to get a revenue and this is very important for independent filmmakers. Thank you very much.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Very clear expose of what you have and the hoops you have to jump through to do what you do and to maintain a company and create jobs locally and give, in this case the local audience that the film they responded to phenomenally well. I think it helped and it holds the record for the longest theatrically run of all locally made movies, yes?
And had enormous viewing figures when it came out, which seems to demonstrate that there is an underlying demand for local content which is really what we tried to address. Thank you so much.
I want to move on to Manuel Guerra. You have heard from a boutique producer who is trying to struggle in the wilderness. What is Mexico doing? Are you speaking yourself of Autor, the copyright office of Mexico, what other legal structures of Mexico filmmakers guild rely on to do what Cristina does?
>> MANUEL GUERRA ZAMARRO: Well, thank you very much. Thank you. And welcome, welcome to Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco. This country embraces you. Mexico is a number nine when it comes to visitors, international visitors from the world.
Now answering your question, what is the cultural infrastructure of Mexico? Mexico has 120,000 buildings related to culture. 128 archaeological sights open to the public. 40,000 archaeological sites. 7 about 4 million libraries, 1,500 book shops, 620 theaters, and 870 artistic educational centers and 119 sound archives.
The cultural sector employs more than 1 million people, internationally, Mexico is number four when it comes to world memories. Number five, when it comes to linguistic diversity, number five when it comes to patrimony and number five six when it comes to cultural resources.
Mexico is positioned number 10 ‑‑ number 18th as a producer of creative words and this is information from their UN oncomers and trade.
Mexico is the first known Asian country amongst the ten most important importers of video games. Mexico is the only developing country with more exports of creative words according to information from the UN. Mexico worldwide is number 10 when it comes to filmmaking production based on information.
Nationally, the creative sector in Mexico is positioned amongst the ten most important economic activities of the country. According to Mexican statistical information, in 2015, 140 films were produced, the highest number in the history of Mexican cinema. Mexico is amongst the ten countries with the highest production in the world and it is also very important in Latin America.
The average cost of a film in Mexico is one million dollars. The lowest level for six years. The production of films for women represents 25% of the total.
More than 70% of films made in my country, Mexico received the support of a different government initiatives. This has generated fiscal stimuli and trusts and because of this, we have a high level of economic activity and this is low level for everyone. Are.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Perhaps the regulatory framework issues relative to some of the topics that will be handled by the practitioners and the panel around the adaptation to the Internet age and how it can help boost creative development in this, the tenth largest film industry in the world. I have just been learning an important piece of data here.
I would like to move on to the digital native at the table, but this is Nicole Artemifio, she's the show runner, the author of the series which was initially available on YouTube only and has matured in the second season to much more complex, multi‑window kind of structure.
She will talk about the narrative and how she dreamed this up, but first we see an extract.
>> (Video).
>> This is the story of an African city.
>> I don't know, I lived to talk about it. See?
>> You do, girl. We always do.
>> After living abroad, but back, back home.
>> I remember sitting there in the States knowing so clearly that miles and miles away that there was this home that I truly belonged to.
Tonight, I'm going to show the world that it's synonymous!
>> It doesn't matter. Sure. Come on over.
>> You have a picture of Jesus over there on the wall that looks like Brad Pitt. I think you should take it down.
>> I do not need to go to the state capital to know that life is beautiful and precious!
>> My lights went off in the north industrial area.
>> And we were looking for love.
>> Love? It's real love that seems to unattainable?
>> And some sex.
>> It went in a little ‑‑
>> Well, just a little.
¶
Coming soon.
(Applause)
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: So you have seen an highly conservative. Nicole, thank you for being with us.
You have the original thing that you went directly to the net, basically to once you conceptualized this series, your first effort with season one was to bypass traditional ‑‑ sorry, traditional approach to financing content going through broadcast, for example, you are looking for subsidy. You gave it a YouTube presence. Can you take this?
>> NICOLE ARTEMIFIO: I wanted to see "Sex In the City" in my country. And then YouTube. I saw more content creators were putting their content on YouTube and ignoring the traditional broadcasters. I thought, yeah, YouTube would be the place where we would give life to an African city.
We met YouTube ‑‑ we wanted to put content on YouTube and have that be the pilot season and then we would go talk to broadcasters, showing them the content we have on YouTube, and showing them kind of what our vision, is but it took off, by episode three of episode one, I mean, we ‑‑ we would put an episode up, and in first five minutes, there were already 3,000 views which was new to us. And so we didn't even have to go to networks. Networks started calling us. I think within the first 24 hours of putting episode one of season one up on YouTube, I mean, I woke up the following morning to an email from BET. So definitely YouTube was the right route to at least gain the visibility for us.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Just rolling back, what inspired you to ‑‑ can you tell us about the concept of the series and maybe what kind of influences might have come to?
>> NICOLE ARTEMIFIO: I like to say "An African City" is a TV movie. I was born in Ghana but raised in Westchester, New York. Any time the content of Africa was talked on TV, or Ghana was on CNN or Fox or what have you, it was always a negative story. It was war, poverty, famine, but I knew Ghana to be very different from war, poverty and famine.
It's a movement. It's to disrupt the narrative, the content of Africa is more about the war poppy famine. We have universal stories, it's more than a TV show. It's a movement and I think a lot of people got behind that. And that's why it was successful.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: If you weren't able to prelicense the rights, the chain of title you had on this, how did you finance season one? Are there any secrets?
>> NICOLE ARTEMIFIO: It's actually very easy. The idea of "An African City" came to me in 2006. We didn't start shooting season one until 2013.
That was just years of saving. I was working at the world bank at the time, and I just put a percentage of my salary every month towards a show that I one did I wanted to create. And so it was just saving. But luckily season one was successful. So some networks did approach us about even licensing season one and putting that on the network. Even though the episodes were 12 minutes, they made it work for 30‑minute time slots.
And then by the time we started wanting to do season two, the networks came to us, wanting to coproduce or wanting to already sign licensing rights and sponsors wanted to get involved. We could charge sponsors money for product placement. And we kept the online rights. So for season two, we were able to put the show on a monetized website and we were also able to make money that way. That was another revenue stream for us.
So we made all the money back that I spent for season one. We made back all ‑‑ we were able to cover all of our production costs for season two and we were able to make a profit.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: And all of this was about capacity building in Ghana. It's entirely shot there. It was using local technicians, do you want to tell us about that?
>> NICOLE ARTEMIFIO: 100%. After season one, there were some that assumed we had crew that flew in from New York or LA, but it was really important to me that this is a local production. Everyone from sound to the editor is ‑‑ is ‑‑ was born and raised in Ghana. Probably went through the local film school NAFTI but that was very important to me. This was very much a Ghanaian production with a universal appeal.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: I suggested at the beginning for the key word of this panel is partnership. We are looking at how your creative sector can use the Internet and associate positively with the imagined online platforms.
Tell us about the role of VHX played in your second season and how satisfied you are with this deal going into the guts of how this worked for you.
>> NICOLE ARTEMIFIO: Well, I will first say that YouTube was not financially profitable at all. You know, the revenues we made from ads from YouTube were very small, especially when you are based on African continent. I don't know why that is. That needs to be fixed, Bertrand.
(Laughter).
But the ‑‑ so maybe the financial benefits are not too great for YouTube being that we are content produced in Ghana, however, the visibility, priceless, we have over 3 million views. We had viewership from all over the world and that makes it easier for journalists to find us and journalists to then report on us from all over the world. So the YouTube was great for the visibility, but VHX was tremendous help in terms of actually making this hobby a business. Being able to monetize the website, being able to create our own price point, being able to decide how often we wanted to release content and every month we receive a payment in which VHX takes only about 16%.
So that's why we were able to make a significant change after season two.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: It built a web presence. You consider how much you are going back from YouTube with the cab ride but then at least it enabled you to say that we are here and to show that there was huge interest in it, in particular, correct?
Would you say this was an example of a partnership that could roll on into season 3, 4, 5, 6?
>> NICOLE ARTEMIFIO: Yes, I think it's a good way to go. To get your content on YouTube, get the visibility that you need. We have been in a few discussions with Google, and I wish the partnership could have been more than just visibility. I wish we could have come in more of a financial arrangement for future seasons, but VHX was very helpful. The other thing I would say, I would encourage ‑‑ I want to meet an African technologist who decides to create a similar website, where one of the challenges with VHX, you have to have a bank account in the West. Once again the continent of Africa is not trusted. And so people are skeptical with partnering with anyone with a bank account in Africa. And so that's what I would love to see. I would love to be able to use a monetized website where it's okay to have a ‑‑ I'm from Ghana. I live in Ghana. So my bank account is in Ghana.
So that's something that I would like to see changed. Exactly.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Thank you so very much to Nicole.
(Applause).
I'm sure there will be plenty of questions from the audience on making that show. I would like to move on to Bobby Bedi. Bobby is ‑‑ I would like to describe behind his back, as being both in Bollywood but not necessarily of it. He's made over the years a number of remarkable features, the one that really struck me most, of course, historically was "The Bandit Queen" which is an extraordinary film. He's usually active on behalf of the industry back home in India.
We was a member of the Bollywood guild of film producers and part of the board of the film festival of India.
We talk about partnering with the Internet.
>> BOBBY BEDI: Thank you. Well, I believe that the Internet is a wonderful thing. It has changed how content is delivered. Normally, a major delivery change injects temporary chaos. The content is put in this disequilibrium. Producers believe that the television would kill cinemas and not paying enough the producers and harming the production sector.
We realized the that the market grew and the cinemas became multiplexes and the TV grew and even when the films grew even bigger and bigger, the TV show created new content opportunities.
So I think it's important to understand and deal with the change. The change is permanent. What has changed is the way in which content is delivered and this change is different from delivery changes in the past, radically because for the first time, the delivery system has not changed the way the content is produced but it's also changed the way content is consumed. So I will give you some examples.
Firstly, the net has enabled social media and in doing so, empowered billions of users to generate their own content and not just to share it with the world but popularize it.
This was just a perfect example of that. It might never, ever have happened if there was no Internet. You would be looking for budgets on channels all the time. From's a vast range of content. So 9 how to do it videos, user manuals bank instructions, airline tickets and this is endless.
Films and TV shows are being produced just for the Internet. The result and the luring of cost has resulted in a much larger volume of content, and showcase the work. Even the experimental and underground space has blossomed. So now some examples of consumption which is a very big one.
First, let's look at music. I myself, I'm addicted to music and I worked in the music industry in the past. I owned tapes, CDs and gigabytes of mp3 songs. For the price of less than one CD every two months, which is the price for Spotify or iTunes, I now own every album I ever want and can play it any devices and any order that I dictate.
I can share it with friends hasn't what an evolution. We could have never have thought of this a while ago.
No more searching, cleaning, sorting, paying. It changes our lives. Professionally, I'm a filmmaker and while I still watch the big ones on the screen, that's about once a month, everything else is on the net. People send me screeners. It's just an email link. No more encrypted and watermark CDs and services, just a secure link.
Anything in the public domain is now available at the touch of a button. So if something ‑‑ somebody mentioned something, immediate history, you don't look for it. You just see it. You have a time to watch it or press the recording button. I can watch and as of last week, I can download seasons of ‑‑ a whole season at a time.
This sounds utopian. So where is the problem? The business models have been disrupted. The Internet has effectively realized the dream of a generation, best articulated by John Lennon. The Internet is beyond country borders and therefore tries to override national laws. It belongs to the world. Unfortunately, the world doesn't exist in the legal sense. Forums like this, try to bring everyone on the same page but it's nor nations to try to ‑‑ for nations to try to tame the net. And the challenge of taming any uncontrollable beast, it can lead to the extinction. I wish the countries well, but it's a difficult job.
I believe this is a growth space. Like any new opportunity, it's a case who have grabs what first. But stability, sustainability and fairness are created for the health of every business and the Internet is no exception. So let's talk about two major actors in our may. Content and delivery. This age old relationship is that of a married couple. There are moments of tension, anxiety, and fear. And divorce and separation are not options. There are periods where one party has the upper hand and periods where the other dominates. The Internet has favored delivery. Some of this is because of the gigantic ‑‑ the delivery systems are called the shorts and some of this is because they are not used to paying for the content on the net.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is having a field day. Commercial users, security systems, airlines, banks, doctors, et cetera, they are effectively and profitably using Internet. But it's important to realize that this can only be attempted as the bulk of intended content, as much as 70% is intended video content. And the health of the entertainment sector will help to determine the benefit of the Internet. It will be achieved as balance is essential to the rule of survival.
This means that the Internet has to be specially viable for both. This will happen. Let's look at how.
Fortunately, the existing delivery systems cinema and TV still deliver significant revenues, enough to survive an experiment for the new age. All major film and TV players have TV channels. Too many of them don't have sustainable revenues as yet, but the power play like NetFlix has shown that there's money on the game. Revenue streams are redefined and while the tug of war, and the subscriptions will continue, they will both survive.
As the dust settles on, this the content producers will start monetizing the plethora new opportunities. And they believe that ultimately content is and will remain king. You can see signs of it even today. While clearly delivery packed homes are dominant. The fact that some of them are making content plays. So production is a knee jerk reaction. We have Amazon and NetFlix all producing content.
They will leave creativity. It will never work for relations in the long run. I'm enthusiastic about the future.
>> We cannot ignore another key link in the value chain. It's clearly going to be the SmartPhone. The biggest companies in the world are in this business. Their future too depends on what is consumed on this device. They cannot afford for the content industry to die. Their health depends on us and they have to contribute to the sustainability.
Now, a quick local perspective, and there is close to 300 million connected people. This will become 600 million by 2020. It's larger than the populations of most countries in the world. Fortunately for us, the country generates content, 1,050,000 of movie and TV and locally and in many languages. Every benefactors and they communicate it to the native languages much more than in English. Internationals like Wikipedia and Google recognized this and offer translations. Major Indian TV talents have a strong TV presence. Having said this, I go back to my first, the Internet is not local. It's global. Local content will be sustainable only if it connects to the local consumer and that too, wherever they live. So local is geographic. It's small culture and linguistic. That's the beauty.
Thank you.
(Applause)
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Thank you. There's plenty of food for thought here. I'm sure we will be able to address some of those in the Q&A. I apologize for not asking correct questions to the panelists but I would like to make this a participative process for all of you. I'm sure you have lots of questions you want to ask. So I would like to move on to the last panelist, Gerardo Munoz de Cote. You occupy an interesting position in Televisa group. It's part of the largest multimedia groups in the world. By virtue of who you are, the dominant player in the Mexican market but also the very powerful player in the united American market and beyond, notably through the exports of your famed telenovela, surely have you now and are sometime looking at migrating a lot of your assets away from legacy, traditional television into the online platforms and they will find your future brand.
I wonder if you could take us through your thinking in this respect and also look at perhaps how the issue of partnering with independent producer is a presenting issue for Televisa or not.
>> GERARDO MUNOZ DE COTE: For inviting us. I think that the timing in this ‑‑ in the audio visual industry is critical for all of us. As we have said before, and I think you have said so clearly and practically, everything has changed, I would like to say just if we are talking about the digital divide that exists, basically due to three factors. First of all, because of an absence of infrastructure, it needs to be the correct infrastructure so that the country can obtain these contents more efficiently.
Secondly, due to the abilities or the lack of abilities they will have in linking to these new forms of access to digital content. And thirdly, the lack of interest that there can be derived specifically from a lack of local supply of content in many countries. If we consider these factors, and add to them that, only 30% of internet traffic in Latin America is directed to websites that are local and in local languages and the rest which is 70% is distributed in international websites that as Bobby just said so. Maybe these contents that represent a 70% of the margin, even though some of those are translated to the language of certain countries, evidently, we are still lacking these local native languages, just like we said at the beginning of the panel, so that we can have a clear concept of what is local content. It's not about language. It's about production and content creation, and thirdly, and very importantly, the relevance of the content. So language, creation production and relevance.
And so it's true, now with these trends that we are seeing in the digital world, everything is changing and, of course, companies such as Televisa, that highlights these three elements, because we produce and create locally. We offer our contents in Spanish and it is relevant for the population of our country. That's the case of the telenovelas. But they need to be transformed. What is the transportation that they need to go through. They need to be accessible for the general public any time and anywhere, and for this, the format of the production of these contents need to change.
These local content producers that have been made, we would like to get involved in OTT services and have the public have access not to one episode, but to a complete season of the series and look for local consumers because if we don't, third parties will get in there and will give it ultimately in an illegal way. We all know this. I ‑‑ I'm talking about piracy, for example. Pirate applications, such as Roku and evidently here you can find any type of content that you would look for, from sports production, contents relating to news or entertainment, such as series or TV programs, et cetera.
So it's quite clear that the contents need to be different and everything needs to be more dynamic. If we add this, and you said this, the new trend that you can see in countries like Mexico and other countries in this region, in the sense of regulation as we see in companies such as Televisa which is a dominant ‑‑ which has a dominant role to play in the market, and this brings about a consequence of avoiding companies to acquire rights of relate vent content, what is the relevant content? It's a final World Series match, the Olympic Games or I can name many more scams. Another particular case of what has happened in these countries in our Latin American region is related to the must carry offer that emerged in the United States. So with Mexico, we established a regulation of free television to all prepaid TV suppliers. And so with this, it brought about a very big impact to the protection of local content.
Obviously the transition from analog TV, digital TVs here in Mexico, this caused an approximately 30% of absence of our audience and changes in matters of publicity, for example, now in countries such as Mexico, where there are delicate health topics such as obesity, for example, that we are dealing with, then we are very careful with publicity when they are dealing with specific times in their segments of production.
And so also the great importance of property and author rights, we have already referred to the value chain of contents from authors and composers of music, screenwriters, directors, producers, executive artists. I'm referring to actors participating in movies or TV series and producers ‑‑ or producing companies that invest large sums of money so that the production can be carried out, all of this, indeed, as you mentioned before as well, bring about this new trend that we are seeing currently, that companies or producers, whether they are legal or independent or large, major producers unite and make partnerships in order to offer the public what they are looking for. Something different. Something that can ‑‑ that can give them exactly what both types of audiences want and, of course, the Internet plays not a fundamental role but the most fundamental role of production and distribution of contents.
(Applause).
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: I'm urged to ask questions myself, we want to make this as interactive session as possible. Could we have some helps with mics or do I need to walk around? Could you say who you are so we get to know you and where you are coming from?
It's over there, the gentlemen there. Yep.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Juan Hernandez. I'm from the Ministry of Communications from Cuba. First, I want to congratulate the panel for being the organizers, Paolo and Bertrand. I have some questions for Nicole.
I have two questions for you. The first question is: Can you assess that part of your success is because the native language of your product is in English? Do you think that it's in another language, it could have the same success?
And second, you proved a point that the revenue through advertising, from YouTube was not enough to make it sustainable. So you went to a monetized website, in which it's pay per view, but some of the content that's needed for the Internet cannot be pay per view, and usually the model in developing countries it's for advertising where the industry is huge and it's so it's enough to be sustainable but that doesn't happen in Africa or Latin America. What are your suggestions on how to subsidize the content that's that cannot be delivered pay per view?
And I would like to make all of my questions right now and they can answer all of them afterwards. For Cristina, Manuel and Gerardo. In Latin America, as Gerardo said, we have problems with content. There are some studies from wildcats that say that it's the region in which we see the less amount of local content, only 26%, and I think part of it is what you said, and part of it is the same question I asked Nicole. How can we in our region, especially with the reflection of Cristina which was very important, how can we finance our subsidize the development of autonomous, of local content, maybe in languages that aren't of ‑‑ that aren't in the interest of the rest of the world?
Thank you.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Thank you, we will go on to Nicole.
>> NICOLE ARTEMIFIO: "An African City" is in English. In Ghana, English is our national language. He's on the phone.
I mean, you are right. I'm not sure if we had a production in another language, I don't think it would have gone viral, probably not. But the way I look at, it out of 54 countries in Africa, at least 23 of them, are English speaking countries and so it just shows us still a large audience in terms of English speaking Africa and then number two, I have already forgotten.
Yes on VHX, you can decide your own price points. So for me, I knew how much we spent on season one and season two. So I knew, even if just 1,000 people paid $19.99 for tonight two, what would that mean in terms of how much money we would get for our budget. What I like about VHX, we were in complete control about creating the price points that would help us meet our budgetary expenses.
And also we did work with advertisers. We had six advertisers would paid for product placement in season 2. So advertisers were skill pun of our top three revenue streams for an African city. Advertisers are very important. And I would tell our fans that if you see somebody drinking tea for an extra 10 seconds, please don't get mad. It's just this is how we are paying for our show.
Yeah.
>> Thank you.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Thank you, Cristina. Would you like to answer the next question? Refer.
>> CRISTINA GALLEGO: Referring to financing. Our region is very pop and permissive with piracy and our contents are being seen in many platforms. Let's not only talk about physical piracy. Let's talk about Internet piracy as well. And we are very permissive in this way. We don't ‑‑ and we realize this only when we change continents, for example. I have a story here because my nephew lived in Colombia and Colombia ‑‑ in Colombia, the audio visual consumption coming from piracy is very normal. And he left for Germany and kept doing this, and during his first week there, he got mail from the trademark office, saying that he was committing piracy, and he was consuming piracy. So this is something that we don't do here in our region. In Latin America and in Europe, we have mechanisms of coproduction that make it possible for us to finance filmmaking in financing with other countries, but these are very small. They have allowed for us a completely south American film. It's Colombian, Argentinian and Venezuelan. It has no income from Europe or North America.
And these funds are vital for production, but today they are rather small. I would like to say that another good way of finding financing and distribution is designed ‑‑ is designating funds, also for the distribution of our contents because we're producing in our region, but the content is not moving there. We are used to consumption in our own language and, for example, in Colombia, we don't ‑‑ there are no Argentinian, Brazilian or Paraguayan films and our own films don't travel to other south American countries, even then we have the language that we have in common. That could be useful, I don't think we are used to consumption. This is why I make this comparison in parallel with the topic of agriculture or organic foods. Ten years, we didn't talk about this.
Ten years ago, processed foods, multinational foods is what we consumed. All the while, we are realizing that production and care in production is important for our health. I think we are generating contents that even though we don't realize that they are harmful to us because we don't get belly aches or headaches or things like that, they do generate a cultural nutrition and a knowledge of the world. So it is important to support our local contents.
>> NICOLE ARTEMIFIO: I do think that as long as the content is good, at some time, you will have the film in another language.
It could go retiral, as long as the content is good. If it's a silent movie, as long as the production is good and the storyline is good. I think a lot about Narcos. Its not in a language that we were brought up in. Yes, the English subtitles, you know, helped but once again, I just ‑‑ I look forward to the day ‑‑ I do think in 10, 15, 20 years there will be a very well done Ghanaian production in the local language that will have a universal appeal, simply because the production value was that good.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Gerardo would you like to give your perspective or Manuel?
>> GERARDO MUNOZ DE COTE: Yes, regarding the comment of illegal streamings and piracy as a result of big moves being made, it's possible to have the needed exposure and make the necessary investments, if we know that that investment is going to go down the train because of piracy in the region.
It's not the same when the content gets to a country such as the United States, that you can eliminate it ‑‑ almost immediately through a law such as the DMCA from 1998. Unfortunately here in Mexico, the same thing doesn't happen. The process is much longer and complicated and when you finally eliminate the content from the digital environment, it makes no sense because the audience has moved on to something else.
And also the schemes regarding subsidies, I think these have been opened up. They are much more flexible right now than they have been a few years ago. They ‑‑ people know now that this publicity, even though it's more extent it's ‑‑ they are fighting over it a lot more and it's more costly as well. I think this is part of one of our great big tasks.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: The question that was raised with Nicole, is have interesting. You said that she was able to go monetize on the pay site which was very good for the ‑‑ the profitability of production, and her ability to stay in business and so on. You were saying, however, it's not the dominant model here in Africa.
It could be true at this point, but it's also an evolving situation. We had an WIPO conference in April, iROKOtv, where they have mostly with Nollywood movies from Nigeria which is immensely popular in Africa and around the United States and Britain and elsewhere.
But what we have seen with iROKO when they were talking about it, they said they are moving very gradually to a business model that initially relied on the diaspora, which could have the subscription VOD, but they are moving to the telephony mark, the mobile telephony market which is immense and developing faster anywhere else. And in doing so, they are adapting their pricing points to the African pocket, to the average spending part of Africans consumer situated in much slower in the economic scale than the market initially made up.
I just wanted to make that point because it's an interesting development.
>> GERARDO MUNOZ DE COTE: I want to talk about government incentives in Colombia and Chile have very positive examples about theirs. They have generated more incentives for local filmmakers. In Mexico, this is something that we need. We need to have that type of scheme. We need to have the government incentives.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Can we have a mic over there, the gentlemen right at the top.
If you could say who you are and who you work for that, would be really useful.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Salvador Comaccho, and my question is to Gerardo. In the European Union we have been talking about the single digital market going beyond borders when it comes out to eCommerce and the consumption of contents.
I would like to know, what do you think about these sing will market, these single digital market? Do you think this can actually work? Do you think we can actually have something like that in Latin America?
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: And there seems to be another question. Maybe we can have sets of two or three questions?
First the lady and then over there. We are going to start with you.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I work in Zimbabwe. My question is to the whole panel and in particular, Bobby, because you seem to acknowledge our reality, especially within the African context of social media.
Do you think we should be deliberately coming up with initiative, cutting across our national Internet Governance Forums and the existing local content policies, pay lot of which are actually not addressing the reality of Internet access.
Secondly, and this is Nicole and probably a bit of Cristina, is sustainability really around a specific targeted audience? Have we actually taken time to explore or carry out an audience research that looks at a purely Latin American, and purely African market. Do you think that this is something that is real, and do you think we should be getting our own role OTTs or the telcos or the Internet service providers should be playing. I think not off the user generated content or the skits that we see are distributed by the audiences or ordinary citizens themselves, is a lot of content, and a lot of creativity, but I feel that a lot of our Internet service providers are not supporting local content production, should we actually be having that conversation?
And is an African or an audience with the reality such as Africa where paying for content online should that content be accessible?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Lourdes Arriola, I work at Inacamune, we have generate inclusion for disabled people and we are focusing on ICTs, accessible ICTs for disabled people. I think this is a topic that has been mentioned in a number of workshops. We are talking about universal access of Internet. Do we actually know what access to Internet means for someone that is blind or is deaf?
Yes, we have to generate content for the different publics that we want to reach but in those publics we ‑‑ I mean, we can have different nationalities or sexual preferences but in those audiences, we have a people with disabilities. So I would like to know why that you can tell me about these access of Internet for disabled people.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Open forum on copyright and disabilities, where we are addressing exactly the issue you are raising, but now I'm sure the producer will also tell you about content specifically produced for them, but as WIPO, I can tell you that we will address these issues in a separate session.
>> I will be there, thank you. I will be there.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Thank you. And something for Gerardo. The question about the single digital market.
>> GERARDO MUNOZ DE COTE: Talking about Paolo, well, they have carried out an extraordinary work and the Member States have participated in this process, Mexico has participated in process and I think this is something that we are talking about in the different workshops, talking about the digital market.
I think this is something very good, very positive, but if we compare the European situation and the Latin American situation, we can say that we are falling behind.
Let me give you an example. The supreme European code has already talked about issues related to embedding, hyperlink, these technical issues. In these regions we have not come to an agreement, when it comes to the concept of a communication and the right that people have to communication.
So I think this is a very good exercise, and the one that they have in Europe. I think this is going ‑‑ this is going to have many benefits, hopefully we will follow after them.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: The use of social media, from Zimbabwe.
>> BOBBY BEDI: Right. So I understand your question, I think one of the points I was trying to make was that there is no world in the legal sense. So policy has to be made and laws have to be made for each country.
Well, the idea is to meet over here and discuss it. When we come home, we take back thoughts and ideas, which will actually help us legislate better and I think a large part of the conference is sort of focusing on that.
You give the example of social media. I mean is Facebook American? No, Facebook is heavily present in any country. They can target locally and promote locally and they can host locally if they want but at the end of the day, it's from country to country.
So if India decides to junk the idea of free basics, or net neutrality, it might not be the same. When I came to Mexico, for example, I could have data, but only for social media and only 50 of that was valuable for digital Internet. It will come to a balance. That's the main thing that I'm trying to say.
If content has to ‑‑ if it doesn't survive, then the delivery system is pointless.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Thank you. Now the second part of your question was Nicole and the role of loan entities.
>> NICOLE ARTEMIFIO: I wanted to talk about Internet access for a second. An African city might not have come to be because I had a lot of nay sayers telling me that Nicole, you want to create "An African Story" put it online and the Internet access in Africa is only 10, 15% at the time and so I was about ‑‑ I was not going to do it. Then I thought about it, not as a challenge, but as an opportunity. If a continent of nearly a billion people, that's still 100, 150 million people and so it was an opportunity to reach that percentage of the population. So I don't look at any Internet or lack of Internet access now as a challenge any more. I looked at it as more of an opportunity with the local Internet providers.
They haven't been very helpful. We had many, many discussions but once again, I think when I look at my content, I don't just think about Ghana. You know, there are telenovelas that I watch in Ghana that are in my beauty salons when I go and do my hair in beauty salons. I would like to see any content be in India or my content be in Mexico, dubbed in the native language, just like Bollywood films are not only dumbed into language but Ga and sri and others. I want to see my content once it goes global and dubbed in local languages abroad.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Again, a quick factual contribution to your question, when we were speaking with iROKOtv, Nollywood which is a global platform, they started off retailing ‑‑ they started going to the international airport and, you know, down home. And getting not very high def DVDs from the merchants there and putting them online.
Through an open licensing process which itself was a revolution. They moved on now that they have the volume of aggregated license, and they conclude taking risks up streams and putting down license fees on projects which helps the producers go discount those deals and put money in the budget to make the films in the first place. It's snag they decided out of their own commercial impetus. They are moving closer as I said, telephony in particular to pricing points that are compatible with people who are not necessarily members of the African middle class.
Now, we have the time to take one more question or point, sir. Would you like to say who you are, as well? And we we'll have to wrap unfortunately.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good afternoon, everyone. This is a question for Gerardo. This lady was talking about inclusion. Inclusion of a people with different capabilities. I am an example of that. I know someone that is an example of that. This person avoids television or Internet or different platforms. For instance, YouTube. This person doesn't like these platforms because she doesn't understand. She's deaf from birth. She knows sign language and she can have a conversation with you in Spanish in a very accurate way.
And my question is: How expensive is it to put subtitles on a film that is one hour and a half? And this is a direct question to Gerardo.
>> GERARDO MUNOZ DE COTE: Well, talking about the first point. This is a very specific interest. There are a number of productions in the industry for that type of audience. I have news, for instance, this is a Mexican news program with simultaneous sign language interpretation.
Now, if you are talking about films, well, because of requirements, because of legal requirements, contents, coming from abroad in another language have to be dubbed into Spanish. In the case of paid television, in most cases we include subtitles with a new technology that we have got available with a set of boxes that we have got, we use the SAP. It is an automatic change between English and Spanish. So I think we do have the technology, and we do have legal requirements making us to have ‑‑ have dubbing instead of subtitles. And that's how we are handling the situation. Well, that was at the point, because before you were saying that it was some ‑‑ it was handled, but this is something that I experienced every single day.
I don't see many shows with subtitles. I'm not talking about only your company. Not many shows include subtitles to help this type of audience. So it has to be inclusive, 100%. Maybe you can take this idea, you can talk about these because we need to work on this in a very definite way, in a very humane way. Because at the end of the day, we have a statistical information about this type of audience. We have a big audience and they have the same opportunity of inclusion into the society, thank you.
Yes, obviously, we are going to take this idea, but because of the three aspects that I have already mentioned, I mean, well, you know that the teleton is a special program for this type of audience with different types of situations.
The purpose is to attract the different types of audience. We are about to finish. You have talked about two important points, access to the disabled people, for instance. As I mentioned, before we have a specific session to talk about this issue.
If you are not going to be here tomorrow, well, I have to say that this is a global problem. This is not a Mexican problem.
At the WIPO we have been talking about this and they will talk about other disabilities. It is not only about the visually impaired people, and this is something that we have been talking about ever since 2013. So this is going to be more specific. It goes beyond the boundaries of this workshop. So please come tomorrow. We'll be able to talk about the details of those issues.
>> PAOLO LANTERI: Thank you, everyone.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: One last question and I ask you to be very brief in your answers. We started the day with this idea of a partnership between your creative enterprises and the new generation of Internet‑based platforms. We had several very vivid examples about how that can work. We heard from Bobby in mar, how producers can utilize this transition and how it can be mutually beneficial and I'm truck by what Bobby said about 70% of Internet of traffic at peak times in the United States is accounted for by video entertainment. You used the metaphor of a marriage, for those platforms to marry our creativity and for us to do business with them. Now, I would like you, what do you need from the lawmakers, from the regulators to make your life sustainable as business enterprise and creative sectors? Starting with you.
>> NICOLE ARTEMIFIO: Oh, lord, I just need money! Bobby?
>> BOBBY BEDI: I just think the protection of intellectual property is all that we can hope for from the states. I think the rest of it is up to us. They can do nothing about it, but produce good content. Historically good content.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: Thank you for this. Gerardo.
>> GERARDO MUNOZ DE COTE: Yes, more protection in 9 digital arena when it comes to copyright, protection of copyrights and also protection of intellectual rights.
>> PAOLO LANTERI: Thank you very much. I want to thank all the participants in this workshop. I want to thank the WIPO and all the participants at the table.
>> BERTRAND MOULLIER: We are giving you a chance to really interact with these people. They are here for a few hours still. So if you want to engage individually with them, and network with them, I'm sure they will be very happy to go deeper into the topics that we touched on all too briefly during that session. Thank you very, very, very much and especially to all of you on the panel today.
(Applause).
(End of session 12:49)