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Ministry of culture wants to count each film view in online cinemas

Russian Ministry of Culture (MinCult) has proposed to track each film view in online cinema in special system (single federal informational automatic system of data on films demonstrations in cinema spaces). According to MinCult’s idea online cinemas have to connect to this system and provide it with data required and at their own account. Certainly online cinemas don’t like this idea.

Traditional cinemas provide data on tickets sold to customers – how many people paid for the ticket; online cinemas would provide data on views – how many times the movie has been shown. The little detail – according to proposed rule the online cinema has to track each paid view of movie. Russian online cinemas have opposed MinCult’s proposal.

They have sent the letter to the deputy of minister of culture where expressed their position. According to the letter it is not necessary to introduce such rule, which certainly would entail additional expenditures.

They have proposed their alternative making right holders responsible for the providing of information relying on the data they receive from distributors. On other words they proposed to send all data to the right holders and the last would analyze it and report to the MinCult.

The logic is simple if the right holders would like to know how many times the movie has been shown they should count by themselves. Russian online cinemas also believe the proposed rules discriminates them in relation to major foreign market players like YouTube and Google as well as social networks.

From the online cinemas’ point of view it should be launched new consultation with aim “to find optimal model suitable for everyone”. Among the stakeholders, who should take participation in this consultation, were named online cinemas, right holders, search engines, foreign market players.

Moreover online cinemas believe the current version of proposed regulation is impossible to implement and can damage the industry of legal online distribution, because sometimes it is impossible to obtain licenses (permission from supervising authority to show the movie online, not from the right holder) for hundreds of thousands units of audiovisual material.

Actually, the task to create unified reporting standard for all online cinemas was provided by the Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, therefore it is in online cinemas’ interests to find solution suitable for them. The MinCult decided to oblige online cinemas to provide necessary information, online cinemas, in their turn, don’t want to bear responsibility and expenditures for additional work.

Besides MinCult intends to introduce the system of licensing for online distribution, it means without such license the online cinema has not right to demonstrate movie to its customers.

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