The 36 months delay only applies to subscription-based streaming services (recurring "all you can eat" subscriptions, like Netflix).

Movies are available after 4 months for VOD with per-movie payment, and other delays apply depending on the situation (e.g. 10 months for cinema-specific paid TV-channel with partnerships with cinema orgs, etc).

Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronologie_des_médias#Disposi...

Why is such a draconian rule enshrined in law?

To protect theaters.

There is this thing in France called "l'exception culturelle" which means not that culture is exceptional, but that cultural products (books and movies essentially) should be exempt from normal (international) competition rules that apply to all other sectors of the economy.

The rationale is that cultural products are "special" and that if they're not protected, they'll vanish and be replaced by American ones that are inferior by nature.

In general terms, the bad consequences of protectionism are twofold:

1. It raises prices for the customer by limiting competition

2. It limits exports, as international partners try to do to your products what you do to theirs (keeping them out of their market)

French cultural products are notoriously difficult to export, for a variety of reasons, one of which being language and another being they're generally of poor quality (I say this as a Frenchman), so problem 2 isn't seen as major (you can't harm exports that you don't have).

And problem 1 isn't big either because everyone benefits from high prices which allow high taxes that further finance the cinema, and no one cares about the end user.

Personally I think this is a bad system that is in large part responsible for the poor quality mentioned above.

That said, rules should apply to all. Just because those rules are bad doesn't mean Netflix or Amazon should be exempt from them. We should change the rules -- but that's, like, hard.

> The rationale is that cultural products are "special" and that if they're not protected, they'll vanish and be replaced by American ones that are inferior by nature.

In fairness to France, other countries have similar laws too. Australia requires TV stations to broadcast 55% Australian-produced TV shows & films during primetime (6pm - midnight). Even 80% of the TV commercials have to be Australian-produced too. But instead of funding lots of culturally significant TV shows, we tend to get repeated news bulletins, low-cost Australian game shows, current affairs shows & soap operas. [Although Neighbours probably counts as culturally significant to Australia.]

http://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Broadcast/Television/Austral...

If we didn't do that, we'd be completely inundated with American shows flogged off on the cheap. We wouldn't have any local content at all - perhaps not even the news. France has a barrier in that they (proudly) speak a different language, whereas we would just get bargain-basement/afterthought prices for stuff in the same language, no edits required.

Our homegrown tv and movie industry was never going to be high quality though, because we're a small market and we've never really been a particularly literary people. I'm curious as to what kind of show you would consider to be 'culturally significant', though. The only staples that you haven't listed that spring to mind are sports (plenty on TV), panel shows (ditto), documentaries (small market everywhere) and sitcoms. What kind of tv show do you consider 'culturally significant'?

> If we didn't do that, we'd be completely inundated with American shows flogged off on the cheap

Absolutely. I deleted it from my post, but I was going to mention that on non-primary Australian TV stations that don't have the same content restrictions, we get 2 hours of non-stop Big Bang Theory reruns, or endless repeats of Frasier, Sex And The City, Charmed & Becker.

> What kind of tv show do you consider 'culturally significant'?

Glitch is my favorite recent Australian TV show, started on ABC but apparently Season 2 has been sold as a Netflix exclusive. Back in the 90s it would have been shows like Seachange, Frontline, Kath & Kim. Maybe Offspring & Packed To The Rafters are recent equivalents.

(Outside Australia, I'd think of shows like The Bridge, Springfloden, The Killing & Occupied, that have exported Scandinavian culture onto Australian TV.)

> another being they're generally of poor quality (I say this as a Frenchman)

I'm not a Frenchman, I'm Canadian, and I completely disagree with this, of course this is all about personal taste, but since you use yours to construct your argument I thought I had to contradict.

But the rule seem to only protect movie theaters (not local film makers) from competing with streaming services. Would not it be better to impose a tax on importing foreign movies?

There are variants that protect different elements of culture...see for example the strict restrictions around wine production that vary by area.

>French cultural products are notoriously difficult to export, for a variety of reasons, one of which being language and another being they're generally of poor quality (I say this as a Frenchman)

Compared to the utter crap pop culture the US produces, where every second film is about superheroes in spandex and explosions?

There are so many other films. It depends on what you classify as 'pop' culture.

Even the other films are nothing like European films. At best formulaic oscar bait crap.

+1

> The rationale is that cultural products are "special" and that if they're not protected, they'll vanish and be replaced by American ones that are inferior by nature.

well that's see some bias here.

The parent is just building a straw-man. There are multiple reasons for the protection of cultural products.

One is that a country should have a lively cultural scene to be interesting to live in. If you lived in a city with a large cultural scene and another one without, you probably see the point.

Another is that a country's culture is a component of its soft power. Not having a lively culture is seen as being culturally under foreign domination.

Totally agree with you.

You must have stopped reading at that point.

Do you consume foreign-language media often?

all my life

To protect the movie theater from the TV competition. The wikipedia in French can be found here: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronologie_des_m%C3%A9dias

Others are (I think) missing the point of your question.

In France, laws are more easily passed and repealed than in, say, the US. Passing a law isn't quite the "enshrinement" one might first imagine.

To wit: laws are passed daily, and they generally have to do with administrative procedures.

In the US, Administrative Laws (regulations) are passed and repealed much easier than legislation. Is there a difference between regulation and legislation in France?

My point was that there is, essentially, no such distinction.

In fact, there are so many laws being passed for such a large number of things that we've coined a phrase to describe it: legislative inflation.

Huh, ok. Thank you for providing that clarification.

Regulatory capture.

Is that the right phrase?

Regulatory capture would usually refer to an industry gaining control of the body that is nominally supposed to regulate it, like if the FCC was captured by broadcasters or the SEC was captured by banks.

Movie production isn't what I would think of as a regulated industry; this seems more like regular lobbying.

If you search the definition of regulatory capture you get:

>Regulatory capture is a form of government failure that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.

Specifically in this case however, the "public interest" could be described as the preservation and promotion of French culture. Which in this case, could be argued IS served by the regulation that awards can only be given to the product which shows in French theaters.

Since we'd have to note that it also means that it must pass all relevant French classification regulations.

Now, I'm Canadian and we have a series of laws called "can-con" (which stands for Canadian content) where all licensed broadcasters must show a certain proportion of their shows as approved can-con (based on the proportion of the creative staff who are Canadians). This does have an effect on shoring up the difference in culture. I mean - so - maybe that results in Trailer Park Boys - but come on! That episode where Rush shows up? Pure gold.

I think the requirement to restrict to cinema-only is a bit of a sledgehammer solution but I personally see the point and think it's overall a good thing.

My guess would be that the film industry in France is good at persuading politicans to pass agreeable laws.

Surely this rule must be that streaming services can't show the movie in france until 36 months after, no? If not, very few hollywood movies would have been shown in france (because almost all of them are on netflix or amazon prime within 36 months)

Well, yes, of course. France is a small enough market that you might choose to exhibit and then wait, but France is also small enough that you might choose to focus on Sundance instead in order to change the policy.