Dutch MP says: "Public broadcasting stations should contribute to Internet platform for video on demand"

The board of directors of the NPO (The association of Dutch public television stations) is against the online exploitation of Dutch television drama by the video-on-demand platform Ximon.nl. This means consumers in The Netherlands will not be able to watch older footage of the public broadcasters online in the foreseeable future. A spokesman for NPO announced this last Wednesday. Dutch public broadcasters have their own platform where you can find a programme you’ve missed, however these archives do not date back further than about a week.

Ximon is an initiative of the Dutch Association of Feature Film Producers (NVS), the Netherlands EYE Film Institute and the Dutch Institute for Sound and Vision.  The platform’s aim is to provide a video-on-demand service for older footage and historical television material. Ximon was launched in March and has started to forward tonnes of Dutch films and series of which they could retrieve suitable footage. The vod-service is for paying customers only. Ximon fits perfectly in the current trend of making archive material available online for a fee.

However, permission of the copyright owners to the footage is needed for the service to work and NPO has advised the public broadcasters not to cooperate. Mariko Peters, Member of Parliament for the Green Party, is not happy with the opposition to this plan by NPO and she has demanded from the Minister of Culture to do something about it. ''This is about works that are financed with public money, so the general public should be able to enjoy it for many years. Makers, manufacturers and individual broadcasters do want to cooperate. It is a mistery to me why the NPO, which does not even hold the copyrights, is able to block this project because they are simply unwilling to support it." said MP Peters. The copyrights to most Dutch public tv-productions are shared by producers and broadcasters. The branche associations of producers support Ximon.

The NPO responded succinctly. ''If Ms. Peters wants us to use publicly funded assets to support a single commercial party, she must change the media law,'' a spokesman for NPO said. The spokesman called Ximon a sympathetic initiative, however, according to the media law, it is a third party with which the NPO is unable to cooperate. ''If we do, then we must do the same in case of a similar request by other commercial cable companies or internet service providers. That kind of practise is not compatible with the public role of the NPO. We cannot be expected to supply government funded content to third parties so that they can build a business around that.” Nonetheless, NPO and the associated broadcaster will continue talks with Ximon to explore possibilities for cooperation.

In itself, it is not surprising that the Green Party brings forward this matter to the Minister. The Ximon project has actually been co-sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the Regulatory body for Media. Caught in the middle of these conflicting interests, Ximon announced they are considering legal action to challenge the decision of NPO, as they went forward with their platform in anticipation of support from the public broadcasters. In addition, Ximon accuses NPO of depriving film, documentary and television producers of the opportunity to exploit their copyright online.

Source: Nu.nl