Pure speculation, but I wonder how much of this is done in an attempt to push out Western companies in favor of Korean companies. All of the large telecoms in Korea sponsor eSports teams, they probably want to develop local services and stimulate their own economy. Beyond that, it's much easier to control or assert political pressure on a local company, while Twitch is known for being notoriously unreceptive.
I watch competitive StarCraft 2 and Brood War, both of which only provide the highest quality stream through AfreecaTV. This isn't something I've looked much into, but I swear that AfreecaTV also has a way better bitrate and encoding than what you get with unpaid YouTube.
This post leaves me wondering about YouTube's relationship with Korea. Someone mentioned Worlds 2023, which was dual streamed on Twitch and YouTube Live.
When I think of protectionism, I think of things like the agriculture and aerospace industries for the sake of food and national security. What is the strategic benefit of game streaming? Does loss of that industry represent an existential national threat??
Protectionism doesn't have to be a matter of national security. Korean ISPs love money and they have friends in the government, that's basically it, as far as I know.
It’s the same with Canada and our Telecom+Media Oligopoly. Three companies basically control internet/phone/tv/radio, and exert incredible influence over politicians to implement laws and regulations that benefit them to the detriment of the general public.
The strategic benefit of game streaming is cultural imperialism. Every sovereign country wants a Hollywood.
To be clear, a "Hollywood" is any local industry that simultaneously:
1. Monopolizes or oligopolizes the internal market to the point where cultural importation is forbidden, and,
2. Exports a large amount of its own work to other countries, displacing the foreign country's culture
Out of these two concerns, #1 is key; #2 is more icing on the cake. Censorship of other countries' speech allows imposing whatever values you want in the resulting silence. If Twitch is operating in Korea, then they control (through algorithmic editorialization) what a large chunk of Koreans are watching; Korea's government loses that control.
How this manifests in other countries differs. America has an oligopoly that used to marginalize anything it didn't make, but Big Tech needs Hollywood to be subservient to them for various copyright-related reasons, so they're willing to circumvent that control with social media. Going further, you can self-privilege in the law: France and Canada have explicit requirements to show a certain percentage of French or Canadian content in broadcast and streaming media.
>Entertainment and the infrastructure that delivers it is an important pillar of soft power.
Might be a miscalculation if the goal is soft power as in cultural export (the so called Korean Wave). At least in the gaming/streaming space where Korea has been punching above it's weight in cultural impact since the StarCraft 2 days.
My guess is this policy results in Korean streamers on Korean sites streaming to Korean-only audiences. Reduces the worldwide crossover reach of Korean cultural export at least near and medium term.
Though YouTube is probably adequate for this if it can stick around...
It won't, see Japanese manga/anime. There's close to zero global reach, zero exchange of capitals and influences are completely one-way. Cultural development in isolation creates invasive species of cultures, the only caveat is it must be paired with alternate means of acquiring foreign currency(car export) to work.
Korean entertainment does get exported a bit primarily in Asia, but it's valuable domestically that you or your people have access or control over their entertainment.
>Mentality: SK Terran is a highly aggressive style that is intended to pressure the Zerg with a large number of MnM and Science Vessels. The ideal scenario is to split apart a big MnM ball and engage in guerrilla tactics around the map while irradiating key Zerg units such as Defilers, Ultras, and Lurkers.
I assumed this was a humorous analogy for this Korean policy but and it's going over my head (though I only know SC2) or maybe you meant to link SK Telecom https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/SK_Telecom_T1
>SK Telecom is a mobile telecommunications operator in South Korea that is a part of the SK Group, one of South Korea's largest conglomerates.
Insight from a Z player in BW: the idea behind the whole strategy is to shut down all Zerg units while pushing them to their bases. Imagine a flying detector unit which has a decent speed and Viper's Parasitic Bomb which works twice as long, could be cast on any unit and deals damage only to bio ones... Basically it could kill any Zerg unit except the big ones in one cast (because Queens are flying and can't heal in BW) or shut down Muta stacks, ceasing any map control attempts until the counter measures will grow.
This has long been portrayed as the battle between "poor local internet services who pay huge sum to telcos" and "evil international internet services who bombard our poor telcos and pay nothing for it". The main target was video streaming, who makes the most traffic; I believe game streaming simply got caught up by the wide net. In fact the law that mandated the "sender pays" principle was dubbed "anti-Netflix law".
Sidenote: The local telcos have long tried to make their VOD service "Wavve" work. The service is part of SK Telecom, who sued Netflix for traffic payment as they didn't have cache server unlike the other 2 telcos.
I watch competitive StarCraft 2 and Brood War, both of which only provide the highest quality stream through AfreecaTV. This isn't something I've looked much into, but I swear that AfreecaTV also has a way better bitrate and encoding than what you get with unpaid YouTube.
This post leaves me wondering about YouTube's relationship with Korea. Someone mentioned Worlds 2023, which was dual streamed on Twitch and YouTube Live.