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Both services have launched separate legal challenges before France’s Conseil d’état, the country’s highest administrative court, while also negotiating with regulators and the film industry over the future of France’s investment and windowing rules.

Since January 2022, subscription streaming services such as Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ have been required to invest 20% of their annual French revenue in local film and television production under France’s implementation of the European Audiovisual Media Services Directive.

France’s film industry also negotiated separate agreements with individual streamers governing both their cinema investment commitments and their place in the country’s windowing system. Netflix’s agreement expired at the end of 2025 and has not been renewed.

“For us, it’s an unsustainable equation: more obligations, a less favorable release window, and the latest Canal+ agreement locks in the current system,” a source close to Netflix said.

Although its industry agreement has lapsed, Netflix’s investment obligations have not. The platform must still invest 20% of its French revenue in local production, while its release window has slipped from 15 months back to the default 17 months after negotiations over a new agreement stalled. Free-to-air broadcasters gain access to films just 22 months after their theatrical release, leaving Netflix only a five-month exclusivity period despite its growing financial commitments. That windowing rule explains why Netflix is skipping Cannes every year as the festival requires every film competing for a Palme d’Or to come out in French theaters.

Having failed to secure a 12-month release window, Netflix is now shifting the fight. Rather than focusing primarily on earlier access to films, the company has begun publicly calling for a cap on mandatory investment obligations.

Netflix now invests more than $287 million annually in French films, series and documentaries, including roughly $68 million in movies that are theatrically released, such as Gilles Lellouche’s Cannes-premiering romance “Beating Hearts” (pictured above). It’s also working with renowned French filmmakers on Netflix original movies, for instance Jacques Audiard’s next movie. The company argues that, unless the rules change, U.S. streaming services could account for nearly half of all financing for French production by 2030, according to estimates cited by Le Monde.

Prime Video’s battle has centered on a different issue — how its investment obligations should be calculated. Unlike other streaming services, Prime Video is bundled with Amazon Prime, making it difficult to isolate the value of the video service from other benefits such as free delivery and music streaming. Its investment convention with France’s media regulator ARCOM expired only days ago and was just extended for another six months while negotiations continue.

What’s currently being debated is a revised proposal that would give the streamer the option to invest $103 million annually across cinema and audiovisual production for a window greater than 12 months, or invest $126 million for a window at 12 months, according to a source close to the discussions.

Prime Video ideally wants Disney’s nine-month slot. But ARCOM has denied it, saying that if Amazon wants Disney’s release window, it should make a comparable commitment to financing theatrical films. Disney, whose recent acquisitions include Ladj Ly’s anticipated period epic adventure film “Dumas: Black Devil,” currently directs 14% of its French revenue toward cinema investment, well above the regulatory minimum.

If it fails to reach an agreement, Prime Video defaults to the same position as Netflix, with access to films 17 months after theatrical release while contributing only the regulatory minimum toward French production.

Canal+‘s recently signed $1.1 billion agreement with France’s film industry has raised the stakes even further. In exchange for its investment commitment, the pay-TV giant keeps its privileged six-month release window — the earliest currently available in France. But the agreement is tied to the current balance of the country’s windowing system, meaning that any concession granted to Prime Video or Netflix would clash with Canal+.

If another major streaming service such as Prime Video or Netflix were granted access to films within 12 months, Canal+’s agreement would automatically trigger a three-month renegotiation period with the film industry. Canal+ would then risk losing its six-month exclusivity and instead revert to a nine-month release window, according to a source involved in negotiations.

Back in court, Netflix is challenging the latest version of France’s windowing system at the Conseil d’état, arguing that it creates an uneven playing field. While Disney+ secured a nine-month release window by committing a higher percentage of its French revenue to theatrical films, Netflix says it invests more in absolute value yet remains stuck at 17 months.

Prime Video has joined Netflix in challenging the legal mechanism that extends France’s windowing rules to streaming platforms that did not sign the underlying industry agreement, arguing they should not be bound by terms they never accepted.

Separately, Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ have launched another legal challenge against recent amendments to France’s SMAD decree requiring streaming platforms to dedicate part of their audiovisual investment specifically to documentaries, animation and live performance. Netflix France’s VP of content Pauline Dauvin penned an open letter published in Le Monde, warning that these sub-quotas are turning cultural diversity into a “checklist,” hurting their editorial freedom and unfairly singling out streamers because comparable obligations do not apply to traditional broadcasters. No timetable has been set for either case, although decisions could come later this year or early next.

The battle is also going on in Brussels, where the European Commission is preparing to review the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, and Netflix is lobbying for clearer limits on how far member states can go in imposing investment obligations on platforms. During a recent visit to Brussels, Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos also urged EU policymakers not to overlook YouTube, which he described as a “straightforward direct competitor” to streamers and broadcaster which isn’t subject to comparable investment obligations. %!s()

However, the new analysis suggests that the later increase in BMI is not caused by a rebound in fat. Instead, it may largely reflect the normal growth of muscle and other lean tissue.

The research, led by Professor Andrew Agbaje, a physician and associate professor of clinical epidemiology and child health at the University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland, was presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity in Istanbul, Turkey and published in The Journal of Nutrition.

Why the Adiposity Rebound Theory Matters

Questioning the existence of the "adiposity rebound" could have important consequences for childhood health care. Since the theory was introduced, some physicians, including pediatricians, have treated the pattern as a meaningful warning sign that might be prevented or modified through diet and lifestyle changes.

If the rise in BMI is actually a normal result of muscle development, however, efforts to stop it may be addressing a problem that does not exist.

The concept dates back to 1984, when French researcher Marie Françoise Rolland-Cachera and her colleagues described "adiposity rebound" in a paper published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The researchers reported a connection between the age at which a child's BMI began rising again and the child's BMI adiposity at age 16 years. An early rebound (before age 5.5 years) was associated with greater adiposity later in adolescence than a rebound occurring after age 7 years. Some later studies reported similar associations.

How Children's BMI Normally Changes

BMI tends to follow a recognizable pattern during childhood. It rises quickly during infancy and reaches a high point at about age 1 year. It then gradually declines, reaching its lowest level at around age 4 years, before beginning to rise again.

By age 6 years, a child typically returns to the same BMI recorded at age 2 years. This pattern occurs across the childhood population and became known as the "rebound."

Researchers have often focused on the timing of the decline and subsequent rise. They proposed that children whose BMI begins climbing at a younger age may reach a higher BMI later in life and face a greater risk of BMI-obesity.

The theory was based partly on statistical models suggesting that when BMI reaches its lowest point earlier, it also begins rising earlier, potentially leading to a higher BMI in later childhood or adolescence.

A Statistical Link May Not Reflect Biology

Professor Agbaje argues that the BMI pattern should not be compared with major biological transitions such as puberty.

Puberty occurs in nearly every child who reaches adulthood, but unusually early puberty has been linked to health risks supported by known biological mechanisms. According to Agbaje, no comparable biological explanation supports the idea that an early "adiposity rebound" causes later obesity.

"Puberty is a defining moment in human biology that alters the whole body, but adiposity rebound is not; it is a natural growth process unattached to any problem, whether it is early rebound or late. So the previous associations relating early BMI-based adiposity rebound to later life obesity are misleading analyses. Positive statistical associations do not always equate to biological plausibility."

Over the past several decades, researchers have also conducted clinical trials intended to influence the timing of the supposed rebound. Agbaje says the results provide further evidence that the pattern is a fixed part of normal growth rather than a disease process.

A Long-Term Diet Trial Could Not Change the Pattern

One randomized controlled trial in Finland followed participants from 7 months of age until age 20 years.

Infants in the intervention group were introduced to a heart-healthy diet with a relatively low intake of saturated fat and cholesterol. Parents and children received dietary counseling and nutrition education from the time the children were 7 months old through early adulthood. The control group did not receive the intervention.

Despite the long-term nutritional program, there was no difference between the groups in the average age at which BMI declined and then began rising again by age 6.

"This is just one example showing clinical trials could not change the so-called 'adiposity rebound' because it is simply a normal part of life and not a disease process or risk."

Measuring Body Fat More Directly

To determine whether body fat truly rebounds, Agbaje examined a measurement that more closely reflects adiposity than BMI.

BMI is calculated using weight and height, but it cannot distinguish between fat, muscle, bone, and other tissues. A rise in BMI can therefore occur even when a person is gaining healthy muscle rather than excess fat.

The new study used waist circumference-to-height ratio (WHtR), which estimates body fat/adiposity with around 90% accuracy when compared with the gold standard (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) measure of fat mass.

Agbaje analyzed information from 2410 multiracial children aged 2 -- 19 years who participated in the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2021-2023 cycle. The analysis compared childhood patterns in both BMI and WHtR.

The average BMI at age 2 years was 17.1 kg/m2. After declining significantly between age 2 and age 6 years (see graph in full paper), BMI returned to that same average level by age 6 years. On its own, this result appeared to support the traditional adiposity rebound theory.

Body Fat Did Not Actually Rebound

The WHtR results told a different story.

The average WHtR at age 2 years was 0.54, but children never returned to that level at age 6 years or at any other point during childhood and adolescence.

WHtR continued to fall until about age 7 years. It then increased through the rest of childhood and late adolescence, but it never recovered to the level recorded at age 2 years.

According to Agbaje, this means there was no true rebound in fat mass. Instead, the increase in BMI seen between about ages 5 and 7 appears to be caused by the growth of muscle and other lean tissue.

"Children in effect undergo a body composition reset at the plateau around age 4 years, which prepares them for the growth stages after that age," he explains.

A BMI Pattern Mistaken for Fat Gain

Agbaje describes the adiposity rebound theory as a BMI-driven "false discovery." He compares it with the so-called "obesity paradox" reported in some adult studies.

The "obesity paradox" refers to findings suggesting that people living with obesity may, under certain circumstances, have lower mortality rates than people with a BMI in the normal range. In studies of heart failure and mortality, BMI has sometimes produced a U-shaped pattern that appears to suggest that a higher BMI protects against heart disease.

Later research indicated that the apparent protection may come from greater muscle mass rather than excess body fat. Because BMI counts muscle as part of total weight, it can create misleading associations.

When WHtR was examined in randomized clinical trials involving heart failure, the relationship was linear. Greater fat mass was consistently associated with worse cardiovascular disease. Agbaje argues that this makes WHtR more useful than BMI for identifying excess fat and the health risks connected with it.

Researchers Call the Rebound a BMI Fallacy

"We do not need to push the adiposity rebound theory in pediatric literature any further because it is not a real disease state or a critical period that warrants clinical intervention. It is a statistical anomaly. Fat-free mass or lean mass growth is likely the accurate physiological explanation for the body composition reset that occurs in early childhood. It is a natural phenomenon for survival, which we have erroneously considered a disease process, and we have been trying to treat or prevent it for 42 years. So, the term 'adiposity rebound' is wrong; it is a BMI fallacy; it is simply muscle mass build-up or growth."

Agbaje believes the findings could change how excess body fat is identified in young people.

"This is a pivotal moment in history in the definition and accurate diagnosis of childhood excess body fat, with the possibility of adopting WHtR as a practical and clinically useful universal tool in diagnosing excess fat in children and adolescents."

Normal Muscle Growth May Need No Intervention

The analysis suggests that the familiar rise in childhood BMI is not necessarily evidence of an obesity-related process. It may instead represent a healthy transition as children build muscle and prepare for later stages of growth.

"Our new analysis suggests that this adiposity rebound phenomenon is not an obesity problem; this is an increase in muscle mass, and it is a good thing for healthy, normal growth. No clinical intervention is needed to address a non-existent problem in children. Let's allow children to grow in peace."

Agbaje also reports that his research team has released a freely accessible WHtR calculator designed to help detect excess fat in children and adolescents. %!s()

Author of the Tech Memo newsletter

For several years, Big Tech has operated under a simple rule: spend more on AI, or investors will assume you're falling behind. This earnings season, that rule may have changed.

Even a year ago, if one of the cloud giants had merely held its AI spending plans steady while rivals kept increasing theirs, Wall Street probably would have panicked. Investors would have assumed AI demand was cooling or that the company had lost confidence in its competitive position.

Instead, Microsoft did exactly that this week, and its stock exploded higher — adding the most market value in one day by any US company in history.

Late Wednesday, the company kept its 2026 capital spending plan unchanged. (It actually fell from $190 billion to $175 billion due to an accounting tweak).

Meanwhile, Google added another $15 billion to its forecast, Amazon increased 2026 spending by $20 billion, and Meta boosted its plans, too.

The contrast is even starker once you look beneath the headline numbers. Memory chip prices have soared, which has pushed capex even higher. Microsoft isn't immune to this. That means its decision to hold spending steady is arguably more cautious than it first appears. If memory costs are rising while your overall budget stays flat, less money is left over for actually building those AI data centers.

And yet, investors loved it. When CFO Amy Hood outlined the conservative spending plan on a call with analysts, Microsoft shares immediately surged.

By the end of Thursday, the stock was up 15%, Microsoft's best day on the market in almost two decades. Strong Azure growth and surging Copilot adoption helped. But investors were mostly enthused by evidence that someone is thinking hard about returns, not just spending.

Before earnings season, I wondered whether any of the tech giants would blink in the race. Microsoft blinked a little, and Wall Street applauded.

Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at [email protected].

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Alistair Barr

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Alistair Barr is the author of Business Insider's Tech Memo newsletter. Sign up here. Before that, he was BI's Global Tech Editor and the Big Tech team leader at Bloomberg, following a reporting career at The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Reuters, and MarketWatch. Alistair won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2007 for coverage of short selling and was a finalist in 2013 for scoops on the Facebook IPO. More recently, he won a 2024 San Francisco Press Club award for commentary. Got a tip? Reach out using the secure messaging app Signal (+1 415-341-4927) or via email on [email protected] oversees all things Big Tech, along with startups and venture capital. He writes analysis and columns about topics including generative AI, large language models, cloud computing, semiconductors, online search, e-commerce, EVs, robotics, and autonomous vehicles.Popular StoriesArtificial Intelligence:It's getting harder to make big leaps at the frontier of AIOpenAI's AI-adjusted earnings numbers have echoes of Groupon and WeWorkDeath by LLM: Stack Overflow's decline, and its plan to survive, shows the future of free online data in an AI worldCloud computing:Amazon dominated the first cloud era. The AI boom has kicked off Cloud 2.0, and the company doesn't have a head start this time.In cloud, there's AI (which is hot) and everything else (which is not)Chips:Why Intel is still so important: Real countries have fabsApple's made-in-the-USA chips signal a turnaround for the US's big semiconductor betEVs and Tesla:Tesla's AI supercomputer has a Silicon Valley town rushing to meet surging electricity demandTesla's Cybertruck is outselling almost every other EV in the USOnline Search:Google is losing its status as a verbA simple way to fix search: Bright pink ads

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As of July 30th, 2026, all regulatory approvals required to complete the merger have been obtained," EA wrote in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. "Electronic Arts currently expects the merger to close on or about the close of trading on August 4th, 2026. Completion of the merger remains subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the remaining customary closing conditions set forth in the merger agreement."

So, pretty much a done deal pending any unforeseen hiccups or issues right at the last minute. Lavishly compensated EA CEO Andrew Wilson is expected to stay in charge once the deal goes through, but the key question is what it'll mean for the workers around the world who make the games which contribute to the massive amounts of cash shovelled into Wilson's pockets on a yearly basis.

"Every time private equity or billionaire investors take a studio private, workers lose visibility, transparency, and power," the United Videogame Workers-CWA union said in a statement on the deal in October last year. "Decisions that shape our jobs, our art, and our futures are made behind closed doors by executives who have never written a line of code, built worlds, or supported live services. We are calling on regulators and elected officials to scrutinize this deal and ensure that any path forward protects jobs, preserves creative freedom, and keeps decision-making accountable to the workers who make EA successful."

Earlier this year, 46 US lawmakers signed a letter to the Federal Trade Commission expressing similar concerns. Developers on series like The Sims have said they'd fight any orders from on high to reduce diversity in EA games that might arrive in the wake of the deal, given the Saudi Arabian state's attitude towards and treatement of LGBT people.

The country's ruling regime have a terrible human rights record which Amnesty International cite as including "arbitrary" detention and execution of people simply expressing their opinions, abuse of migrant workers, and discrimination against women. They're also believed by the CIA to have been responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. %!s()

Unlike in a lot of other industries, oil demand is largely inelastic. Demand isn't completely stagnant, but oil is still essentially an ingredient used to make other things people buy, and consumers can only buy so many of those things. Even if gasoline dropped to $2 a gallon, there's only so much more driving most people want to do, and at $8 a gallon, we'd still have to do the vast majority of the driving we do now. Oil supply, however, can swing drastically, whether a war breaks out and interrupts production, or someone discovers a new oil field that floods the market. 

From a business perspective, the booms are great, but the busts are a real doozy. When the Spindletop oil field was discovered near Beaumont, Texas in 1901, production tapered off quickly, but where there's some oil, there must be more. Fast forward to 1930, and they finally found the big one: the East Texas Oil Field. That discovery yielded so much oil that by 1938, Texas reportedly supplied 40% of oil for the U.S. and accounted for 25% of the world's oil production. The massive East Texas Oil Field made a whole lot of people very rich, but it also created another problem — a price crash.

Risky business

Bettmann/Getty Images

The post-WWI U.S. had largely been a free-for-all for the wealthy, as a string of "small-government, pro-business" conservatives served in the White House, ultimately causing the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. The opportunity to make big money in Texas meant a massive rush of investment and speculation in the area. Large companies moved in, but so did wildcatters, independent operations who went into unproven areas hoping to strike it rich. Wildcatters who struck black gold usually carried a lot of debt, which only incentivized them to pay it off pumping as much oil as they could as fast as possible.

In a matter of months, oversupply caused the price of a barrel of oil to fall far below what it cost to produce. But with the Great Depression in full swing and so many wildcatters desperate to unburden themselves from debt, politely asking oil producers to slow down didn't work. Threaten the wealthy's money, though, and it's only a matter of time before the government steps in to stop it. Conveniently for the Texas oil industry, the governor at the time was Ross Sterling, an oil and railroad executive who co-founded ExxonMobile's predecessor, the Humble Oil Company. 

On August 17, 1931, Sterling declared that Gregg, Rusk, Smith, and Upshur counties were in a "state of insurrection" and would be subject to martial law. He deployed more than 1,000 Texas National Guard troops to the East Texas Oil Field and put the entire area under military control. Eventually, the courts would decide Sterling went too far when he declared martial law, but controlling oil production had become popular enough that the Railroad Commission of Texas gained the authority to regulate oil production. The only way to save the Texas oil industry ended up being government regulation of how much oil each well could produce. 

Creating OPEC

Poetra.RH/Shutterstock

After seeing the success Texas and Oklahoma had regulating oil production, the federal government created the Interstate Oil Compact Commission to do the same thing nationally. But the feds weren't the only ones to see the potential in regulating oil production. Venezuelan politician Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo began to study the TRC's success, and he soon got it in his head that maybe it could also work internationally. In 1959, Pérez Alfonzo began talking with a few oil-exporting countries in the Middle East, and on September 10, 1960, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela officially formed OPEC.

Before OPEC, oil production had been controlled by a group of companies known collectively as the Seven Sisters: the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, which later became Exxon; the Standard Oil Company of New York, which later became Mobil; the Standard Oil Company of California, which later became Chevron; the Texas Oil Company, which later became Texaco; Gulf Oil; Anglo-Persian, which later became British Petroleum; and Royal Dutch, which is now Shell. Those companies still exist or have merged, but even in its early days, OPEC still turned the industry on its head. 

OPEC countries nationalized their oil industries and were able to coordinate production with longterm goals and stability in mind, without pressure from private shareholders only concerned with seeing the biggest return on their investments. And they shifted the industry toward a model that's more focused on each country's production instead of individual companies. That hasn't always gone so well for the U.S., and as we've seen since Trump attacked Iran in late February and earlier when Putin invaded Ukraine, the global oil industry is still vulnerable to price swings caused by war. But if you didn't know OPEC only exists because a Venezuelan politician saw what the Texas Railroad Commission was doing and decided to go bigger, hey, now you do. %!s()