Ofcom Head Doesn’t Rule Out Future Internet Content Regulation
The collision between broadcasting and the Internet may make online content regulation necessary, the head of the U.K.’s media regulator said last week. A “challenge for policymakers will arise at the point where the boundaries between traditional media and Internet-based content truly blur,” said Office of Communications (Ofcom) Chmn. David Currie. Although Ofcom’s reach doesn’t now extend to the Internet, it will begin looking soon at regulatory issues raised by content becoming available over a range of platforms, Currie told an Internet Services Providers’ Assn. (ISPA) U.K. parliamentary advisory forum in London.
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Currie acknowledged ISPs have led the way voluntarily in areas govts. haven’t regulated. The U.K. Internet industry created the Internet Watch Foundation, a hotline for reporting child abuse images and criminally obscene and racist content. ISPA members commit to a self- regulatory code of practice to handle consumer dispute resolution.
But “consumers can view television broadcasting on their PCs over an IP [Internet Protocol]-based broadband connection,” Currie said. “The future will hold many more, new possibilities which will further blur the expectations consumers have become accustomed to.” That will require a balance between protecting consumers from additional risks online and “not underestimating their ability to understand and assess these risks for themselves,” he said.
Ofcom isn’t seeking greater power to regulate Internet content, Currie said. Rather, he pleaded for “honesty” in the debate about what’s needed. It can’t be assumed that the debate should focus on “how we remodel television regulation and adapt it to the world of content delivered by IP,” he said. Equally, Currie said, “self- regulation may not always be the answer.”
Ofcom’s draft strategic plan for 2005-06 includes reviews of new markets in digital multimedia platforms, 2nd-generation broadband and broadcast content production. Currie said Ofcom will look at questions such as: (1) Whether the current model of regulating broadcast content is sustainable. (2) Whether a consistent or platform- neutral approach to content regulation is desirable or practicable. (3) The extent to which consumers and citizens will be able to control access to content themselves with tools such as parental controls. (4) The impact digital platforms may have on methods of distribution of content and new business models for selling content, and the implications for future regulation.
Andrew Burke, head of British Telecom’s (BT’s) new entertainment div., reportedly told forum participants that if content has been requested by consumers who have taken the trouble to download it, maybe it shouldn’t be regulated.
There have been many arguments about “push vs. pull, free-to-air vs. subscription, delivered by Transmission Control Protocol/IP vs. UHF, and all of these are probably missing the point,” Internet Policy Agency founder Roland Perry said later. Somewhere between a formal broadcasting license and the inherently non-licensed private Internet publishers, “there exists a space in which putative ‘broadcasting over the Internet’ organizations could be required to notify” Ofcom of their existence, said Perry, former dir.-public policy at the London Internet Exchange. Then a list could be issued periodically of those organizations required to sign an appropriate code of practice for regulating their content, he said. If self- regulation fails, regulation might be necessary, Perry said.