EU Rules On Video Won’t Control Tribes
Posted on October 18, 2006
Filed Under Insights |
The Times story about EU rules that might force websites that carry video and advertising to register, be licensed or otherwise heavily regulated have a twenty year gestation and were born to restrict. It’s interesting to see how they have evolved because by coincidence I did the research on the early attempts to control cross-frontier broadcasting twenty years ago. From that experience I can say they have only ever been restrictive in nature.
On the other hand there were some virtues in what they were trying to do - the virtues have been lost but it is not too late to find them.
A little background. Twenty years ago when the EU was much smaller responsibility for cross-frontier broadcasting in Europe (remember most countries were, in those days, entirely self-contained media states) lay with the Council of Europe. It had 35 members to the EU’s twelve.
One fine day SES Astra based in Luxembourg decided to send asatellite into space and facilitate multi-channel broadcasting without frontiers. Countries that had two or three TV channels were likely to get 40, 60, 80, in all kinds of languages showing all kinds of subject matter.
The Council of Europe commissioned a series of reports on how to regulate what SES Astra were about to do. Researchers like me were sent out to examine the broadcasting laws of all 35 Council members to see if there were any rules that would provide common ground for quick agreement that would regulate change.
We found a few - every country insisted on a public service broadcasting service. Almost every country was already experiencing the erosion of public service values.
The beginnings of satellite TV were of concern for a number of reasons - eroding ad revenues of commercial broadcasters would force down quality and there were public service broadcasters who also sold ads. Those that didn’t would be chasing audience so they too would flee from quality.
It all came to pass. Despite the Council agreeing a recommendation on Trans Frontier Broadcasting. Despite the commitment to public service quality.
The attempt to regulate has hadno effect whatsoever.
Here is a more interesting observation - when you look beyond the tribal nature of YouTube and MySpace there is some very interesting quality content coming onto the web. The problem is not YouTube, it’s more to do with the fact that those of us with a belief in certain values and in the transformation of debate into artistically expressed movies are not tribal in our nature, so we don’t group together and do what we need to do - produce great quality work for the web.
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