Backing for U.K. Reported on Limits for On-Demand AV
The U.K. seems to be gaining support as it tries to limit potential damage from an EC proposal to regulate “nonlinear” -- on-demand -- AV services, Broadcast Minister Shaun Woodward told a Lords panel studying the legislation Wed. Only Slovakia has endorsed the U.K. idea of regulating only “TV-like” services under a revised TV without Frontiers (TVWF) directive, but Woodward hopes he and his colleagues have persuaded enough other EU countries that govt. control isn’t the way to deal with nonlinear services to soften the Commission proposal, he said.
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The EC wants to apply traditional TV broadcasting rules to “linear” AV services such as streaming and webcasting and set minimal rules for video on demand and its ilk (CD Oct 19 p6). New technologies’ emergence demands updates on the directive, Woodward said. It sounds “incredibly well- intentioned,” he said: Who wouldn’t want to protect children from inappropriate or harmful content? But the draft lacks efficacy and efficiency, the minister said. Creative industries account for over 8% of the U.K. economy, he said: “We'd better get this regulation right” or the country will suffer tremendous damage… It isn’t good enough to say, as the EC does: “We'll work it out later.”
Woodward is “terrified” by the EC impact assessment’s poor quality. It omits information from large segments of the AV industry, he said, adding that Orange, Yahoo, Telewest, Microsoft and others have been making their concerns known, but aren’t included. It should worry the U.K. “severely” that the EC has gotten so far with its TVWF proposal without figures, he said. He traced the problem to a Commission decision to speak only with focus groups and others inclined to bring Internet services into the discussion, and ignoring telcos and other key players.
It can be hard to draw a line between linear and nonlinear services, but it must be done to keep businesses from moving elsewhere, Woodward said. Talks are under way on a U.K. proposal to define on-demand services by whether their nature and means of access would lead users to think the service to be regulated -- that is, whether the service is “TV-like.” Such services share broadcast characteristics such as principal purpose and editorial control.
Despite convergence, most people know what a TV program is and isn’t, Woodward said. Most discern between YouTube, where they can post their own content, and TV programming. There are gray areas, he said -- U.S. consumers didn’t know a soap opera streaming on YouTube was made by Fox -- but they're relatively small. Most on-demand services clearly are TV, he said.
When the EC proposal emerged, the U.K. had a hard time getting anyone to agree that its scope was as broad as the U.K. thought, said Alex Blowers, Office of Communications (Ofcom) head of policy development. It wondered if anyone in the EC had considered whether the draft would drag in Internet services such as online gaming and weblogs with video. There’s a “kernel” of Internet and VoD services that will look and feel more like traditional TV; there, the case for “TV-lite” regulation is much stronger than it is for purely Internet offerings.
Ofcom isn’t asking for more control over non-linear services, Blowers said. They're already covered by other instruments -- the EU e-commerce directive, for one -- leaving Ofcom to guide and aid industry in crafting effective co-regulation, he said: “It’s not a free-for-all.” Guidelines are far better for dealing with the fast-moving AV industry than inflexible rules, he said. Industry must play its part, however; companies considering new services must weigh the regulatory implications, he said.
Blowers derided the EC impact assessment, saying it so baldly omitted any mention of the directive’s possible effect on business behavior that Ofcom commissioned its own study by Rand. The regulator wants the online gaming industry left out of TVWF entirely, but believes govt.-industry co- regulation would be suit mobile multimedia.
With TV-like services murkily defined, isn’t Ofcom struggling to define something merely for the sake of regulating it? a peer asked. The agency takes a strongly deregulatory approach to many issues, Blowers said -- compared with the EU, which prefers regulation unless shown to be unnecessary. If the U.K. converts other nations to its view, the directive’s scope will narrow. Linear broadcasters would be regulated via licenses, as they are now, and nonlinear services likely would come under codes.
The U.K. originally opposed change to TVWF broadcast rules, Woodward said. Over the summer, officials worked out a “principled argument” for regulation of TV-like services, now garnering enormous support. The Council of Ministers will consider the matter in mid-Nov., and the European Parliament will have its first reading of amendments coming out of its various committees Dec. 10-14, he said.
The key decision for the current Finnish Presidency is whether to bring the matter to a head or leave it for Germany, which takes over in Jan. If the Nov. Council meeting isn’t successful, Woodward said, the German Presidency probably will push to complete the directive.
He warned that the debate over whether enforcement of certain provisions belongs to the country of origin or country of destination of a particular program could be a deal-killer for the U.K. If the language doesn’t change, the U.K. will do everything in its power to oppose the measure, Woodward said.
The Lords EU-Internal Market subcommittee will hear testimony later from EC officials, its spokesman said. Several industry players already have appeared.