Tech Firms, Don't Fence Us In

Vitaly Friedman writes "A proposed broadcasting law by the European Commission that would regulate emerging media formats in the same way as traditional broadcasting companies draws fire from the companies who say they will be hurt by a one-size-fits-all mentality. From the article 'An alliance of companies, including ITV, Yahoo, Vodafone, Intel and Cisco Systems, warned that a European Commission proposal to impose rules for traditional broadcasters on new media providers could have "unintended consequences" and hurt investment.'"

Comments

Link with better reporting of the story.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Business week carrying this story. But it has a couple of snippets missing from the wired report:

1) Its not An alliance of companies, including ITV, Yahoo, Vodafone, Intel and Cisco Systems, warned that...., its an alliance of British companies (and British subsiduries of US companies)

2) The wired article makes no mention of what the actual rules are. From business week: Those rules include limits on hate speech, advertising and the kind of content that can be broadcast to children.

I'm not a big fan of censorship by any stretch of the imagination & I don't particularly support these rules - but I do find wired's reporting of this situation a little skewed (I wonder if wired thinks they'll be effected by this?)

As far as I understand

[JanneM]

As far as I understand it, the proposed rules simply say that any advertising, hate speech or other content rules already applied today for other media in Europe would apply for the same media when online. Where's the problem?

The parallels are interesting

[LaughingCoder]

Media and technology companies warned Tuesday that new European Union broadcasting rules could restrict the growth of emerging media formats such as video broadcasts through the internet and mobile phones.

This discussion is somewhat reminiscent of the development and standardization of GSM cell phones in Europe back in the 80's and early 90's. I'm sure many of the same arguments were made on both sides of the issue. Of course in the US it was decided to let the market sort out the best cell phone technology. Now here we are in the US with multiple competing mobile formats. It is a complicated undertaking for a consumer to decide which mobile operator to choose -- there are coverage maps, different network capabilities, non-overlapping phone models. Add to that the fact that despite all this "competition" the cost to the consumer is fairly high compared to Europe.

So, which is the best way to go? Mandate these sorts of things early on, or let the market evolve? As a died-in-the-wool capitalist I like the idea of letting the market choose the winner. Unfortunately sometimes you end up with what we have in today's US cell phone market - no clear winner and confusion for the consumers.