EU Considering Regulating Video Bloggers

Aglassis writes to tell us that recent proposed EU legislation could require anyone running a website featuring video content to acquire a broadcast license. From the article: "Personal websites would have to be licensed as a "television-like service". Once again the reasoning behind such legislation is said to be in order to set minimum standards on areas such as hate speech and the protection of children. In reality this directive would do nothing to protect children or prevent hate speech - unless you judge protecting children to be denying them access to anything that is not government regulated or you assume hate speech to be the criticism of government actions and policy."

Comments

Re:Never going to work

[viniosity]

Another question is: should this work? I am not a historian, but wasn't the whole point of broadcast licenses to prevent frequency interference? Is that really relevant with the way things work on the Internet today?

Re:Taxman!

[Zarniwoop_Editor]

I think George Orwell may just have been before his time...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime
Next thing you know I'll need a licence before I can hum a tune in my head.
They can have my videoblog when they pry it from my cold dead server. ;-)