There are a many ways to spin what’s happening in regulation of new media in Europe. One way, which is favored by the official EU machinery, for obvious reasons, is that all media platforms should be treated the same. As Viviane Reding, the European information society and media commissioner, said during a speech last week: “Conditions of fair competition require a neutral stance with regard to and between platforms…This neutrality will put all service and content providers on an equal footing, guarantee a coherent regulatory framework and reinforce legal security.” That’s a technical point of view and you can argue the semantics to death…
The other way to look at it is that EU want to control your [read digital] media…and you can buy into that point of view and then take that to its illogical extreme.
And then there’s the third, rather oblique way which could be a sub-set of the first point too: the difference between regulatory behavior in U.S. and in Europe: In Europe, the move to open up new regulatory fronts seems to be driven more by technological change than any desire to crack down on naughty behavior.
Anyway, here’s my spin: all the attention new media is getting is good for it in the long run: the regulatory/turf-defending behavior will balance out in the long run with the desire to break new boundaries…or at least that’s the hope.
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