EU ‘Television Without Frontiers’ Regulations Widely Rejected
Posted by Kevin Marks in Net Neutrality, Logical Fallacies, Consultations, Computer Law at October 25th, 2006

The European Union’s plan to regulate the net as if it were TV – Television Without Frontiers – picked up a lot of attention in blogs this week, after the Times covered it.

The basic idea is flawed – TV involves handing a monopoly over spectrum to organisations, so regulating how they use it makes some sense, but there is no spectrum scarcity online, as all you need is a webserver. So the EU limits on local content, advertising intervals and content labelling don’t fit at all.

I spoke about this on the Technorati videoblog last week, and the BBC’s Pods and Blogs show last night. You can hear me about 30 minutes into this show recording.