Media regulation broken by convergence: ACMA report

THE Australian Communication and Media Authority says most of the legislated regulation it administers has been "broken or significantly strained" by the processes of convergence.

The 93-page Broken Concepts report, released today, makes it clear that media regulation over the past 50 years has failed to keep up with changes in technology and society.

ACMA, a government-funded regulator, administers 26 acts passed by parliament in the past half century that include 523 pieces of regulation. These cover radio and television broadcasting, telecommunications, the internet and radio communications, where convergence is blurring historical distinctions.

Piecemeal changes to legislation have led to a situation where the communications landscape "resembles a patchwork quilt".

"It is fragmented and characterised by 'bandaid' solutions that lack an overarching strategy or co-ordinated approach to regulating communications and media in a digital economy," the report says.

The report identifies problem areas including policy misalignment, gaps in regulation, misplaced emphasis in legislation that skews regulation and the blurring of boundaries between historically distinct services and sectors.

The report will put pressure on the federal government to urgently rewrite the rules for the digital economy, a process that it has begun with the Convergence Review. The three-member Convergence Review panel, established last year by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, has been touring Australia hearing submissions. It will continue to receive input until October 28 and has promised a report by March.

The Broken Concepts report, which has been two years in development, is not its submission to the review, but it will inevitably shape thinking as the panel seeks to create a framework for regulation. ACMA chairman Chris Chapman told Media: "I don't see the Broken Concepts report as a shopping list of things to fix. Rather, it is a heads up on where we are and where we have to go.

"At ACMA, we have a unique and privileged insight into these matters because we have to discharge our regulatory responsibilities against a backdrop of constant change. We have had to be more adaptive and flexible.

"We strongly support what the Convergence Review is trying to do. We know we cannot outrun the convergence phenomena."

Last week, ACMA was supportive of a Press Council plan, revealed in Media, for the industry-funded non-statutory council to regulate news and current affairs commentary across all platforms, including blogs.

Its report is released into a political climate where the government is pushing for a privacy law, while the Greens are demanding an inquiry into media ownership.

The report identifies 55 legislative concepts that act as "building blocks" for regulation and says most are broken or under strain because of five key pressures:

lTechnological developments that merge previously distinct media such as voice telephony, broadcasting and the internet;

lMarket developments where the old "silos" of broadcasting, media, information technology and telecommunications are merging into a broad communications market;

lCitizen engagement through social networking applications that change the way people interact with one another;

lGlobalisation that challenges regulation designed for local or national markets; and

lThe NBN, a public investment infrastructure project that reshapes competition dynamics.

The report says these forces and digitisation have broken "the nexus between the shape of content and the container that carries it", making services independent of platforms and requiring a shift away from the old form of regulation.

This typically applied to individual "silos" such as fixed phones, mobile phones, television broadcasting, radio broadcasting or data delivery such as the internet. A new approach is to apply regulation in a "layered" fashion, concentrating on infrastructure, delivery systems, applications and content, regardless of platform.

"Regulation constructed on the premise that content could and should be controlled by how it is delivered is losing its force both in logic and in practice," the report says. It is difficult to administer new services and delivery devices not envisaged at the time the governing legislation was enacted, it concludes.