Regulating Audiovisual Services

In recent years, the changing nature of audiovisual services has had a significant impact on regulatory policy and practice. The adoption of digital technology means that broadcasting, cable, satellite, the Internet and mobile telephony are converging, enabling each of them to deliver the same kinds of content and allowing users to exercise much greater choice over the kind of material that they receive and when they receive it. The essays examine the implications for regulatory design, asking whether there is still a role for traditional-style state controls, or whether other techniques, such as competition in the market and self-regulation, are more appropriate. They also explore how, in the digital era, structural issues of media ownership and control become problems of access and interconnection between services and how content regulation focuses more on problems raised by the interactions between providers and users, the relationship between freedom of information and technologies to control it and the international reach of the new media.

Contents: Introduction; Part I Convergence and Regulation: New challenges for European multimedia policy: a German perspective, Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem; Regulatory convergence? Douglas W. Vick. Part II Techniques of Regulation: Television and the public interest, Cass R. Sunstein; Self regulation and the media, Angela J. Campbell; Controlling the new media: hybrid responses to new forms of power, Andrew Murray and Colin Scott; Shielding children: the European way, Michael D. Birnhack and Jacob H. Rowbottom. Part III Structural Regulation: Media Concentration and Ownership: Rethinking European Union competence in the field of media ownership: the internal market, fundamental rights and European citizenship, Rachael Craufurd Smith; The goal of pluralism and the ownership rules for private broadcasting in Germany: re-regulation or de-regulation? Peter Humphreys; Architectural censorship and the FCC, Christopher S. Yoo; Media structure, ownership policy, and the 1st Amendment, C. Edwin Baker; Control over technical bottlenecks - a case for media ownership law?, Thomas Gibbons. Part IV Issues in Regulating New Media: The regulation of interactive television in the United States and the European Union, Hernan Galperin and François Bar; The 'right to information' and digital broadcasting: about monsters, invisible men and the future of European broadcasting regulation, Natali Helberger; Access to content by new media platforms: a review of the competition law problems, Damien Geradin; Television as something special? Content control technologies and free-to-air TV, Andrew T. Kenyon and Robin Wright; Yahoo! Cyber-collision of cultures: who regulates?, Horatia Muir Watt; Spectrum auctions: yesterday's heresy, today's orthodoxy, tomorrow's anachronism: taking the next step to open spectrum access, Eli Noam; Spectrum flash dance: Eli Noam's proposal for 'open access' to radio waves, Thomas W. Hazlett; Name Index.

Thomas Gibbons is a Professor in the Department of Law at University of Manchester, UK