Bruce Taylor
>Sender: State and Local Freedom of Information Issues
> <FOI-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
>From: sap@TANK.RGS.UKY.EDU
>Subject: Internet a Broadcast Media?
>To: Multiple recipients of list FOI-L <FOI-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
>
>>>From DM News International, April 15, 1996:
>
>
> European Commission Wants Control Over WWW
>
> by Thomas Weyr
>
>Brussels - The European Commission has issued yet another draft of its
>Television Without Frontiers directive, this one with a "legal
>clarification" that widens the definition of broadcasting to include
>the Internet.
> The "clarification" states that a moving or non-moving sequence of
>images, whether or not accompanied by sound, constitutes a TV program.
> "I am very worried about this development," said Alistair Tempest,
>director general of FEDIM (the Federation of European Direct
>Marketing), "because broadcasting becomes anything but personal
>correspondence and can be regulated."
> E-mail, Tempest noted, is excepted. Anything else would be fair
>game for national and European regulators, both from the broadcasting
>and the telecom end.
> And such regulations could seriously crimp U.S. direct marketing
>efforts on TV and over the Web.
> The struggle over updating the original TV Without Frontiers
>directive -- first issued in 1989 -- has been underway for over a year.
> The explosive growth of the WWW in recent months has served to
>intensify the conflict.
> "This is a fascinating exercise in how European politics works,"
>Tempest said. He noted that the European Commission -- the
>policy-making bureaucrats in Brussels -- had sent the directive to the
>European parliament in Strasbourg without the expanded broadcast
>definition.
> The parliament debated the issue late last year, and last month
>returned the draft to the EC with a number of proposed amendments
>including this one, which the commission then dutifully incorporated
>into the new draft.
> The decision now rests with representatives of the member states
>in Brussels, who can revise the directive once again or adopt it and
>send it back to the member governments for reconciliation with national
>laws.
> On March 22, experts from the 15 member countries held a meting
>without coming to a conclusion. "They agreed that the more important
>issues, including this one, should be kicked upstairs to the council of
>ministers for resolution," Tempest said.
> Agreement in principle, he added, might be reached next month,
>with a common position worked out over the summer. "I don't expect
>anything concrete to come out till after the summer," he said.
> Fortunately for the direct marketing industry, FEDIM isn't the
>only body up in arms about the implication of the new broadcast
>definition.
> Software manufacturers like Mircosoft and programmers like Time
>Warner and Polygram are also lobbying hard in Brussels to delete the
>"clarification."
> "We have time to put pressure on them," Tempest said.
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Posted by Adam Starchild
> The Offshore Entrepreneur at http://www.au.com/offshore<<
Bruce Taylor
Bruce.Taylor@hedb.uib.no