The merger between internet service provider America Online and media and entertainment giant Time Warner and the takeover proposal by Telstra’s Bigpond of Ozemail are dramatic illustrations of converging technologies in the communications industry. Convergences of this kind will ultimately make government regulation of broadcasting toothless. They will make the Australian Government’s rules on cross-media ownership, foreign content and ownership and internet content irrelevant anachronisms.
Before widespread internet usage, governments had a significant say in what the public could see and who could publish it to them. That say was centred around the technology of broadcasting. Broadcasting has two elements that make regulation fairly easy. First, the same sound, vision and print being seen by masses of people at the same time (or in the case of print on the same day). Secondly, the sound and vision require access to wireless spectrum of which there is a limited amount.
It means that monitoring authorities can pick up and monitor whatever is broadcast. The public, too, can monitor it note the time it is broadcast and complain about it to authorities. It means also that the limited wireless spectrum can get allocated by government to parties who agree to abide by regulation.
The internet is entirely different. Its content is not cast at all, either broadly or narrowly. Rather its content is produced by millions of producers. It is as if each producer puts filing cabinets full of files with words, pictures, video and sound facing out to the footpath. Any passer-by can open the drawers of the filing cabinet and take copies of anything. The passers-by, however, are not walking. They are accessing over the phone line. And the files are not paper they are electronic and the filing cabinets are not indexed individually but collectively so it is easier to get the file you want. And access is made from the privacy of the home and no-one else need know what is being accessed or when. The task for the regulators is impossible. Words, pictures, sound and video become private transactions, just like conversations between individuals. Whole movies, novels, radio programs as well as written chit chat can be accessed at will. Moreover, individuals can make their words, movies and sound available to the world via the internet very cheaply without having to pay for a publisher and distributor. Just like conversations, government will not be able to regulate this traffic very easily. To that extent the internet and its convergence with other technologies make it a force for freedom.
On the other hand, convergence presents a danger.
One of the reasons we have restrictions on cross-media ownership and foreign ownership is to promote diversity of programming, to allowing differing potions of view and to ensure Australian content and suitable children’s content. These are endangered by converging technologies. The Australian Government can do nothing to prevent foreign internet sites making available whatever they like. Already the five television networks have what are in effect newspapers (though they are on-line) despite a ban on newspaper owners also owning broadcasting licences.
It is likely that the tide of convergence is too hard to resist and that regulation to promote diversity and Australian content is unworkable. If so, other ways, like subsidy and greater support for the public broadcaster and its internet sites will have to be looked at.