We're trying to regulate with broken concepts, says ACMA

Stuart Corner
Monday, 29 August 2011 10:21

IT Policy - Regulation

The ACMA says convergence has broken or is straining many of the constructs and concepts that form the building blocks of current communications and media regulation.

Its conclusions are published in a new paper 'Broken Concepts: The Australian communications legislative landscape'. According to the ACMA "Of the 55 legislative concepts analysed in the paper, the majority are either 'broken' or under significant pressure from the effects of convergence. These 'broken concepts' are symptoms of the deeper change of digitalisation breaking those now outdated propositions, including that content can be controlled by how it is delivered."

The paper is accompanied by an ACMA occasional paper 'Converged legislative frameworks: international approaches' that examines the approaches to date of a number of overseas jurisdictions in the move to a converged legislative framework for media and communications.

This latter paper concludes that there is no single approach to dealing with these issues, saying that converged legislation demands an evolutionary approach to regulating for communications and media.

ACMA chairman, Chris Chapman, said: "The ACMA deals on a daily basis with the rapidly changing communications and media environment. Its current responsibilities cover 26 Acts and more than five hundred pieces of subordinate legislation. And yet the majority of the legislation the ACMA administers was made before the Internet was even in use in Australia."

Both papers have been provided to the Government's Convergence Review Committee to help inform its consideration of the design of future regulatory frameworks. The papers and an interactive presentation of the changing digital landscape are  available on the ACMA's Engage website (http://engage.acma.gov.au).

The ACMA says it has observed seven broad regulatory consequences of convergence. These are listed on page 2.

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