Wired on Friday: During the dearly departed World Cup, British viewers were shocked to discover they could be penalised for watching the live footie on their work computers if their office hadn't paid a TV licence fee, writes Danny O'Brien.
In their infinite wisdom, the authorities had decided that while you don't need a TV licence for a desktop computer playing programmes on demand, if it's a live show broadcast at the same time as the original TV programme - well, your PC has just become a TV.
Bizarre as it may sound, that magical transformation is fast becoming the definition of how a net-connected computer or mobile phone is to be viewed in law. In the World Intellectual Property Organisation's (WIPO) proposed treaty on broadcasting, television broadcasters would have new controls over "simulcasted" internet broadcasts, with the understanding that simultaneous broadcast is more intimately connected to television.
The encroachment of television regulations into the world of the net doesn't stop there. The EU is currently planning a large-scale reform of member states' TV regulations, the "television without frontiers" (TVSF) directive. The TVSF encourages European quotas on broadcast content, public access to major sporting events, limits on TV advertising, and the protection of minors.
Originally drafted in 1989, the latest proposals involve renaming the law to make it the audiovisual media services directive, and expanding its requirements wholesale to the net. Similar moves are in place in Australia. Following complaints that an indecent scene was streamed online from the Australian Big Brother show (but removed from TV broadcasts), the ministry for communications has announced its intention to extend television content regulation to the internet.
The rules of the TVSF directive mark the same division into internet video that is "linear" - broadcast to a fixed schedule - and "non-linear", on demand video. The former would have to comply rigorously to television standards. But even non-linear video would be sucked into the regulatory framework originally invented for television. Advertising would be limited, the media service provider would have to be identified and providers would have to "respect the protection of minors".
These don't sound too bad if you're imagining a world dominated by steamy Big Brother spin-offs. But that's not what the majority of internet video is turning out to be. Visit incredibly popular sites like YouTube and Google Video and you'll see that the overwhelming majority of popular video content is amateur, with commercial content mostly being unauthorised and swiftly shut down with cease and desist letters from Hollywood lawyers.
Popular video podcasters such as RocketBoom and Ze Show are run by individuals or small teams on micro-budgets.
What does it mean for these amateur enthusiasts, uploading themselves lip-synching to their favourite songs, filing their own biased news reports, and dancing their ill-co-ordinated hearts out, to be under the same regulations as regular television, or laws derived from them?
Probably not much, for the same reason that those British workers aren't shaking in fear from the licence detector van: there is simply no way to enforce these laws. It was hard enough to make some of the "TV without borders" regulations fit, even in the age of television.
But that does not mean regulators will not try. Having created a set of unenforceable rules, they will gamely attempt to impose them to the best of their ability - and when they cannot, attempt to obtain the powers to do so.
Individual videomakers online can't be held liable for not labelling their antics "for mature audiences only", nor could the film and video ratings agencies police them all. But YouTube, or Google, the hosting companies, could.
Australia cannot seriously expect to impose decency regulation on the sprawling net - but it can take its existing net filters, imposed in a previous spat of indecency outrage, and tighten them against its own country's videomakers.
In the 1990s, many believed that the internet was, by its nature, impossible to regulate. They couldn't comprehend how the current content laws could be bent to apply to the new media. But ill-fitting regulations do not break when you bend them; they just mangle what it is they are applied to.
They are either replaced with better-fitting rules, or else they snap back, often at those they are intended to protect. To govern any part of the net - whether it be linear, non-linear or a dancing YouTube toddler - by the rules of television is a ridiculous overreach. Even that licence fee decision seems ridiculous.
If we are really determined to regulate content online - and not every country is comfortable with the radical levels of free speech available on the Net - we should at least have a serious debate about what it is we want. Simply patching our existing television regulation to cover the internet, and then scrabbling to fill the loopholes and potholes that such misfit laws create, is the worst of all worlds.
Danny O'Brien is activism co-ordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
