On 29 August 2011, the ACMA released Broken Concepts: The Australian communications legislative landscape (word) and (pdf), a research paper about ‘broken concepts’ in media and communications legislation.
The paper examines how the process of convergence has systematically broken, or significantly strained, many of the legislative concepts that form the building blocks of current communications and media regulation.
Of the 55 legislative concepts reviewed, 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 These ‘broken concepts’ are symptoms of the deeper change of digitalisation breaking the now outdated premise that content can be controlled by how it is delivered.
‘The ACMA deals on a daily basis with the rapidly changing communications and media environment,’said ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman. ‘Our current responsibilities cover 26 acts and more than five hundred pieces of regulation. And yet the majority of the legislation we administer was made before the internet was even in use in Australia.’
Just a quick note that the PDF points to the international legislative frameworks paper.
Please check link for PDF – I believe it is the “Converged legislative frameworks – International approaches” occasional paper.
Also – this post is dated the 24th. It’s a bit confusing if you’re announcing the publication of something dated the 29th.
Look forward to reading the paper.
Thanks for the feedback – the link should be working now
[...] Read full report, Broken Concepts. [...]
I look forward to reading this – reminds me of my times at ACMA trying to explain my concerns at this group of issues.
It is not only in the mentioned areas that ‘broken concepts’ are becoming a concern, the reduction of resources in many of the ‘Communications’ sections of ACMA are heading the same way. In particular, the loss of resources in equipment standards areas will eventually lead to a lack of guidelines for equipment to be correctly licenced and so ensure efficient management of the spectrum, plus the watering down of the standards (or operating guidelines) will effectively mean that monitoring and prosecution of incorrect apparatus devices will become much more difficult. There is a burgeoning demand for co-regulation in these areas to ensure the system does not fail or become so inneffectual that the result is the same. We may not need high levels of regulation for radio communications, but we do need reasonable guidelines to protect the spectrum
Nice paper guys,
Good to see all the confusion on the one paper. So we seem to be at the point where we can agree that no amount of legislation is going to help with controlling the aggregation and distribution of content on a National basis.
One thing I’m trying to understand. Why is it that we can never get as far as taking the first step? They can do it in Singapore. But it seems everything we do in Oz has to be institutional-centric. This alluded to in the paper@ Vector: Consumer/citizen = Australian identity.
Even AP is trying to get in on the act.
Eventually, if everyone is a media producer/communicator, we need a common online identity, which could be used on a institutional site like this. Seems that we’re trying to impose a broken concept i.e. representative government on a new one i.e. participatory government.