Posted: 06th Dec, 2004 By: MarkJ
Ofcom has warned that the eroding boundary between Television (TV) and broadband content services (video-on-demand) may not be all good news. Restrictions for TV could end up applying to the Internet:
Matt Peacock, Ofcom's communication director, warned last week that the inexorable rise of the Internet Protocol means this status quo is coming under growing pressure.
"The Communications Act rightly excluded Internet control from Ofcom's remit, and made a clear distinction between TV and the Internet," said Peacock, speaking at an event marking the 10th anniversary of the London Internet Exchange. "Over time, that distinction will be washed away."
"The idea that the regulator should become a gigantic firewall isn't a very good one," said Peacock adding that the least ISPs could do would be to introduce "intelligent meta tagging" to help consumers to filter out inappropriate broadband television.Watersheds for broadband content? How on earth would you go about policing that on the Internet? More @
ZDNet.