Media Convergence: Communications Committee Report

Lord St John of Bletso Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord St John of Bletso (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, for his able chairmanship of this very topical, broad-ranging and fascinating inquiry. The speed of the technology revolution of the past decade has been nothing less than remarkable and, as the report said:

“Converged devices have become a mass market reality”,

with audiences expecting everything any time and anywhere. The possibilities for multifaceted smart devices with ever-greater interactivity seem limitless. In a very short time we have moved from an analogue to a digital, to an on-demand and now to an interconnected age. The emergence of common standards has meant that we are more connected than ever.

There is no denying that the younger generation are at the vanguard of media convergence. I have to admit that, as the father of four young teenagers, I rather pine for the days when my children were not constantly on their iPads, iPhones and BlackBerrys. The digital evolution with media convergence has presented huge opportunities but, as this report aptly puts it, with a number of major challenges. While the UK market for on-demand services is one of the most advanced in the world, it is reassuring that linear broadcast TV still remains largely popular and resilient with most of the population getting their news from television. I noted in the recent Ofcom report that UK households currently spend less than 10% of their TV viewing time watching on-demand content.

A key observation of this report is that new technologies and behaviours are evolving more quickly than regulatory protections. The Government’s forthcoming White Paper on communications will certainly need to address some of the regulatory challenges on content, content creation and competition. Statute is a blunt instrument and should be used only when totally necessary, but a regulatory framework needs to keep pace with this ever-changing world in an evolutionary manner.

Clearly the competition regime for media markets should seek to promote choice, innovation and competitive pricing. The new platforms to distribute content over the internet and via satellite have allowed UK viewers increasingly to take advantage of international content and businesses to globalise. While this provides opportunities for wider economic growth, it raises the thorny issue of jurisdiction over the content of some of these programmes. This should and could affect a number of areas of regulation and enforcement, particularly as Ofcom has the ability only to regulate services that originate in the United Kingdom. The impact of globalisation on national regulation of media content raises a major challenge.

The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, gave us an excellent overview of the key findings and recommendations in this report. Without repeating his points, I will touch briefly on the safer internet, which was briefly raised by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. It was summarised in recommendations 220 to 222. It is essential that adequate protections are put in place to ensure that children’s use of the internet is controlled in a safe manner. I know that the Government are working closely with the UK Council for Child Internet Safety to pursue a self-regulatory approach to keeping children safe online. However, I do not believe that simply installing filters on IP smart devices, including mobile phones, iPads and computers, is sufficient. Parents need to be better educated as to their responsibilities to ensure parental controls on these devices. It is also essential that ISPs, mobile phone operators, device manufacturers and retailers as well as software developers all work together to ensure adequate protections.

One area of the Internet of major concern to me is the “deep web”, sometimes referred to as the “invisible web”, which is accessed through an anonymous network called Tor. This was originally developed by the US Navy, but is currently being used as a hub for illicit activity, including the notorious website Silk Road, which was fortunately shut down by the FBI recently. Sadly, similar websites are cropping up as we speak. The deep web has also been used as a source of child pornography.

Normally, file-sharing and internet browsing can be tracked by law enforcement through each user’s unique IP address, which can be tracked back to individual computers or iPads. The Tor network on the deep web effectively hides the IP address, opening the internet to unsavoury elements. A lot more focus needs to be placed on trying to control this content which is not part of the surface web.

I briefly draw reference to paragraph 155 of the report, where we pointed out that one of the risks of convergence is the fragmentation of audiences and revenues, which could impact adversely on investment in high-production-value content. As ITV pointed out in a recent briefing note, the sustainability of their investment in content depends on their ability to make a viable financial return on their investment and also, obviously, to reach large audiences. I entirely agree with ITV that in a digital age, an effective intellectual property regime is vital. It is essential that any exceptions from intellectual property protection are as narrowly and well defined as possible. Advertising revenues are no longer sufficient to ensure continued investment in world-class drama programmes. I call on the Government to give assurances that a strong intellectual property framework will be incorporated into the forthcoming communications White Paper.

I noted that, in the Government’s response to our report that, while the process of convergence poses a challenge for how we continue to ensure public expectations about content standards, the time is not yet right for convergence of linear and non-linear regulation. There should be no movement to reduce the amazing opportunities that are presented by convergence and the internet more broadly. Regulation should not stand in the way of innovation but, equally, more needs to be done to address the challenges facing media convergence. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Gordon, that there is a need for some form of regulation of the internet.

In conclusion, there needs to be an evolutionary approach to the regulatory framework to keep pace with this rapidly changing world. I wholeheartedly support the recommendations in this report and hope that many of them will be incorporated into the forthcoming communications White Paper.