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Page updated:
4 February 1997
Page owner:
ETO Site Team
Should the Internet be Regulated and if so, How?
This is one of three linked questions raised as part of a study for the European Commission (DGXIII) in June 1996. The others are:
- Should Internet Access Become Part of "Universal
Service" Requirements?
- What effects will the growth of the Internet have on the telecommunications sector, especially for data and voice transmission?
The question asked by the DGXIII study team was:
What are the problems, the need and use of regulating Internet?
There are at least three quite distinct aspects to this:
(a) The question of "generally undesirable traffic", eg child pornography and other criminal or antisocial uses
(b) The question of access by children to so-called "adult" or other materials that the child's "responsible adults" might not wish the child to see
(c) The question of economic and social dependence on reliable services It's unfortunate that media attention to (a) and (b) has deflected attention from (c) which is arguably more important but is little discussed.
Undesirable traffic - the general question
Most of the "generally undesirable traffic" is already illegal and can be dealt with by a combination of appropriate anti-crime measures coupled with well orchestrated market responses - for example voluntary codes of conduct policed by trade and industry associations who award complying suppliers with "safe to use" badging, just like quality marks etc. If there is some "generally undesirable traffic" traffic which is not yet illegal but is agreed by society through the democratic process to be illegal, then laws governing the behaviour of citizens and companies seem rather more appropriate than regulation of a particular medium. In this respect Internet is different from the traditional "broadcast" or "one-to-many" media (radio, TV, newspapers and magazines); Internet is "many-to-many" and every citizen can broadcast anything they choose, whether through web pages, discussion lists or newsgroups. So the Internet's "content" cannot be regulated in the way that the editorial content of a TV station might be, material posted on the Internet cannot be regulated in an editorial sense any more than the content of a phone call - it has to be dealt with through the law and the courts.What can be done in this general context is for service providers to develop clearly identifiable and clearly targeted service sectors and to apply "rules of conduct" to those sectors. A subscriber who breaks the rules of a particular service can have his or her subscription cancelled. Market forces will determine what is "desirable" or otherwise to particular sectors of the community, since a service that provides or freely allows "undesirable" content or conduct will have fewer subscribers than one that offers the most widely acceptable mix.
Access by children
The case of access by children (or other vulnerable persons) to material which is legal and may be acceptable for private or even public use among adults is somewhat different. Children should have regular and unconstrained access to the Internet as an important part of their learning, since its use is of value in the learning process and skills in its use will be an important asset in later life. However, today's Internet is a "single medium" and the child who develops skills may well find or encounter material or behaviour for which he or she is not well prepared and that might damage or corrupt them. How to deal with this is a topical issue and somewhat controversial. Some say that children should only have access under supervision - especially younger children, but this is impractical in many homes and even in some schools. Some say that children should only have access to certain types of Internet accounts which restrict the websites, discussion lists and newsgroups made available. Some say parents and teachers should use local software on the PC that detects inappropriate sites and closes the link when these are detected. One market-based solution being proposed is a badging system for sites and pages, the child's browser can be set up to deny access to pages labelled "adult". It seems that we need both more discussion and more technology before deciding the best way to handle this, meanwhile the onus is on responsible adults to manage the problem in the way of their choice, as is the case with childrens' access to "undesirable" television programmes.
Reliable and resilient services
The third problem - of economic and social dependence on reliability of services - is a serious challenge to regulators in an open market environment. Perhaps the easiest solution is an industry managed "safety net" approach, where arrangements are put in place for customers of a failing service provider to be switched gracefully to another service provider. Service providers would have to subscribe to a mutual fund to cover the costs of such provisions. In the UK travel market the ABTA scheme is a useful model for this - few British travellers will risk booking a holiday through a company that is not an ABTA member.Today there is a high and increasing risk that companies trading across the Internet are placing a very high reliance on it and are unaware that many Internet services providers may be trading on a financially unsound basis. The time and cost of recovering from the failure of an Internet access and sevices provider could easily put such a company out of business. This is a subject for national and European regulators to concern themselves with as a matter of urgency.
When considering this last qestion, Governments and regulators should also consider the national and regional economic interest. At present network connections to and from the USA from any European country tend to be better than network connections within Europe from one country to another. And network connections from one country or region to the global network can be significantly better or worse than connections from a neigbouring country. Just as telecoms pricing is now an important strategic economic factor, so is the quality and pricing of Internet conncections that are available to citizens and companies. Orchestrating the regulatory environment to ensure a high and improving level of overall Internet service provision and at competitive prices should be a key priority for regulators.