A couple of days ago I spotted this little gem of a news item over on Drudge. A couple of the key paragraphs give pretty keen insight into the mind of a regulator:
“It would be a distortion of competition if we were to just regulate one and not all,” EU Information Commissioner Viviane Reding told reporters.
She described the new proposals as offering a “light regulatory touch” in a multi-channel, multi-media age.
No, you fool, it’s a distortion of competition to regulate broadcast content at all. The sensible solution, plainly obvious to anybody but a bureaucrat, is that in order to make things fair the current regulatory scheme should be abandoned rather than applied to all media content.
But, of course, that just won’t do, because then what would the EU’s Information Minister Commisioner do all day? Twiddle her thumbs? Paint her nails?
