Regulations banning investments in media outlets by political parties, the government and the military are “very ridiculous” and should be amended as soon as possible, as they constrain the development of cable operators and telecoms, former National Communications Commission (NCC) chairwoman Su Herng (蘇蘅) said yesterday.
Su made the comments at a seminar in Taipei hosted by the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia, in which participants focused on vital changes to the nation’s cable television policies in view of the rise of new media like over-the-top (OTT) services.
She was asked if the commission is powerful enough to initiate changes to adjust the nation’s system to the new reality.
Revising the outdated policy governing investment in media outlets by the government, political parties and the military would be the first and foremost thing that the commission should do, she said.
“The regulations, in my opinion, are very ridiculous. They were stipulated to preserve press freedom, but I look at them as merely ‘black-and-white’ rules. The most unreasonable part is that they punish media outlets that knowingly or unknowingly receive funding from political parties or the government. The regulations should have been revised a long time ago,” she said.
There have been discussions about the need for government investment in the production of content that is not related to news, Su added.
The government must also relax other regulations so that cable systems and telecoms can have more flexibility in securing the funding they need, she said.
Su also noted challenges to cable TV operators and telecoms brought by the rise of OTT operators.
Even though OTT operators have used large percentages of the nation’s frequency bandwidth to provide programs, they do not invest in infrastructure, threatening the revenue of telecoms that have made massive investments in broadband infrastructure, she said.
OTT operators should be required to obtain licenses from the government, follow the tax code and fulfill its obligations as content providers, she said, adding that this could be accomplished under the current legal framework.
Another challenge is the issue of copyright infringement, she said.
“Content producers do not have to worry too much about piracy when the content is broadcast on cable because cable is a closed system, but this infringement happens almost every day with online broadcasts,” she said, adding that Ministry of Economic Affairs officials often do not see piracy as an urgent matter.
However, former NCC commissioner Liu Yu-li (劉幼琍) disagreed that OTT operators should be required to obtain licenses.
She cited results of a survey published last year by the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute which showed that the top 10 platforms where Taiwanese watch OTT content are offshore — such as YouTube and Tudou — so the government does not have authority over them.
Liu also said there would be regulatory disparity between OTT operators and cable or channel operators if the government keeps waiving the requirement for OTT operators to follow media regulations.
However, the conundrum could be solved by relaxing the regulations for cable and channel operators, Liu said.
Meanwhile, 21st Century Foundation deputy director Jessica Chou (周韻采) said that it was estimated that the nation has about 1.36 million to 2.13 million OTT service subscribers.
Despite the increasing popularity of OTT content, Chou said that the nation has yet to see a massive cancelation of cable subscriptions.
One of the main reasons is the comparatively low cost of cable — about US$17 per month — which makes the US$10 average cost of an OTT service hardly attractive to consumers, she said.
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