Mike's Minute: Paul Goldsmith cannot regulate the internet

Tell me how Broadcasting Minister Paul Goldsmith is going to sort the unsortable?

The Broadcasting Standards Authority has, deliberately or not, opened a box of whoopee that is playing out all over the world in various forms.

In simple terms regulators are trying to work out how to control tech.

The problem with regulators is their jurisdiction is limited. The problem with tech is there is no border.

The same way a Government isn't going to charge a tech company for nicking news and putting it on their websites, a broadcasting watchdog is not going to control Joe Rogan.

The Prime Minister has already worked this out and said so Monday. But then the Broadcasting Minister, in that ponderous sort of surprise-ladened fashion that is unique to Goldsmith, started wondering out loud why the Herald NOW stream wasn’t regulated while breakfast television was.

That of course is the simple version of the problem. You are only dealing with the difference in transmission mode - terrestrial vs the internet.

Next issue - if you are regulating the internet, what internet? Where does it stop and start? Local streaming? What is local streaming? If you are protecting an audience, surely you have to protect them universally? And yet you can't.

Even if Goldsmith argues the line that things that look like radio or look like TV are captured, what if the radio consumed in New Zealand originates in London?

Next problem - if you regulate the internet, where does that stop and start?

Does a podcast look like radio? What about short form vs long form? What about local content on TikTok and, if so, why not all content on TikTok.

Answer: because you can't.

And if you can't, how is it fair to regulate my TikTok but not Piers Morgan's?

Talk about a horse and bolting.

Governments look old world. They look “AM” in an "FM" world. They look like they are trying to save letters from the internet.

They look like control freaks who don’t know how to save their powers.

Rightly or wrongly making me adhere to rules while every half-baked weirdo on the net gets to say whatever they like is the cold, hard reality of the here and now.

Save yourself the time and the headache and give it up.

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