SESSION 7.1 and 7.2: Law, Regulation and Governance
SESSION 7: Law, Regulation and Governance
Moderator: Peter Yu, Professor & Director, Intellectual Property Law Center, Drake University Law School
Discussant: Doreen Weisenhaus, Director of the Media Law Project & Assistant Professor, Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong
- Olivier Arifon, Assistant Professor, Robert Schuman University / CERIME laboratory, Strasbourg France. “Regulation of Internet: technical, normative or cultural conception; a cross comparison between Europe and China.”
Olivier is speaking on regulation of the internet compared with regulation of traditional media, and questions surrounding rule of law. Looking back at the 2005 World Summit of Information Society, there were many debates on internet regulation. Three points: the USA’s “status quo” role as head of ICANN, the EU’s “consensus mode, and views from countries such as Brazil, China, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia, which call for each country to have ability to regulate internet within its own borders.
In contrast to ICANN, looking at the Internet Governance Forum, a multi-stakeholder, democratic and transparent body. It offers space for dialogue, but has no mandate for decisions made. There are also many independent bodies within countries such as France, Uk and USA.
Then there’s the Chinese conecption of internet regulation: has a long history, emphasis on stability and unity for a harmonious society and strong technical control (ie. Golden Shield Project).
WIthin these larger frameworks, invidual web users face more subtle forms of regulation, self-regulation, legal measures and moral arguments.
Lobbying policies focus on technical development, the norms and intellectual policies and key government positions within relevant bodies (ie. USA’s FCC).
‘What does a balanced position look like?’
-Do we believe in the power of a civil society?
-Is the internet on the path to “sinisation” (Chinafication?)
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Duncan Clarke:
Online Video in China: WeTube, Not YouTube?
BDA predicts 1 billion mobile and 0.5 billion internet subscriptions in China by 2013. 3G is coming, a huge amount of these users are broadband users, thanks to China’s ‘informatization’ drive.
Despite regulation, venture capital is playing a main role in pulling up Chinese tech dev. Shanghai and Beijing now get more venture capital than Silicon Valley. America has YouTube. China has uusee, pplive, PPs, Ku6, Tudou, Youku, 6.cn, 56.com. Everything seems to be fine from a broadband perspective, venture capital. There is a lot of piracy, obviously. There is Online TV now, which even comes via subscription, and is not coming from the government. Users are driving what is happening there, and that includes piracy.
China’s online video industry has quickly grown to become a mass medium.
Academics love to have empirical data, but it’s impossible in this area. The CN gov fears this might say something they don’t like about modern values. However, these video websites are serving up millions of videos per hour to millions of users. This is attractive to advertisers, but they want the relevant data too.
2007: The Empire Strikes Back
-Dec. 27 2007, SARFT and MII issue announcement that all video sites are to be majority state-owned as of February ‘08. There was no clarification as to how this would happen, and backlash came from Chinese domestic media, criticism the inappropriate application of these laws. At that time, the top 8 video sites had USD 190 million in foreign VC cash.
February came and went and all the sites were still up and operation. SARFT/MII had another press conference, appeared to be backtracking, and the industry sighed a collective breath of relief.
However, one main player, 56.com, has been shut down for over a week as of today, for still unknown reasons. Other main players have been shut down for short periods of time in the past. SARFT now holds the sword at the neck of these players, a comfortable vague position.
Chinese TV stations (ie. CCTV) have awful online presence. Now looking, as in other countries, ie. suing YouTube, at working with these websites, buying them. Then the key issue for these video websites is how to make money. How to do PR. How to deal with VC (venture capitalists). “Remember that 40 million you gave us? Yeah, uh, we’re down right now…” (ie. 56.com)
See Danwei.org and Isaac Mao’s blog for ongoing updates.