Empire of Culture

The European Commission's proposal to start to regulate TV shown over the internet in a similar way it regulates broadcast TV rumpled the British government. The U.K.'s broadcasting minister said he planned to lobby other European nations against the new Television Without Frontiers directive that would extend content restrictions on video sent via the internet.

The U.K.'s culture secretary characterized the directive as unacceptable, even as the directive takes pains to make its precedent-setting measures unobtrusive. The directive seeks to establish "a basic set of minimum principles," such as preventing racial hatred incitement and some kinds of advertising, such as product placement.

International internet firms have been lobbying against the imposing of any restrictions. Any content limits could make much more complicated the global distribution of content - which, according to the British government, could limit the development of future services. That very factor may in part be an attraction to other E.U. governments, however, that have previously expressed concern about the diminution of their perceived cultural footprint relative to the increasing popularity of market-generated English language content.