皇冠体育app

Culture Secretary laid out to the audience at this evening鈥檚 RTS Cambridge Convention.聽

Mr Hunt focused on three 鈥渞adical elements鈥� that he wanted a new Act to enshrine.

A focus on promoting growth in the Communications industry

Mr Hunt proposed accelerating the roll-out of superfast broadband and 4G mobile internet, strengthening the UK鈥檚 already-impressive position in e-commerce, and allowing Public Service Broadcasters more flexibility to develop new business models

New measures to protect freedom of expression and media plurality

皇冠体育app Culture Secretary has asked Ofcom to develop a platform-neutral way of measuring media plurality, more appropriate to a multi-platform marketplace.聽In addition, he proposed to look at whether 鈥榩ublic interest鈥� interventions to protect plurality should be allowed at any time, not just at times of corporate transactions, and additionally whether politicians should be removed from having the 鈥榝inal say鈥� in .

He also proposed an independent regulatory regime, appropriate for today鈥檚 converged media marketplace.聽

In the context of the聽, the establishment of聽a new regulatory framework for the newspaper industry offers the opportunity to look to the future, creating a system that not only聽has the confidence of consumers but also applies across all the platforms on which tomorrow鈥檚 newspapers will operate.

Protecting consumers and companies from offensive and unlawful content

To protect families from offensive content, Mr Hunt indicated that he will consider including in the new Communications Act an obligation on ISPs to ensure all their customers make an active choice about parental controls.聽

To stem the supply of unlawfully distributed content, Mr Hunt reiterated the Government鈥檚 , and proposed a range of possible measures 鈥渢o make life more difficult for sites that ignore the law鈥�, including:

• a cross-industry body, perhaps modelled on the Internet Watch Foundation, to be charged with identifying infringing websites against which action could be taken
• a streamlined legal process to make it possible for the courts to act quickly
• a responsibility on search engines and ISPs to take reasonable steps to make it harder to access sites that a court has deemed contain unlawful content or promote unlawful distribution of content;
• a responsibility on advertisers to take reasonable steps to remove their advertisements from these sites
• a responsibility on credit card companies and banks to remove their services from these sites

皇冠体育app ongoing is currently considering consultation responses, and a Green Paper will be published before the end of 2011.聽

皇冠体育app Secretary of State鈥檚 .

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