Regulatory Nightmares

Regulating online TV channels is going to be a hot subject for the rest of this year - the FCC brought in rules at the beginning of the month that banned any on air promotion of web properties with any commercial content to children aged 12 and under; but I've heard tales of kids in junior schools passing around clips of Saddam's infamous hanging videos on their mobiles.

Regulators have struggled since the inception of the internet, but the recent blanket ban on online gambling in the US shows that they can be effective, but there are other areas such as spam that have not been properly addressed by the powers-that-be.

With video content it's rather more difficult; because it's practically impossible to interpret the content of a video files, undesirable content can easily be uploaded to an innocuous web service and be accessed by anyone.

However hard the regulators try, marketeers and pormographers will inevitably remain one step ahead.

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