Digital Britain

So, what should be in the Digital Britain report published this afternoon ?

Universal broadband - with a minimum 2Mbps uncontended at a sensible price everywhere in the UK.

Level playing field - the BBC needs cutting down to size; cut its budget by half, reduce its workforce to 20,000 and rationalise its sprawling services.

Public service broadcasting - turn the BBC into a public service broadcaster not the commercial wannabe it is now; create a fund to support other public service broadcasting and programme making.

Cut BBC salaries - cut the ludicrous salaries paid at the top of the BBC to realistic levels - roughly equal to those paid to MPs and Ministers, use the saving to fund young film makers.

Licence fee - get rid of it and levy a charge on the digital providers and equipment makers to make up the revenues.

Break up major TV rights - so that the Setanta situation does not happen again and allows fair competition against NewsCorp for rights such as the Premiership.

Regulation - regulate TV equally on all media and bring in proper regulation of services such as YouTube; treat foreign monopolies in the same way as Kangaroo was judged.

Content certification - require all commercial content to be certified, or watermarked, so that its usage can be tracked.

Advertising - relax laws on product placement, advertorials and sponsored programming to encourage commercial production.

Online charter - introduce a usage charter for online media requiring all users to respect universal values such as ownership of content and authorship.

Cross-media ownership - deregulate cross-media ownership, but apply general anti-competition law to the market.

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