REGULATING INTERNET AND CONVERGENT MOBILE CONTENT THE NEW CONTENT SERVICES REGIME

摘要

The purpose of this article is to explain the new regulatory regime (the 'content services regime') that appliesnto the wide range of content delivered via the Internet and mobile devices. The article will first outline thenvarious regimes that regulated content delivered by these technologies prior to the introduction of thencontent services regime. It will then provide an overview of the new regime, including details of its objectivesnand of the legal complexities involved in determining its scope. It will then summarise the Australian systemnfor classifying content, and explain how the content services regime adapts and applies the classificationnsystem to forms of content delivered via the Internet and mobile devices. After detailing some of thenminutiae of the scheme, the article will conclude with comments about the policy choices made inndesigning the new regime and some observations about the likely effectiveness, and the attendant benefitsnand costs, of the regime.