Switzerland: ban the Internet (plus: an alternative idea)

The Swiss publisher's association Schweizer Presse has asked the Federal communication office (the regulatory body) to ban the newly launched news-portal of national broadcaster Swiss Television. The reason: it competes with the publisher's online efforts. The legal ground: Swiss Television is financed through a mandatory licence fee. Hence, the publishers claim, "public" money is financing a site that's competing with their commercial efforts, and that's contrary to the legal framework that defines ST's operations. (reported in the Netzwoche and Klein and commented by Namics, all in German). ST replies saying that the portal "is a complement to the broadcast programs".
To my knowledge, the BBC is also financed that way, yet I haven't heard the Guardian or the Telegraph asking for its (very popular) websites to be shut down by law.
But coming from the Swiss publishers, it doesn't really surprise me that rather than competing by creating compelling, innovative services, they pull the regulator's skirt. In the last ten years, the Swiss publishers have missed one development after another: they've lost tons of money on the Internet without figuring out yet what it is and how to use it (this is the main portal of the second-largest Swiss publisher, for example: it has been in development since 1996); classifieds, which once accounted for the lion's share of newspaper's revenues, have been massively migrating online but until recently most publishers discounted the thing as a passing fad (despite people like myself and others raising red flags in the mid-90s already); they've totally underestimated the potential of the free press, and today the biggest daily in the country is the free 20Minuten (in German for now, will soon have a French-language version); "blogs" is still an empty word in most newsrooms (exception: the newsmagazines L'Hebdo - who's also experimenting with a wiki - and, again, Swiss Television, where the top editor is blogging); everyone is wondering "where are the young readers gone" and asking pollsters to find out...
As Roland suggests in his headline (which I borrowed): if the Internet was banned in Switzerland, the publishers would probably be happy.
More seriously, here is an alternative idea for them, rather than complaning with the regulator: ask Swiss Television to open up its news feeds and other in-house productions (not the stuff it buys from other prods or broadcasters, but that it self-produces: national and local news, sport, live events coverage, and so on) for all to use. Something like the BBC is doing with Backstage (where the news feeds and programming interfaces for the BBC website are made available for anyone to use, or to come up with ideas for how to use them better: the slogan is "Use our stuff to build your stuff"), something like that but pushed even further: if Swiss Television's productions are made with "the people's money", let's give them back to "the people" (including the publishers) and see what they can do with them. The BBC's terms of use boil down basically to no commercial use, and no removal of the BBC brand. Swiss Television could even forgo the first, at least for usage on Swiss websites. So the playing field would be leveled, and I'm sure the publishers would then be able to demonstrate their online creativity.

Comments

[Peter]

good point :-) maybe they'll ask soon for a ban of all other news portals and even then they would still lose out to adsense on all those content sites ;-) if they go on like this they might be history sooner than they can imagine...

[Zorglub]

There are many people who would be happy if the Internet was banned. The Internet has lowered the barrier of entry if you want to report news or misc information; blogs are a good example.

The example provided in the interesting article are more about the use of public funds; while the argument is quite weak, they would probably not want to ban the Internet.

Even more interesting is the case of the big "content provided", aka Hollywood or music providers. They have started to lobby for mandatory control protection into any software that can copy copyrighted works. In the US, the Supreme Court decision on the Grokster case says that a software provider can be held responsible for copyright infringements made with the software. In Australia, a court has required Kazaa to include filters and other protection methods in its file-sharing program.

The Internet is a big file-sharing system: I provide files (such as a web page), and you can get it from my server and display it on your computer. Is there any doubt that if the Internet was to be invented now, Hollywood and co would lobby hard for a strict technical control over this beast that allows people to copy things (from the web, or send them by email, etc) without any control ? Where would we be now ?

Zorglub

[Zorglub]

I forgot to mention; actually, the Radio Suisse Romande, and Couleur 3 in particular has started to distribute some of its content under a Creative Commons licence, basically allowing redistribution without change and no commercial utilisation. A few snippets from La Premiere are also available, so it is a good start.