Asian Media Summit: co-regulation for all?

Its always dangerous to go to Asia and talk about co-regulation and civil society multistakeholders as if they really exist. here's a good write-up from Botswana on a big Beijing media summit:
'President of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation and former Secretary-General of the European Broadcasting Union, Dr Jean-Bernard Munch, observed that universal principles of freedom of expression and information can be upheld in an environment that allows for effective co-regulation of the media industry on the basis of common codes of conduct, as well as self-regulation by individual media houses. He noted that in Switzerland, mechanisms for co-regulation in broadcasting involve structures through which the Federal Minister responsible appoints an oversight body largely drawn from civil society.

Amidst calls for re-regulation of global media in the face of mounting evidence of a worldwide decline in public trust in news organizations, the concept of co-regulation found widespread acceptance among diverse Summit participants. As one participant noted regulatory mechanisms, along with guarantees of press freedom, should exist for the protection of the governed, not governments.'

Rights and the Internet

Computers, Privacy, Freedom will this year focus on social network users and a potential Bill of Rights - in response to rather flagrant privacy breaches by Facebook, but also governments, employers and stalkers dipping liberally into social networks to prosecute their interests.
Also, there's a very interesting article by Yaman Akdeniz regarding Internet filtering and European law and regulation.

More on how regulation aids big business against entrants

Mr Cable: 'Regulation is too often the creature of big businesses with the resources to handle it forcing out the small.  The cost to business of regulation currently in the pipeline is around £20bn: far in excess of any direct help the Government does or can give. Of course regulation can be necessary to protect consumers, the environment and the labour force.  But it must be proportionate.  I used a statement to Parliament yesterday explaining how this Government will embark on radical steps to remove and stop unnecessary and costly regulation.'

Yet the European Parliament (quite rightly) asks big companies to account for human rights, notably Siemens Nokia Networks for their Iranian operations.

Vince Cable on Adam Smith

Stronger competition policy signals: "Arguing for more competition instead of cosy cartels. Arguing for better protection for consumers from shady practice. Rejecting special pleading... Amongst [Adam Smith's] many wise words which have stood the test of time is this: “the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer”. And the consumer is all of us.Smith – and this is often forgotten – also argued trenchantly that successful capitalism rested on a sense of morality, not on unfettered greed."

Krugman on corporate lobbying against regulation

How broken is DC? 'Many Obama supporters have been disappointed by what they see as the administration’s mildness on regulatory issues — its embrace of limited financial reform that doesn’t break up the biggest banks, its support for offshore drilling, and so on. Yet corporate interests are balking at even modest changes from the permissiveness of the Bush era. From the outside, this rage against regulation seems bizarre. I mean, what did they expect? The financial industry, in particular, ran wild under deregulation, eventually bringing on a crisis that has left 15 million Americans unemployed, and required large-scale taxpayer-financed bailouts to avoid an even worse outcome. Did Wall Street expect to emerge from all that without facing some new restrictions? Apparently it did.'

Harpers' Steven Pearlstein: industrial warfare

"The biggest oil spill ever. The biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The deadliest mine disaster in 25 years. One recall after another of toys from China, of vehicles from Toyota, of hamburgers from roach-infested processing plants. The whole Vioxx fiasco. And let’s not forget the biggest climate threat since the Ice Age…It hardly captures the breadth and depth of these regulatory failures to say that during the Bush Administration the pendulum swung a bit too far in the direction of deregulation and lax enforcement. What it misses is just how dramatically the regulatory agencies have been shrunken in size, stripped of talent and resources, demoralized by lousy leadership, captured by the industries they were meant to oversee and undermined by political interference and relentless attacks on their competence and purpose. "

The Coalition: our programme for government: co-regulation

The second section of the document makes clear that regulation needs improvement by using more co-regulation:

"We will cut red tape by introducing a ‘one-in, one-out’ rule whereby no new regulation is brought in without other regulation being cut by a greater amount.
• We will end the culture of ‘tick-box’ regulation, and instead target inspections on high-risk organisations through co-regulation and improving professional standards.
• We will impose ‘sunset clauses’ on regulations and regulators to ensure that the need for each regulation is regularly reviewed."
Surprising that some of this still doesn't exist in 2010!