Despite its faults, the Department of Communications' (DOC) Local and Digital Content Development Strategy is a step in the right direction, broadcasting and Internet lawyers say.
At the beginning of September, the DOC published its draft strategy to stimulate local and digital content in SA. The department requires submissions on the draft by 20 October.
The objectives of the policy are to meet the requirements of the Electronic and Communications Act and the Broadcasting Act, and to accelerate growth of the industry by increasing output, facilitating the rapid entrance of new players, creating jobs, developing export potential, and to position the country as a content hub.
The draft strategy says it will meet these objectives through strategic funding and infrastructure investments, encouraging the promotion of content from historically disadvantaged groups, and promoting content as a vehicle for fostering regional integration and development.
The strategy discusses content of national interest, generating content in marginalised languages, and forming a Digital Content Fund that broadcasters and others, such as ISPs, will contribute to. The draft strategy also envisages a larger role for telecommunications regulator ICASA to monitor content.
“The policy is messy,” says Aynon Doyle, regulatory affairs manager for broadcaster MIH Group. “It uses the idea of 'convergence' to lump all sorts of content together. What it doesn't realise, for instance, is that convergence opens up all sorts of niche specialties. For instance, what works for film or TV will not necessarily work for mobile or the Web.”
Doyle also says the strategy totally ignores other incentives or programmes that are in place to promote local content. These include the Department of Trade and Industry's incentives for TV production and the Department of Arts and Culture's programme for feature filmmaking.
Dominic Cull, of Ellipsis Regulatory Solutions, says one of his main concerns about the draft strategy is that it envisages a greater role for ICASA in content monitoring.
“ICASA doesn't need any more responsibilities on its plate at the moment. The Film and Publication Board (part of the Department of Home Affairs) is already the 'content police', so why get ICASA to do this as well?” he says.
Cull says the draft strategy is a policy document, and so, by definition, is vague.
“While this document is not that great, it does fill a specific role and it needs to be worked on. Recently, the DOC has taken the leadership in a number of issues such as the National Broadband Framework, and this has been a great step forward after the previous vacuum,” he says.
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