Oxford Media Convention 2004: Philip Lowe, DG, EC Competition Directorate

Philip Lowe, Director General, Competition Directorate, European Commission 'Media Concentration & Convergence: Competition in Communications'

I should note that I find discussions of regulation dull at best, and this was a dull, civil servant-scripted speech. (And I know PowerPoint is out of favour but it does have some use, especially for poorer speeches, in helping the audience follow a talk structure.) What is most unsatisfactory is the idea that we have open and free markets yet Lowe has 600 staff in Brussels who spend their time working on the most banal issues, for which there is no clear intellectual basis for decision-making.

Trends identified by Lowe included the use of new technology to create new markets and the way that technology has made national level regulation impossible in many areas. He also discussed how new media markets might be monopolised by traditional players, or because key content remained bundled in established (often vertical) companies could be withheld from new players. The Directorate seek to prevent abuse of market power -- such as leveraging content to get into or bar entry to new media markets -- to the detriment of consumers. However, he observed that where business models and economics won't support two competitors there is no point forcing the creation of another competitor, citing the Sky Italy case.

One of the Directorate's objectives is to preserve some degree of restriction of use of intellectual property rights, thus allowing product development and innovation. I would have been interested to know where he sees this innovation taking place.

Finally, he asked whether Internet activities fall within the definition of broadcasting (but didn't suggest an answer this question) and noted that the Directorate was also address spam, electronic piracy and counterfeiting. He argued that the Directorate needed to be informed not just by competitors ('who are complaining') but by consumers and (other) people who are interested. There was no elaboration on how consumers might inform them, or why this was desirable.

[This posting is not checked against a record of the talk. The discussion is not included.]

Comments

[philip lowe]

pretty accurate in my view. No excuse, but too late to do anything about on the day. There are reasonably good unbureaucratic answers to your questions. Will have to wait til the next article/speech opportunity which is not immediately identifiable. Oxford was the first time anyone had been to a media-related event from here. If there is a next time, the presentation will have to be entirely different

[Nico Macdonald]

Credit to Philip Lowe, and the Competition Directorate, for getting out to media-related events. Hopefully the feedback he and others receive will be useful in evolving models of presentation and discourse.

[Jamie Cowling]

It is my fault that Philip's speech came across as too technical for some of the audience. Poor briefing so I hold my hands up on that. From a regulatory perspective - that's mine - I thought it was an interesting perspective and I was pleased that Philip took the time and trouble to speak at our event.

[Nico Macdonald]

An admirable mea culpa from Jamie Cowling. Sadly I didn't have a client wanting me to cover this year's Oxford Media Convention, and didn't discover whether the programming had been adapted accordingly.

However, Jamie Cowling did write a nice paper, entitled 'Digital News: Genie's Lamp Or Pandora's Box?', for a recent ippr seminar in which I took part, and about which I shall write in another post.