Apart from the developments in media policymaking mentioned in the previous sections, many changes have taken place in the domain to be discussed here: infrastructures. Politicians and other policymakers who are responsible for the media domain have not always recognised this. Usually, they regard digitalisation of infrastructures as something that only applied to colleagues responsible for telecommunications policy. The developments in this domain, however, form one of the most important reasons for the fact that traditional goals and instruments of media policymaking are being seriously challenged. That is why we have expanded on this in a special section of this booklet.

The various forms of content distribution in the Netherlands have all developed separately, be they cable, broadcast transmission, ADSL or the written word. The traditional media landscape reflects both the different ‘media pillars’ (e.g. press, radio, television) and the different layers (technical infrastructures, distribution). Legislation governing them has also developed in parallel (created by separate ministries, as we have noted previously) with no single piece of legislation covering it all. More recently, policymakers in the Netherlands have been stimulated by their colleagues at the EU in Brussels to reconsider the situation. On July 1, 2003, the EC Electronic Communications Framework went into effect, which recognises that separate policy is needed between content and the infrastructure required to propagate and distribute that content.

According to the Framework policy, the different distribution channels should be technology transparent, so that different infrastructures can compete in the marketplace. This clause is putting pressure on Dutch policymakers to re-examine totally obsolete legislation governing cable and frequency management. Arguments about scarcity and impact may explain how the existing legislation was passed, but in many cases have been superseded by advances in technology.

The Internet, especially peer-to-peer exchange software such as Kazaa, has shown that definitions of ‘the source’ are more difficult to define than legislators had ever imagined. In the cases of illegal downloading of content, application of existing legislation as applied to broadcasters is either not valid or not enforceable.

DIGITALISATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL CONVERGENCE

Two technical developments have had a direct influence on the longevity of the current approach to the media landscape and are inextricably linked to each other. They are digitalisation and technological convergence, along with spectrum scarcity.