The White Paper seeks to bridge the gap between the legislative framework applicable to audio and audio-visual content services and the technological advancements and trends which have come with the global digital revolution - thereby promoting investment in the audio and audio-visual content industries and facilitating socio-economic development.
The DCDT proposes that South Africa adopt a similar approach to that taken by the European Commission. In 2005, the European Commission resolved to, amongst other things, relax the regulation of broadcasting and broadcasting-like services (i.e. non-linear services provided over the Internet), and to level the competitive landscape between traditional broadcasting services (which were subject to a particular regulatory environment) and non-linear services by introducing a basic set of rules for non-linear services.
The European Commission stated that a more technology neutral approach needs to be taken to the regulation of what has traditionally been referred to as broadcasting services and introduced a set of rules that apply in a technology/platform neutral way - so that is, rules that apply to all services regardless of the platform used to provide the services.
The White Paper adopts a similar technological neutral approach of treating services in the same way so as to ensure regulatory parity and fair competition.
The White Paper proposes the following: