'What If Television Becomes Just an App?' Re-Conceptualising the Legal Notion of Audiovisual Media Service in the Light of Media Convergence
28 Pages Posted: 8 Jan 2014
Date Written: December 20, 2013
Abstract
This working paper has been prepared in the context of the FP7 project Experimedia, the IWT-SBO-EMSOC project and iMinds-MiX projects. The objective was to carry out a legal analysis of the notion 'audiovisual media service' – being a building block in, and defining the scope of, the current EU regulatory framework for the audiovisual sector – in order to understand how this notion is being challenged by emerging technologies and services, such as connected TV, over-the-top television, etc. This requires interpretive, qualitative analysis of the constitutive elements of the definition of 'audiovisual media service' put forward by the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive, combining doctrinal legal research methods with interdisciplinary methods. Our study looked in particular at two sources of interpretation: on the one hand, (semi-)binding sources including the recitals and preparatory documents of the Directive itself and regulatory decisions adopted by national media authorities in EU Member States (in which further guidance was provided on how to interpret the criteria included in the definition of audiovisual media service); on the other hand, non-binding sources such as scholarly writings and policy or guidance documents adopted by the national media authorities.
Keywords: AVMS, Audiovisual Media Services Directive, Convergence, Europe
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