Conspiracy theories have to do with government papers; the more secretive the paper, the less reliable the source, ergo, the more speculative the theory. In this case, the government paper can be found online. Between the lines of the paper on the Multimedia Revolution by the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport you find the first draft of the worst case scenario of the internet's future... in other words: how the government might escape the catch 22 of content regulation without legitimate power.

'Regulation' in the media has long been defined in 'negative' and 'positive' terms. Negative regulation implies, "preventing the transmission of undesirable material". Positive regulation can be understood as a pseudonym for public service broadcasting: "the requirement to produce programming of a certain character". "The government's approach to internet regulation is to encourage voluntary action". But "by its very nature the internet is international" and therefore potentially "escaping the entire national infrastructure and thus national regulation". In other words: it seems almost impossible to superimpose law and order onto the internet, based on "the full force of the existing law". And the report concludes that "over time, public sector regulation of content will become increasingly difficult; technology will erode the state's capacity to intervene."

That is certainly undesirable from a governmental point of view, so the state should look for possible spanners to throw in the works and stop the wide spread of the internet. That would be easy. To name but a few: "the Telecommunications Act 1984 and the Broadcasting Act 1990 prevent public telecommunications operators from conveying or providing entertainment services nationally to homes." That means that "BT [is] theoretically in breach of the 'broadcast ban' when more than one viewer watche[s] the same broadcast over the Internet." It is questionable if anything could bring the internet to a halt at this stage, but it would certainly shake the global network if the government would act upon the realisation that something seems to be kind-of-quite-dodgy.

But the government loves the internet. Let's have a blueprint of that *long boom*, shall we? The internet has long been hailed as the god given solution to unemployment, drug problems, rehabilitation, under population, hay fever and the next world cup...you name it! The *accelerated* development and ballistic increase of 'users' are somehow being mistaken for economic growth and/or human progress. What's the difference between information and education, secure work and flexible work force? You tell me! The figures look right - whatever *growth* those steep figures represent.

That's the catch 22. On the one hand the state desires the growth and spread of the internet. On the other hand they despise the very nature of the internet, the lateral and apparently chaotic architecture of content which ridicules old models of content regulation as seen on TV.

In both cases the concerns relate to a mass audience which will only be reached through a much better broadcasting quality and facilitation than currently available online: "there are technical barriers to the transmission of high quality audio-visual material over the Internet, but these are diminishing and show signs of all but disappearing." We might naively assume that this should make the regulatory bodies fairly unhappy. Those will be the times when it matters that "the regulation of content will [be] difficult".

Paradoxically, the government "is committed to encouraging the rapid roll-out of broader-band networks throughout the country". (Let's skip BT's breach for the time being.) Expand your mind and it becomes clear that the acceleration of streaming quality might be the best (and only) way to create alternatives to regulatory bodies without any existing legitimate power. The increase in bandwidth obviously will soon attract video on demand and online streaming of TV channels. It is only a question of time before the many to many users will be turned into passive recipients of top down streaming - merely because the production of equally 'professional' material will be just as expensive as producing TV programmes today.

The acceleration of high bandwidth channels will (almost naturally) change the face of the internet and push the independent producers to the periphery. Yes, there will be a periphery! And that will be neglectable, if not regulatable... If most users are being kept by a small number of companies specialised in high bandwidth content production, then it would be good to buy lunches for those directors fairly frequently. That will be the lobby for the replacement of public service broadcasting with the Gentlemen's Agreement Regulation.

And then what? The 80s are back - with a vengeance! *Old* models of top down structures and the appropriate criticism will be revived. We can all wrap up our Deleuze and Guattari and dust down the old Chomsky. Some will start writing about the parallels of early 80s community access channels for TV and the global network of the www. And they will point out once more that *people* would have been happy to commission *shows*, but didn't have the energy to actively engage in the production of meaning. Oh, what the heck...

Micz Flor [micz@yourserver.co.uk]