Mexico. It is a global trend from which Mexico is not exempt, the growing preference of audiences for audiovisual content offered by streaming platforms. In this regard, regulatory authorities have undertaken the search to level market conditions with other traditional broadcasting models, such as free-to-air, restricted or pay television.
Indeed, in 2021, streaming platforms have established themselves as the main way of accessing original and premiere series and films. This has been contributed by the closure of cinemas and the proliferation of alternatives for the visualization of these audiovisual contents during the first pandemic year.
Based on this, various regulatory bodies around the world have begun to balance the operational, tax and competitive conditions that prevail in the ecosystem that integrates these platforms with traditional players.
However, today we are moving at a rapid pace towards a scenario in which the obligations fulfilled by free-to-air and pay TV, for example, those related to transmitted content and consumer service, are applied to streaming platforms.
UK at the Forefront of Regulatory Levelling
The British government has undertaken an initiative from its Ministry of Culture to update the rules applicable to broadcasting players (BBC, ITV and Channel 4) and seek to level the competitive playing field with online video-on-demand platforms.
The objective is that the latter comply with the standards of impartiality, fairness, harm and offense that are applicable today to traditional players. At the same time, it would be incorporated into streaming services within the regulatory framework that regulates the provision of direct-to-consumer content under the supervision and jurisdiction of Ofcom, the regulatory authority for broadcasting, telecommunications and the postal service in the United Kingdom.
With this, the first stone is laid to form an equitable ecosystem of distribution of audiovisual content.
Other Proposals at the International Level
So far this year, two Asian countries have extended content obligations to streaming platforms operating in the country. In the case of India, they are already beginning to implement rules similar to those applicable to television players and during 2021 a code of practice for digital services will be issued. Indonesia lifted its ban on Netflix and other platforms by pledging to follow rules on violence, pornography and terrorism, as well as respond to consumer complaints within 24 hours.
In the Latin American region, countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Colombia already have precedents that seek to equate obligations in the audiovisual content market, with projects and initiatives that regulate streaming platforms in the same way as is done to free and pay TV.
For example, in Colombia a 2015 bill intended that the contents of these were supervised by a state entity, as well as to avoid the phenomenon of concentration in the industry leaving aside the public interest of the audiences. While in the case of Brazil there would be a dozen projects to directly regulate digital players.
These ongoing initiatives at the international level lay the foundations for progress in the matter in Mexico, with a regulatory system that regulates in an equitable manner the operation and transactions that take place in the physical world, as well as in that digital one.
Undoubtedly, they are the first steps of a continuous process of adjustments to the global regulatory framework, from which Mexico is not exempt and that in the medium and long term will contribute to matching the competitive floor both between countries and between companies in that duality of the physical and the digital.
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