Various opinions are fighting following the legal misery of National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission member Professor Pirongrong Ramasoota. Yet from the chaotic scene emerges a clear-cut consensus which appears to be supported by everyone.
Thailand needs an immediate and unambiguous rule on Over The Top (OTT) services.
During the conception of the NBTC, nobody thought Internet streaming capabilities would go this far and this fast. Nobody thought things would become this complicated. So complicated, in fact, that even the people with the supposed authority to govern the relevant content and related businesses are disagreeing over what should and should not be done.
It makes everyone wonder if the case against Pirongrong, which has resulted in her being sentenced to two years in jail pending appeal for malfeasance, could have been conceived at all had a crystal-clear legal guideline been in place about what to do.
Would NBTC’s licensees have had to seek approval or advice from NBTC first before their business dealings with TrueID? Would she have had to send the warning notifications? What would have been the selling point of TrueID when it asks content providers to join _ and thus boost _ it?
Would TrueID have become viable business-wise if there had been restrictions? In other words, would TrueID have existed in the first place if there had been an explicit rule against it regarding OTT and “Must Carry”?
Two things are certain: At present, OTT can be monetised and content it displays carries some forms of advertising. What is currently uncertain or unknown is how much money is involved and how much authority the NBTC should have over it.
The NBTC was born out of a constitutional will that the Thai public should benefit as much as possible from “frequencies”, which must be regarded as national assets that belong to every Thai citizen. Advertising, meanwhile, is a business formula which may or may not serve public interests.
“Investors” naturally need to recoup their investment, and it’s the NBTC’s job to balance that inescapable reality with the constitutional will, guaranteeing that the ultimate “owners” are not taken their advantage of through overcharging or monopolistic moves.
It’s a tough job because telecom projects require massive investment. Ordinary or constitutional “owners” cannot build them. But this is the exact reason why the NBTC needs the support of clear-cut rules without any loophole.
And immediately.
Pirongrong’s case is highly technical. However, it’s highly technical because very little governs the technicalities at present.
Her court ruling was based largely on the conclusion that her action was hasty and biased, and the appearance that the action had no legal basis to fall back on. The ruling did not have anything to do with public interests, which is understandable because all the judges can only base their verdicts on what is in front of them.
The court in Pirongrong case basically ruled that, since there is no current law requiring OTT services to obtain a license from the NBTC, Pirongrong-led NBTC subcommittee cautioning all digital licensees about having their content channeled through TrueID could cause unwarranted damage to the business of True Digital Group, the parent company.
The onus is on every rule setter. It has now been accepted globally that OTT has tremendous ability to successfully reach audiences, enhance ad segmentation, improve ad engagement, and maximize cross-channel campaigns. OTT services are offering a wide variety of content consumption options for consumers, and increasing ad inventory types for marketers.
As more and more people move towards online-only media consumption, an effective way to reach these consumers is increasingly via OTT advertising. Pirongrong’s case is a wake-up call.
Advertising can be slightly annoying for, say, YouTube users three years ago, but it can be quite annoying now and it can be very much annoying in the near future. It’s just annoyance, not legal headache, when users are concerned, but sooner or later, when advertising floods OTT content, they will ask if the NBTC can do anything about it.
That will be when, if it’s not backed up by a firm and unequivocal rule, the NBTC will be caught between a rock and a hard place. On one side stand media businesses needing eyeballs and advertising income and on the other are the public whose interests are supposed to be the agency’s utmost concern.
Who should set the rule and how? It’s admittedly not an easy question at all.
Everybody knows that opening the door even slightly for the government, politicians or the military to sneak back into the broadcasting and telecom management is dangerous economically and politically. The NBTC, for all its shortcomings, some of which are serious, is here for good reasons.
In this era of information being the King of Kings, it's even more important than ever that no single entity dominates the telecom and media spheres. Some may argue that the NBTC has become too powerful itself and susceptible to the same malaise that plagued whoever having the allocation power before the commissioners. Yet the NBTC is more transparent than politicians or the military, both of whom look at the frequencies and see only two things _ money and the power to control.
Setting rules will be a nightmare, but it’s a nightmare that Pirongrong’s case cries out for.
