Dan Sabbagh takes aim at Europe’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive in today’s Times. Click here for his take. He writes in part:

In Europe, MEPs will begin thrashing out revisions to Television Without Frontiers. The new directive aims to keep up with changes in technology, setting minimum standards in regulation across the EU.

This is a well-meaning objective but it is flawed. Each country should concentrate on its own TV regulations, but this is not where the argument is going. Product placement should be a reasonable alternative to spot advertising, but the Germans don’t like it. That’s OK, but why inflict that on Europe?

And with respect to new media, Sabbagh adds:

The new directive also wants to regulate online broadcasters. Private blogs are excluded, as is anybody not primarily in the moving image business (such as a newspaper website) - but any internet TV site with money-making aspirations gets caught. That includes a Euro YouTube.

MEPs will debate an amendment next week to exclude sites that do not exercise editorial control, which would take out sites such as YouTube, but leave in the actual creator. The idea is to create regulations to protect minors, provide a right of reply and prevent racism. That sounds reasonable but, as Ofcom, the British regulator, says, this is mostly covered by criminal law already.

Our take: A lot of ink has been spilled on this issue already. There exists a fairly clear U.K. consenus that the AVMS directive constitutes poor regulation: It won’t achieve its goals and will foster - not reduce - regulatory uncertainty in the new media sphere. But the U.K. so far has been outgunned by Viviane Reding on this issue and from what we hear - this will likely continue.