These proposed online media regulations are in need of a serious rethink

What has become known as the Finkelstein Report has been delivered to Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. It is proposing to form a News Media Council with powers to order media organisations to issue apologies, corrections and give rights of reply. Nothing wrong with that. In fact I could think of one particular media outlet I'd like to give me a right of reply on some issues.

But they are proposing that these rules and their monitoring role be applied to all online sites right down to 15,000 hits per year.


Is there really anyone who still refers to hits as a meaningful metric for website traffic? In fact, is there any monitoring tool that even bothers to measure them? Certainly Google Analytics doesn't. Websites use far more meaningful metrics these days, like absolute and unique visitors, repeat visits, and to a lesser degree bounce rates.

Even using absolute visits, even very small personal interest blogs like this one (with about 4000 visitors per month) would be caught up in these proposed regulations if they were enacted. And of course there's also the little concern about compelling disclosure of those metrics...

But probably the biggest concern with this idea is the sheer scale of the agency charged with this huge monitoring role. It could be the proverbial Ben Hur situation.

Rethink time surely?

UPDATE 30 April 2012:

It seems the review reconsidered in light of all the adverse commentary about the interim report:

The Review considers that this threshold would be far too low and would require a very
resource-intensive complaints and enforcement system.