Amendments or no amendments, the future still looks grim to some potential datacasters as the Australian government makes adjustments to what is believed to be an already "flawed regime."
"We will examine the bill with fresh eyes and see what opportunities there are, if any, but frankly we're not optimistic," Fairfax Manager of Corporate Affairs Bruce Wolpe told ZDNet Australia.
In a swift turnaround in Australia's datacasting debate, the Government's ban on multi-channelling was overturned in a joint move by the Labor and Australian Democrats parties, allowing national broadcasters ABC and SBS to build a second digital channel on their networks.
However, tight controls reigned as the government refused to allow the amendments to be passed unless restrictions were made on the type of content the ABC and SBS could deliver.
The outcome from the embroiled debate is that ABC and SBS will not be able to show sport, movies, and comedy on the extra channels, and restrictions will be made to the type of news and current affairs that can be broadcast.
"I think the prospective datacasters need to examine the bill as it has emerged from the Senate and make a judgement as to whether they think there is a viable opportunity for them there," Shadow Minister for Communications Stephen Smith said in a media statement.
However, Wolpe told ZDNet Australia that, "if we can't provide something that is attractive to viewers and different to broadcasters, then there is no point in going into business. But we'll give it a clean look."
"The legislation is still highly restrictive as to what datacasters can do in terms of both e-commerce and Internet content," he said.
Also disappointed with the results, Labor Senator for the ACT, Kate Lundy told ZDNet Australia that, "by the Democrats not showing their hands at all, they were sucked into the vortex of the government's last minute negotiations."
"We wanted to remove all restrictions on content," she said.
Others, namely the commercial stations, would prefer maximum restrictions on the public broadcasters. General Manager of the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations, Tony Branigan spoke to ZDNet Australia yesterday, before the bill was passed. He said: "our preference would be to restrict them (ABC and SBS) to running public interest programs of a clearly complimentary nature, such as children's programs, education, foreign language, news and parliamentary coverage".
"Parliament should indicate clearly to the organisations the kinds of programs it's expected would be applied," Branigan said.
According to Lundy, the legislation has been created in order to protect the incumbents in the television industry. "We need to rise above the interests of the incumbent players," she said.
"The most disappointing thing is that the democrats did not see fit to support Labor to determine viability of potential datacasters participation in the market," Lundy said.
"I'm gravely concerned about what we've potentially lost in digital content here in Australia." Lundy said.
According to Smith, the changes to the datacasting legislation are "modest amendments to what we regard as a flawed regime."
