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The OTTs and Internet Giants believe they wear a ‘Cloak of Regulatory Invisibility’: they should be exempted from the laws and rules that apply to everyone else in order to maintain what they refer to as their ‘current business model’ which consists of taking the revenues out of countries without paying any tax, making any local investment or obeying local laws or developing any human capital. However, it is increasingly accepted among policy makers around the world that law and regulation does – and must - apply to the online world and that OTTs should be made subject to existing regulation in the economy and also that new rules may be required to properly regulate the emerging digital economy.
The shape of what a future framework that addresses the challenge of OTTs might look like is now coming together around the globe and this includes:
• The question as to how OTTs and the Internet Giants pay their fair share of taxation to local economies;
• How is the investment required to build the broadband networks of developing nations and bridge the digital divide? Equitable commercial arrangements and revenue sharing between OTTs and network providers is an imperative for developing regions and developed regions and it is important that legal and regulatory frameworks permit and promote these outcomes;
• A level playing field where local service providers are not subject to rules that do not apply to online competitors and the application of the same rules to local and online providers – including the licensing of service providers (“Same service same rules”).
Laws and regulations exist for good public policy reasons which are valid irrespective of whether the delivery method is online or offline. It is imperative that regulators and governments close the loopholes that allow the new global corporations to use the Internet to avoid regulation
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