Search Results

This chapter presents a discussion on the audiovisual battleground and the diverse of effects of information liberalization in the information society. This chapter provides a historic and descriptive account of Roberto Barzanti's call for community action after the Treaty of the Commission of the European Communities has failed to govern the political rights of the citizens of the European Union. This failure to govern has led the European audiovisual market to decline. Barzanti, former president of the European Parliament Committee on Youth, Culture, Education, Media, and Sport claims that the solution to the botched European audiovisual market lies on the solid support from the Community. He pointed out that the audiovisual industries of the United States are the predator which devours the European Union's audiovisual industry. Barzanti then proposed various mechanisms which, surprisingly, pointed them back to the anti-competitive market structures which were first considered as the cause of the decline.

After engaging in a discussion on the post-liberal framework of participatory theory of public space in the previous chapter, this fourth chapter opens a discussion on the political design of information infrastructure and the modern realm of telecommunications. This chapter examines the historic European origins of information liberalization in the age of information. This chapter gives assessments on policies which harmonised regulation of the information infrastructure. These policies were assessed in terms of key instruments for shaping the public sphere through universal service, de-monopolization, and liberalization. It also discusses that the Community's regulatory approach towards the information infrastructure shows radical transformation brought about by policy arguments of technological necessity and liberal competition. This chapter also addresses the problem of public communications from the point of view of infrastructure policy and provides a springboard for a more detailed and exhaustive discussion on the policies in information society for the succeeding chapters.

This chapter attempts to provide a contemporary and clear-cut definition of information society. It raises an important point that information society is not just about the processes of technological progress. This chapter states that information society depends largely on societies' and states' social, economic, cultural and other political decisions. Several issues, concerns, and dilemmas are also raised in this chapter with regards to information liberalization. It also raises a number of supranational and global benefits and advantages that come along with liberalizing the information society. This chapter also points out the connection between modern democracy and the growing landscape of information society and attempts to analyse the effects of information liberalization in the democratic political layout of a nation or society. It points out that it is important to compare the status of the fundamental rights of the people to access information and the competition in the constitution of the information society.