Minister says podcast rules must not stifle new media

Podcasts may be excluded from Iceland’s media legislation as part of a comprehensive review, Culture, Innovation and Higher Education Minister Logi Einarsson said, according to mbl.is. He also stressed that regulation must not be so burdensome that it “stifles new growth at birth”.

Árni Helgason, a parliamentarian for the Independence Party, urged the minister to speed up the work and criticised the Media Commission for imposing daily fines and other measures on podcast producers over registration requirements.

Árni raised the issue during an unscheduled question period in Parliament. He said the commission had exchanged letters with various podcast hosts and requested that their podcasts be registered as media outlets.

He questioned whether this was consistent with the purpose of the media legislation, given the differences between podcasts and traditional media. He also said that threatened daily fines and other penalties placed a heavy burden on podcast producers.

“Podcasts are, as most members of Parliament know well, friends or acquaintances talking about everyday matters, whether cosmetics, politics or English football,” Árni said. He argued that it was difficult to place such activity under the same rules as a media organisation that reports news systematically and according to an editorial policy.

Árni referred to Logi’s earlier announcement that the legislation would be amended to exclude podcasts from its definition of media outlets. He praised the minister’s position and asked when the amendment would be introduced.

“Does he consider it appropriate to pursue this registration so forcefully when it is clear that the change is imminent?” Árni asked, calling on the minister to allow some flexibility in the circumstances.

Logi replied that the Media Commission was an oversight authority whose role was to enforce the law, and that the minister could not intervene in its work.

“As minister, I do not want to, and it is not appropriate for me to, interfere in the work of oversight bodies. There must be an arm’s-length relationship,” Logi said.

He nevertheless agreed that the media market was developing rapidly and that legislation needed to reflect changing circumstances. He said Iceland’s media laws were broader than those in many other countries and that the Nordic countries did not generally require podcasts to register to the same extent.

Logi also mentioned YouTube and other distribution channels that were not registered as media outlets, and questioned what in practice distinguished a podcast from, for example, a video on Instagram.

“These are certainly questions worth examining,” he said.