Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the British Internet Publishers' Alliance
During our oral evidence we undertook to provide
the Committe with some illustrative slides in support of our written
and oral statements. I am encloseing a set which I'd be most grateful
if you could make available to Mr Kaufman and other Committee
members[36].
These cover:
— BBC Website Navigation;
— examples of cross-promotion of BBC
Internet services;
— beeb.com—an illustration of
some of the issues we have raised; and
— the business models of web publishing.
If members would like a practical demonstration
of how the sites are structured and how they inter-link BIPA would
be pleased to arrange this.
Meanwhile,the BBC in their evidence today seem
to have misrepresented BIPA's position on at least two key points
and again I'd be most grateful if you could bring our concerns
to the attention of Mr Kaufman and the Committee members.
1. Firstly the BBC claimed that BIPA was
attacking public service. Clearly this is not the case. We specifically
stated in both our written and oral evidence that the BBC had
a rightful place on the Internet to deliver their public service
remit and that there was no question of trying to remove them.
Our concern is to make sure that Government has adequate mechanisms
in place to determine exacly what their public service remit is
on the Internet and to ensure that they operate fairly without
distorting the market.
2. Secondly they claimed that BIPA was attempting
to freeze the BBC into out-of-date techology. This is patently
untrue when we explicitly said in answer to one of the questions
that we thought investment in digital broadcasting was an essential
part of their public service remit and that we expected Internet
broadcasting to develop once the technology was available to deliver
high quality audiovisual content.
I hope these points of clarification, together
with the slides, are helpful to the members in their further deliberations.
November 1999
36 Not printed. Back
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