Government does the right thing

Stuff reports:

The Government will allow online video providers like Netflix to self-classify their content after officials warned providers could withdraw from the New Zealand market if a more stringent approach suggested was taken.

Hooray common sense won.

It would be insane for us to have an army of bureaucrats viewing and classifying every single TV show and film available on provides such as Netflix.

All these shows have generally already gone through a classification process overseas.

All we need is a requirement that any material have a classification, and a process for appealing that classification if someone thinks it is materially incorrect.

The Government opted to allow providers to self-classify, going against the wishes of the Children’s Commissioner and the Labelling Body which wanted the current process followed.

Well done Minister Martin. Following their advice would have been incredibly costly and not actually provided any substantive benefits.

The regulatory move went through some trouble with officialdom – the regulatory impact analysis itself was not up to scratch according to the Quality Assurance panel, made up of Department of Internal Affairs and Treasury.

That panel found the original report did not meet quality standard, saying the analysis was limited on “the magnitude of the risk from misclassifying content” and there was “little information about the costs to providers”. A supplementary report was found to have addressed these concerns. 

Which suggests the officials involved were so keen on the proposal, they failed to do a rigorous analysis.