Adam Thierer of the Progress & Freedom Foundation was in Brussels last week attending a Summit on the Future of Free Expression / Child Protection. He offers his thoughts on the summit at the P&FF website.

"This week I traveled to Brussels and, along with my friends at the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA), co-hosted an interesting roundtable discussion entitled "Mission Impossible: Protecting Children and Free Expression in Our New, Digital Content World." The focus of the day's discussion was the same as previous ICRA roundtables that I have participated in and written about here before: What steps can we take to shield children from potentially objectionable media content without repressing freedom of speech / expression...

After a short introduction from ICRA's Stephen Balkam, we began the event by hearing from Europe's most important public official dealing with these matters: EU Commissioner Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media...

Reding went on to outline what would end up being the focus of much of the day's discussion: Europe's various models of "co-regulation."...

during Q&A, Ms. Reding was inundated with questions about how it will all work in practice...

ICRA's Stephen Balkam, who had his video i-Pod sitting in front of him, showed Commissioner Reding a clip from ABC's "Desperate Housewives" that he had downloaded from the Internet for a few dollars. But he pointed out that he could also watch the show over broadcast television or on DVD. So, he asked, will "Desperate Housewives" be regulated the same way or differently on all 3 platforms? Commissioner Reding didn't really provide Stephen and the audience with a clear answer, and when challenged with similar questions from other participants it became obvious to me that the devil will be in the (regulatory) details...

beyond convergence and the "scale-scope-volume" problem, regulators now face a world in which humans create almost as much media as they consume... parents feel that the more serious problem they face today is not what children can watch or download but instead what they can upload about themselves or others...

concerns and issues regarding objectionable media content and parental controls are remarkably similar on both sides of the Atlantic. As Commissioner Reding noted, "There may well be disagreements between America and Europe about where exactly to draw the line... however, if you take a broader world view, the similarities of approach in democratic countries are obviously much greater than the differences." Indeed, that appears to be the case. But drawing that line will remain a difficult, contentious task."