Global streaming giants such as Netflix, Apple TV+, and Amazon Prime Video will fall under the jurisdiction of the UK’s broadcasting regulator as the government seeks to update its regulatory framework.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) said the move is to protect UK audiences from “harmful material” and to enable audiences to make complaints against content that concerns them.
The government said it’s concerned that video-on-demand audiences are not as well protected from “harm caused by misleading health advice, pseudoscience documentaries on climate change and COVID misinformation” as broadcast audiences.
Under a new “light touch” proposal published on Thursday, larger non-UK TV-like video-on-demand providers that target and profit from UK audiences will be under the jurisdiction of the Office of Communications (Ofcom), which will be given powers to draft and enforce a new video-on-demand code that is similar to the UK’s existing broadcasting code but are more practical for video-on-demand services.
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