Mr. Ryan Meade:

The Deputy has made clear his stance that he considers our companies to be publishers. It is open to legislators to decide to apply the same rules that publishers work under to the various online services. This would need to be taken through to its conclusion. What would it mean and what impact would that have on the operation of the open Internet? We have developed our services on the basis that they are open and for everyone. One of the great features of our services is that the same Gmail, drive or whatever service we offer is available anywhere in the world on the same basis. That brings with it a huge volume of material. On YouTube, for example, there are hundreds of hours of video material uploaded to our services every minute. If we were to be considered publishers, each item would have to be reviewed before appearing on the platform. It would be open to legislators to make that a requirement but it would fundamentally alter the availability of that service. It is up to legislators to decide what the rules should be. The point I would make, in common with the other members of the panel, is that legislators should also take account of what benefits the liability regime has provided.

Just because we do not consider it appropriate that the regulation should be the same for publishers as for the platforms, that does not mean the platforms cannot be regulated. As I said in my opening statement, there are regulations that apply to platforms and it is obviously open to legislators to decide if they are appropriate, if they can be strengthened, changed and made more clear and whether we can get better outcomes for users.

I do not know if the Deputy and I will agree on the question of publishers versus platforms. Perhaps we can agree, however, that just because we are not regulated in the same way as publishers and are not subject to exactly the same regime, that does not mean there is no ability for legislators to regulate.