The Senate has scrapped amendments to the Media Law in the section relating to on-demand Internet services.

Culture Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski said during the Upper House debate the changes are to be introduced in a separate item of legislation.

The bone of contention and object of wide social criticism had been the introduction of a registration requirement with the National Broadcasting Council for all television programs with exclusive on-line distribution.

Experts called this an attempt to introduce censorship and jeopardising Internet development in Poland.

Earlier, the Sejm, or Lower House, had approved the amendments in a vote on 4 March. This had been mandatory in order to implement the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, a background to the EU law on audiovisual broadcast content.

Poland is already one year behind schedule in adapting its legislation to meet the EU standard in this area and could face financial consequences imposed by the European Commission. The deadline for implementing the AMSD directive was 19 December, 2009. (ss/jb)

Source: IAR