BIPA blasts BBC over Internet publishing

The British Internet Publishers Alliance (BIPA) has lashed out at the BBC for distorting the Internet publishing market in the UK.

The comments come in the wake of the publication of the Davies committee report into the future funding of the BBC, which calls on the broadcaster to increase its attempts to gain revenue from Beeb.com - its commercial online arm run by BBC Worldwide.

BIPA chairman, Sir Frank Rogers, said: "These issues cannot wait to be resolved - the Web moves too fast for that - we need an independent person to review the BBC charter. The UK has the potential to have a world class Internet industry but only if these problems are sorted out.

"It is clear that the BBC is distorting this market to some extent," Rogers continued, "Web publishing is a fragile business right now - imagine a few years from now a small online car magazine - how can it compete with the Top Gear site?"

A spokesman for BBC Online said: "This is just the same as when the BBC first began broadcasting in colour - not everyone had access to it but we have to keep up. In five years time the question would be the reverse - why the BBC ignored this technology."

Responding to criticism that British licence payers are subsidising Web sites being viewed by Web surfers from other countries who do not pay for a TV licence, the spokesman added that the corporation is looking at ways to commercially exploit the content of its public service sites.

This might involve selling content through international portals. Such a change would also mean excluding foreign viewers from looking at bbc.co.uk Web sites.