Three Regulators, One Screen

For most of the post-war period, regulation of moving images in the UK divided neatly along distribution lines. Cinema and home video were the BBFC's province under the Video Recordings Act 1984. Television was Ofcom's, under the Communications Act 2003 and the Broadcasting Code. The internet, until very recently, was almost no one's.

The Online Safety Act 2023 has changed that. Part 3 imposes safety duties on user-to-user services and search services in respect of illegal content and content harmful to children. Part 5 addresses pornography on services that do not host user content. The duties are general, technology-neutral, and overlap in several places with the existing classification and broadcasting regimes.

Three regimes, one frame

Consider a single piece of content. A feature film containing extreme violence, released theatrically with an 18 certificate from the BBFC, broadcast on a linear channel under Ofcom's watershed rules, and clipped onto a video-sharing platform regulated under Part 4B of the Communications Act and now also Part 3 of the OSA. The same five seconds of footage are subject to three distinct regulatory frames at the same moment.

In practice the regimes have settled into a rough division of labour.

• BBFC continues to set classifications that retailers and streamers voluntarily adopt as their reference point.
• Ofcom retains primacy on linear broadcasting and now functions as the OSA regulator.
• The OSA sits over the top, imposing systemic duties of risk assessment and proportionate measures, rather than item-by-item judgments.

The risk is not regulatory conflict but regulatory drift. Three bodies each disclaiming responsibility for the harder editorial calls because another body 'really' has the lead.

The harder cases are editorial

Where this matters is at the margins. Trailers and previews that fall short of a full classification, user-uploaded clips of classified films, and AI-generated works that do not have an obvious "publisher" to whom duties attach. Each of these is, on a strict reading, within all three regimes. Each, in practice, is meaningfully governed by none.

The OSA's transparency duties may, in time, force the regulators into a more articulate division. Until they do, the law on the same square inch of screen will remain less coherent than the screen itself.