1. This definition, which reflects widespread understanding of the term within the communications industry in Australia, was adopted in Department of Communications, Regulating Harms in the Australian Communications Sector: Observations on Current Arrangements (Policy Background Paper No 2, May 2014) 10 (‘Regulating Harms’). In this article, we differentiate co-regulation, as defined above, from self-regulation (meaning voluntary rules developed by industry without legislative backing or regulator enforcement) and direct regulation (meaning legislation and rules developed under legislation by government or regulators). Our approach is largely consistent with how the terms are used in the 2014 Policy Background Paper (see pp 6 and 15), except that we use ‘direct regulation’ in place of ‘black letter law’.