CRTC to review hands-off approach to unregulated Internet

[CD]

CRTC to review hands-off approach to unregulated Internet, cellphone content

15 Feb, 12:20 PM

MONTREAL - Canadians are watching more and more videos and TV shows that aren't required to have home-grown content via their computers and cellphones, but after a decade of explosive Internet growth the CRTC will review its hands-off approach to the medium.

The federal broadcast regulator will begin hearings on Tuesday in Hull, Que. to review its policy of allowing broadcasting content to be unregulated on the Internet and cellphones.

Predictably, there are those who want rules to ensure Canadian content on the Internet and there are others who believe home-grown content already has a presence on the Internet without the encouragement of regulations.

"If Canadians don't encourage Canadian content on the Internet, who will?" asked Ian Morrison, spokesman for the watchdog group, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.

Traditional radio and television broadcasters are regulated and subject to Canadian content rules.

Morrison said the Internet has changed from being text-dominated since 1999 when the CRTC decided to take a hands off approach.

"So a decade has gone by and the Internet has morphed into something where as you know the audio-visual side of the Internet is ubiquitous," he said.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission also exempted broadcasting services that are received on cellphones and other mobile devices in 2007.

A decade ago, cellphone use wasn't widespread. Now the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Agency says there are more than 20 million cellphone subscribers in the country.

Search engine giant Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG) likes the status quo.

"When you look at the amount of Canadian content online, when you look at the diversity of that content and when you look at the ease with which Canadians can now access, promote and distribute content, you can see that the online world has opened up amazing possibilities," said lawyer Jacob Glick, Google's Canada policy counsel.

Glick noted Canadians producing original content for video sharing site YouTube, owned by Google.

"If you just look at YouTube, there's more Canadian content just on YouTube than all three major TV networks combined, assuming that they broadcast Canadian content 24/7," he said.

The growing dominance of the Internet is causing the CRTC to take a look at what it calls the "new media environment."

However, there is already Canadian broadcasting content on conventional websites run by CBC, CTV, Canwest and TVA, the French-language network owned by Quebecor Media (TSX:QBR.B).

The CRTC has said high-speed Internet access is now available to 94 per cent of Canadian households and has been adopted by more than 60 per cent.

Alan Sawyer of Toronto-based Two Solitudes Consulting, said that after a decade it's time for a review, but he added it would be difficult to regulate content on the Internet and cellphones.

"It's unwieldy," said Sawyer, who provides consulting services to Calgary-based MoboVivo, which licenses and distributes TV programming online. Its MoboVivo iPhone TV is a popular iPhone application.

"It's not impossible to do and it's certainly within the CRTC's authority to do," he said, adding it would provide some certainty to businesses.

Sawyer also said the CRTC could take an "incentive-based approach" to make more Canadian-produced content available on alternative distribution channels.

He noted that foreign ownership requirements now don't apply to new media on the Internet while they do apply to traditional broadcasters.

Watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting supports the idea that some kind of fee be levied to ensure there are resources for a Canadian presence on the Internet.

"Our fundamental position is that this is a public space and that the Broadcasting Act does cover elements of what happens on the Internet and that the prime responsibility of the CRTC almost before anything is to ensure that in Canadian homes and workplaces that a certain amount of the content available to them is Canadian."

[grimey]

How the hell do they think they'd regulate the internet? Short of spending tens of billions of dollars to bring in a non-functional made in Canada version of the great firewall of China?

Watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting supports the idea that some kind of fee be levied to ensure there are resources for a Canadian presence on the Internet.

Oh. Nevermind. @#$! you, "Friends of Canadian Broadcasting".

[Doc]

You vill only vatch vat ve say you can vatch! Papers pleeeezzzeeee.

[BibleMonkey]

....that the prime responsibility of the CRTC almost before anything is to ensure that in Canadian homes and workplaces that a certain amount of the content available to them is Canadian."

While we all agree that the government is the best arbiter of anything we view, hear or read, since we are all retards, I for one believe that rather than dictate proper percentages of Canadian content , the CRTC should instead mandate more monkey-on-bicycle content in movies. You can never get too much of that .


Hopefully our leaders can make time to visit China, and get this program off to a proper start:

Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China

The government of the People's Republic of China has a longstanding set of policies restricting the information to which citizens are exposed, and that which they may themselves publicly say. The Internet poses a new challenge to such censorship, both because of the sheer breadth of content typically available, and because sources of content are so often remote from Chinese jurisdiction, and thus much more difficult to penalize for breaching restrictions on permissible materials. There is some evidence that the government has attempted to prevent the spread of unwanted material by.......

[mcrit]

Watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting supports the idea that some kind of fee be levied to ensure there are resources for a Canadian presence on the Internet.

...it all comes down to that. Some useless group of artsies wants the rest of us to pay them to be useless.

[200hr Wonder]

And it wont work. The internet is so global it is beyond anyone's control. Australia is going to find that out as they are attempting to filter all of there content. They have it in there mind that they can arbitrary decided that big boobed pr0n is all good but midget pr0n is a no no? This is just not going to work any time you try and mandate anything on the net.

Sure the government can piss away money at Cancon but it will be just that pissed away. Next they will filter what we can and can not download. Better yet lets put all that pissed away money into law enforcement projects to catch sex slave traders, child pornographers, scam artists and so on in a proper focused way. Rather than spending massive resources busting the people downloading it, how about we concentrate on the PEOPLE MAKING IT. Sure the number of criminals for the dog and pony show would be less but GASP we might prevent a child or woman from being exploited and I bet if you ask them that is money well spent. But no our government will piss away a pile of money on Cancon BS to start the next will be the great purifying firewall of Canada, mark my words!

[bmc]

Watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting supports the idea that some kind of fee be levied to ensure there are resources for a Canadian presence on the Internet.

...it all comes down to that. Some useless group of artsies wants the rest of us to pay them to be useless.

I wonder if it won't come as a tax to airlines.

[Doc]

When folks are happy with something, like the internet, satellite TV, or radio, and there is no government agency in place to @#$! it up, you can bet your ass, Ottawa will create such an agency.
In the case of the CRTC......go pound sand you bunch of whining piss ants!

[. ._]

The internet can not be regulated. For every one guy that is paid to regulate it, there are a hundred trying to hack around him for free. If this regulation flies in Canada, it will only show the bureaucrats have NO understanding of technology.

OMFG.

-istp

[BibleMonkey]

The internet can not be regulated.

And it wont work. The internet is so global it is beyond anyone's control.

Sure it can-and yes it will work. The dick-swallowers, like Colin Mochrie , will get the governmnet to slap a "fee" on your monthly internet connection , to pay for "Canadian content". All internet connections will be taxed, the government will remove your money by force, and give it to Canadian 'artists' -regardless of whether you view them or not.
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_pape ... id=1299867

Canadian cultural groups drew on star power yesterday in calling for up to $100-million in new money for homegrown digital media and minimum Canadian content requirements for the Internet.

Comedian Colin Mochrie and director Sturla Gunnarsson spoke before the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission as hearings on the future of new media began in Gatineau, Que.

Internet service providers (ISPs) and wireless operators now pipe huge amounts of video to consumers, the groups said, and should fund Canadian programming the same way cable companies do.....

[GilletteNorth]

mcrit wrote:

CD wrote:
Watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting supports the idea that some kind of fee be levied to ensure there are resources for a Canadian presence on the Internet.

...it all comes down to that. Some useless group of artsies wants the rest of us to pay them to be useless.

x2

istp wrote:
The internet can not be regulated. For every one guy that is paid to regulate it, there are a hundred trying to hack around him for free. If this regulation flies in Canada, it will only show the bureaucrats have NO understanding of technology.

OMFG.

x2

[JakeYYZ]

There is no nationality on the web. Just good and bad.
Canadians can find Canadian content anytime they want, it's called google.ca. If they're not watching, it's because they don't want to.
CRTC’s motto: SUPPORT CANADIEN PROGRAMMING (whether you like it or not.)
There's always Little Mosque on the Prairie to point to as a shining example
of CANCON at it's best (not).

[The Old Fogducker]

So what these "Cancon Welfare Bums" expect is for me to pay an additional 3% tax on my internet bill so they can supposedly generate Cancon for distribution via the net, thereby protecting myself from the influences of the big, bad, ugly, world out there.

In their presentation to the CRTC, the artists and actors are borrowing a "Hail Mary Move" from the "NDP Playbook of Populace Manipulation" by attempting to make it appear that those hated, large, fat-cat, faceless, corporate ISPs will be the ones paying the money for their cash grabbing production adventure.

There is one problem, those greedy CEOs of huge, impersonal ISPs that exist by preying upon the unsuspecting public won't being paying that 3% on gross revenues.

Corporations don't pay taxes by reducing profit margins, they pass along the escalated cost of doing business to their clients in the same way an increase in their rent, labour costs, or power bill is ultimately passed along to the end user ... you. It is your pocketbook that will take the hit.

Its your wallet these people are trying to pick in the dead of night, through a form of legalized theft via the CRTC.

To me, these guys are like the Quebec separatists ... every time you give them an inch, they come back a day later asking for a mile, accompanied by a threat of how the very existence of Canada is on the verge of disaster unless immediate action is taken.

Initially, they are asking for 3% but what will it be when artsy types think they are barely surviving in a year or two? Maybe things should go to 5% just to ensure that a "Canadian presence on the web" is maintained. Where will it stop, and how could it possibly be repealed after enactment?

According to Messiah Obama the Wonderdog, we are in for the worst economic times since the great depression. Things are bad, really, really, really, bad, and heading for disaster faster than a free-falling elevator. He (with a capital H) says things will be far, far worse before they get better. We are in crisis.

So in these tipping point times, the Cancon Welfare Clowns come forward and ask for yet another tax on every household in the country?

Yeah, sure. Get stuffed, you clowns.

It is my hope the CRTC will leave this alone, however I think they will look for a way to allow the camel's nose to get under the edge of the tent under the guise of helping the talent pool which makes us different from everyone else on the planet. The CRTC never saw a tax or a method of media control they didn't like if it could be wrapped in the flag and us painted as being the underdog, unable to have a Canadian identity without another huge series of regulations to help us out.

Fog