Telecom issues were in the spotlight yesterday with the government ordering the CRTC to “examine claims of aggressive or misleading sales practices concerning telecommunications services, the prevalence and impact on consumers, as well as potential solutions.” The Order-in-Council, which was accompanied by a request to the Competition Bureau to provide assistance, follows CBC reports on misleading sales tactics from companies such as Bell and Rogers and the CRTC’s rejection of a request to conduct an inquiry into the matter. The announcement from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains is a welcome development, signalling the government’s frustration with a CRTC under new chair Ian Scott that has seemingly abandoned consumer interests.
Archive for June, 2018
Music Canada at the Copyright Review: “Illegal Content is Drifting Away”
Music Canada was one of several witnesses that appeared before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology this week as part of the copyright review. The group continued its campaign on the so-called value gap, largely ignoring huge increases in streaming revenues with claims about legislative reforms that bear little resemblance to the Canadian experience. While those arguments will be old news to the committee members, it was the discussion of piracy and government handouts that merit attention.
Off the Rails: How the Canadian Heritage Copyright Hearings Have Veered Badly Off-Track
The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage has conducted several weeks of hearings as part of its study on Remuneration Models for Artists and Creative Industries. While the copyright review is the responsibility of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, the heritage committee was asked to conduct a study to help inform its work. The mandate was described in the following motion:
Canadian Music Industry Wants Government to Pay Copying Fee for Every Smartphone Sold in Canada
Last fall, months before the start of the Canadian copyright review, the Canadian Private Copying Collective, the collective that administers the tax on blank CDs that has long advocated for extending the payments to iPods and other electronic devices, met with senior officials at Canadian Heritage including Deputy Minister Graham Flack and Melanie Joly’s chief of staff Leslie Church (over two days the collective also met with politicians such as Dan Ruimy, Peter Van Loan, and Pierre Nantel). According to documents released under the Access to Information Act, the collective arrived with a startling demand, asking the federal government to pay $160 million over the next four years to compensate for music copying.
The CRTC’s Fundamental Flaw: Broadcasting May Be the Internet, but the Internet is Not Broadcasting
Canada’s communications regulator last week reversed decades of policy by recommending that the government implement new regulation and taxation for internet services in order to support the creation of Canadian content. The report on the future of program distribution, which will surely influence the newly established government panel reviewing Canada’s telecommunications and broadcasting laws, envisions new fees attached to virtually anything related to the internet: internet service providers, internet video services, and internet audio services (wherever located) to name a few.
My Globe and Mail op-ed notes with the remarkable popularity of services such as Netflix and YouTube, there is a widely held view that the internet has largely replaced the conventional broadcast system. Industry data suggests the business of broadcasters and broadcast distributors such as cable and satellite companies won’t end anytime soon, but it is undeniable that a growing number of Canadians access broadcast content through the internet.
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