In August 1999, I wrote my first technology law column for the Globe and Mail. The column was titled The Gap Between Can’t and Won’t and it focused on the CRTC’s new media decision that was released earlier that year. The decision was the first major exploration into the applicability of conventional CRTC regulation to the Internet, with the Commission ruling that it had the statutory power to regulate some activities (such as streaming video), but it chose not to do so.
That column came to mind yesterday as I read through some of the CRTC’s TalkTV transcripts and listened to Jesse Brown’s Canadaland podcast on the prospect of a “Netflix tax.” It seems to me that both the discussions before the CRTC (particularly the CBC’s decision to urge the Commission to establish a fee-for-carriage model and a Netflix tax) and the Brown podcast with Steve Faguy fail to distinguish between the gap between can’t and won’t.
