Archive for September 15th, 2022

Inflation by atramos (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/pgZttg

The Bill C-11 Hearings Are Back, Part Three: The Risks of Higher Consumer Costs, Less Competition, and Little New Money for Film Production

The first two posts of this series on Bill C-11 focused on the risks to user content and Canadian creators. This post picks up on the implications of the bill for consumer costs and choice. In short, at a time when political parties are focused on affordability and inflation, the Bill C-11 effect is likely to increase consumer costs and decrease choice. There is no magic solution that results in hundreds of millions of new money entering the system without someone paying for it. It is fairly clear that that someone will be Canadian consumers as streaming services either hike Canadian fees to account for their new costs or shun the market altogether. It should be noted that it doesn’t need to be that way: a bill that establishes thresholds to exclude smaller services would limit the negative effects on competition and a sufficiently flexible approach to Canadian contributions would recognize that the large streaming services already invest billions in Canada.

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September 15, 2022 2 comments News