Archive for December 6th, 2022

Age Verification Station by Nock Forager (CC BY-NC 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/4H67D7

From Bad to Worse: Senate Committee Adds Age Verification Requirement for Online Undertakings to Bill C-11

The Senate committee studying Bill C-11 has ramped up the hours devoted to clause-by-clause review with amendments related to user generated content currently up for debate. However, earlier today, just prior to addressing the user content issue, the committee shockingly adopted an amendment that adds age verification for online undertakings to the Broadcasting Act. The amendment comes as a policy objective, meaning that it will fall to the CRTC to determine how to implement it. The implications are enormous since broadly defined the policy would require every online service that transmits or retransmits programs over the Internet (broadly defined to include all audio and audiovisual content) to establish age verification requirements to prevent child access to programs with explicit sexual activity. If the CRTC implements, the policy will surely be challenged as unconstitutional.

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December 6, 2022 16 comments News
Winners and Losers by Neil Owen https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5700794 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

How the Government Is Using Bill C-18 to Pick Media Winners and Losers

Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez’s claim that Bill C-18, the Online News Act, was a hands-off approach was never really credible, but the clause-by-clause review of the bill has taken the government picking media winners and losers to another level. It was always readily apparent that the bill represents an unprecedented government intervention into the Canadian media sector with the extensive power wielded by the CRTC as it sets regulations and the ground rules for the mandatory arbitration process. Further, the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s estimate on the benefits that might arise from the bill – hundreds of millions of dollars of which more than 75% would go to broadcasters such as Bell, Rogers and the CBC – provided a reminder that there was big money involved of which relatively little would go to the newspaper sector.

In recent weeks, however, the government’s role in picking winners and losers has become even more pronounced. Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner’s ill-advised comment that online news outlets weren’t real news was rightly criticized (leading to an apology and near total silence from Hepfner ever since) but skeptics feared she was merely saying the quiet part out loud since the reality of Bill C-18 is that it is the lobbying product of large media outlets, who are set up as the prime beneficiaries.

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December 6, 2022 3 comments News