Michael Geist

The CRTC’s deadline for submissions to the over-the-top video “fact finding” exercise passed yesterday. While many notable submissions will likely appear on the CRTC site today, there are enough there already to get a good feel for where this is headed. I wrote last week about the perceived bias against consumer interests in this consultation, but the reality is that the industry arguments are thus far so devoid of actual evidence that the Commission should be well positioned to leave the issue alone at least until the next new media hearing in 2014.

The submissions include the usual fear mongering about services like Netflix. The winner so far comes from the Stingray Digital Group, which warns:

Just as Napster wreaked havoc on the record label industry in the early 2000’s and played a major role in the collapse of the music retail industry, so too will the new breed of OTT music services materially disrupt licensed Canadian music services and the Canadian broadcasting system if the status quo is left unchecked.

Other submissions contains lots of rhetoric about the dangers of an unregulated over-the-top services market, but no actual evidence of real harm.

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