Post Tagged with: "broadcasting act"

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The Broadcasting Act Blunder, Day 5: The Narrow Exclusion of User Generated Content Services

The Broadcasting Act Blunder series has focused for the past two days on inaccurate claims from  Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault that the bill contains significant economic thresholds as a guardrail against over-regulation and excludes news from its ambit. As I noted, the bill does no such thing, though the CRTC will be able to establish regulatory exemptions once it conducts extensive hearings on implementing the legislation should it pass (prior posts in the Broadcasting Act Blunder series include Day 1: Why there is no Canadian Content Crisis, Day 2: What the Government Doesn’t Say About Creating a “Level Playing Field”, Day 3: Minister Guilbeault Says Bill C-10 Contains Economic Thresholds That Limit Internet Regulation. It Doesn’t, Day 4: Why Many News Sites are Captured by Bill C-10).

One type of service that is narrowly exempted from the new regulation in Bill C-10 is user generated content services, referred to in the bill as social media services. The bill states:

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November 25, 2020 — 1 comment — News
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The Broadcasting Act Blunder, Day 4: Why Many News Sites Are Captured by Bill C-10

The Broadcasting Act Blunder series yesterday covered claims by Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault that the bill contains significant economic thresholds as a guardrail against over-regulation. As I noted, the bill does no such thing, though the CRTC will be able to establish regulatory exemptions once it conducts extensive hearings on implementing the legislation should it pass (prior posts in the Broadcasting Act Blunder series include Day 1: Why there is no Canadian Content Crisis, Day 2: What the Government Doesn’t Say About Creating a “Level Playing Field”, Day 3: Minister Guilbeault Says Bill C-10 Contains Economic Thresholds That Limit Internet Regulation. It Doesn’t).

Guilbeault also told the House of Commons that news is excluded from his bill:

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November 24, 2020 — 1 comment — News
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The Broadcasting Act Blunder, Day 3: Minister Guilbeault Says Bill C-10 Contains Economic Thresholds That Limit Internet Regulation. It Doesn’t.

The Broadcasting Act Blunder series continues this week with posts focused on the uncertainty fuelled by a bill that was months in the making, yet leaves numerous issues unanswered (prior posts in the Broadcasting Act Blunder series include Day 1: Why there is no Canadian Content Crisis, Day 2: What the Government Doesn’t Say About Creating a “Level Playing Field”).   Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault tried assure the House of Commons last week that the bill features several “guardrails” against over-broad regulation. In particular, he stated:

entities would need to reach a significant economic threshold before any regulation could be imposed. This keeps the nature of the Internet as it is. It simply asks companies that generate large revenues in Canada to contribute in a fair manner.

With all due respect, this is simply false. There is no specific economic threshold established by the bill. The starting point is that all Internet streaming services carried on in whole or in part within Canada are subject to Canadian regulation. In other words, if you have Canadian subscribers, the law applies regardless of where the service is located.

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November 23, 2020 — 3 comments — News
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The Broadcasting Act Blunder, Day 2: What the Government Doesn’t Say About Creating a “Level Playing Field”

A central part of Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s argument for Bill C-10, his Internet regulation bill that reforms the Broadcasting Act, is that it levels the playing field between traditional and online broadcasters. Guilbeault has tweeted images showing a scale that are designed to suggest that conventional broadcasters such as Bell and Rogers face an unfair disadvantage by facing regulations and mandated payment requirements that do not apply to Internet streaming services. These claims are regularly repeated in the House of Commons with Guilbeault stating this week that “the purpose of the bill is to level the playing field” and “this bill will level the playing field between traditional Canadian broadcasters and online broadcasters.” Those claims continued during debate on Thursday, when MPs repeatedly referenced levelling the playing field as the goal of the bill.

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November 20, 2020 — 5 comments — News
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The Government’s Internet Regulation Bill: Why Bill C-10 Will Mean a CRTC-Approved Netflix Service, Reduced Consumer Choice, and Less Investment in Canadian Culture

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault tabled his “get money from web giants” Internet regulation bill this morning. As expected, Bill C-10 hands massive new powers to Canada’s telecom and broadcast regulator (the CRTC) to regulate online streaming services, opening the door to mandated Cancon payments, discoverability requirements, and confidential information disclosures all backed by new fining powers. Given that many of the details will be sorted out by the CRTC, the specifics will take years to unfold. In the short term, the bill creates considerable marketplace uncertainty that could lead to reduced spending on Canadian film and television production and delayed entry into Canada of new services. Once the policies are in place, the end result will be CRTC-approved versions of Netflix, Disney+, or Amazon Prime in which the regulator decides how these services promote Canadian content to their subscribers.

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November 3, 2020 — 25 comments — News
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