Parliament resumes after a summer break today. While digital policies receded into the background over the past few months, the political intrigue of by-elections and a minority government without an NDP deal will be accompanied by questions about what happens to Bill C-63, Canada’s online harms bill, Bill C-27, the privacy and AI reform bill, Bill S-210, the age verification bill, and a myriad of other regulatory and policy issues. Matt Hatfield is Executive Director of Open Media, one of Canada’s leading digital rights organizations. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to break down where things stand and what other digital policies may command attention.
Post Tagged with: "crtc"
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 208: Will Page on Why the CRTC’s Bill C-11 Ruling is Discriminatory and May Ultimately Hurt the Canadian Music Market
The recent CRTC Bill C-11 decision mandating that streaming services pay 5 percent of their revenues has left seemingly everyone unhappy and has sparked multiple legal challenges. While much of the focus has been on video streaming, music was a core part of Bill C-11 and the implications for music streaming services may be the most pronounced. Will Page is the perfect person to unpack these issues. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Tarzan Economics, the former Chief Economist of Spotify and PRS for Music, the co-host the Bubble Trouble podcast and a regular contributor to BBC, Financial Times, and The Economist. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to provide new data on what the CRTC’s numbers mean and why the decision could ultimately move the Canadian market backwards rather than forward.
Government Court Filing on Bill C-11: “The Act Does Allow For the Regulation of User-Uploaded Programs on Social Media Services”
The public outcry over the Online Streaming Act is largely in the rear view mirror as the law is now at the CRTC facing years of regulatory and court battles. Last week, the Commission issued its first major ruling on mandated payments by Internet streaming services, a decision that, as I’ve written and discussed, is likely to increase consumer costs with limited benefit to the film and television sector. While Bill C-11 may ultimately become associated with the consumer implications and the CRTC’s failure to consider the market effects, for many Canadians the bill is inextricably linked to fears of user content regulation. For the better part of two years, a steady parade of government ministers and MPs insisted that user content regulation was out of the bill even as a plain reading made it clear that it was in. This week Ministry of Justice lawyers provided their take, arguing on behalf of the government in a court filing that “the Act does allow for regulation of user-uploaded programs on social media services.”
Sour Grapes: Big Media Lobby Wants to Squash the New Collective Responsible For Administering Google’s $100 Million Online News Act Money
Late last month, I wrote about the behind-the-scenes battle over the selection of a collective to administer and allocate Google’s annual $100 million to news outlets as part of its Bill C-18 deal with the government. I reported that there were two proposals: the Online News Media Collective, a big media consortium led by News Media Canada (NMC), the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB), and the CBC, which was pitted against the Canadian Journalism Collective, a proposal spearheaded by a group of independent and digital publishers and broadcasters that promised a more transparent and equitable governance approach. To the surprise of many, last week Google selected the Canadian Journalism Collective.
The importance of who administers the collective is open to some debate since all eligible news outlets get their fair share regardless of which collective is responsible for allocating the money. However, concerns emerged that the big media collective envisioned a governance structure almost completely controlled by its own members, largely shutting out independent outlets and digital publishers and broadcasters. That governance control opened the door to implementing Bill C-18 in a manner that would benefit big media over the independents.
Yesterday members of the big media collective responded to Google’s choice with a request to the CRTC that can only be described as sour grapes.
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 205: Len St-Aubin on What the CRTC’s Internet Streaming Ruling Means For Creators, Competition and Consumer Costs
Last week, the CRTC released its much-anticipated Bill C-11 ruling on the initial mandated contributions from Internet streaming services. While the government focused on the requirement to contribute 5% of Canadian revenues, a closer look revealed the CRTC largely ignored industry data and the actual contributions from Internet streaming services and seemed entirely unconcerned by the effects on competition and consumer costs. Len St-Aubin is the former Director General of Telecommunications Policy at Industry Canada and played a role in the development of both the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act. He provided consulting services to Netflix until 2020 and has since been an active participant in the debate on Internet policy. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to talk about the CRTC ruling, the state of TV and film production in Canada, and what may lie ahead for the streamers, creators, and consumers.