Post Tagged with: "netflix"

Our Beloved Phone Company by Dennis S. Hurd (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/8v9Mm9

The Bill on Canada’s Digital Policy Comes Due: Blocked News Links, Cancelled Sponsorship, Legal Challenges, and Digital Ad Surcharges

Canada’s digital policy has seemingly long proceeded on the assumption that tech companies would draw from an unlimited budget to write bigger cheques to meet government regulation establishing new mandated payments. Despite repeated warnings on Bills C-11 (Internet streaming), C-18 (online news), and a new digital services tax that tech companies – like anyone else – were more likely to respond by adjusting their Canadian budgets or simply passing along new costs to consumers, the government and the bill’s supporters repeatedly dismissed the risks that the plans could backfire. Yet today the bill from those digital policy choices is coming due: legal and trade challenges, blocked news links amid decreasing trust in the media, cancellation of sponsorship deals worth millions of dollars that will be devastating to creators, and a new Google digital advertising surcharge that kicks in next week to offset the costs of the digital services tax.

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September 25, 2024 16 comments News
Spotify by Jon Åslund https://flic.kr/p/8aTxPM CC BY 2.0

CRTC Bill C-11 Ruling “Makes Web Giants Pay” But it is Canadian Consumers That Will Get the Bill

The CRTC has released its much-anticipated Bill C-11 ruling on the initial mandated contributions from Internet streaming services. The headline the Commission and government will promote is that the services will be required to contribute 5% of their Canadian revenues to support various Canadian funding programs that support film and TV production, news, and music. The decision is a perfect illustration of a sector that is too often focused on regulatory payments rather than market-based success with incredible micromanagement of funding in which the CRTC is turned into a policy funding machine of the government (no surprise that government officials spent last week calling stakeholders for advance supportive comments). For the moment, the actual contributions from Internet streaming services are ignored, an updated definition of Canadian content doesn’t exist, commercial success is irrelevant, and subsidies for the news operations of companies such as Bell and Rogers are encouraged. To top it off, the streaming services are required to pay but are unable to access the funds even as they invest in production in Canada. Bill C-11 was about “making web giants pay” and that is what the CRTC was determined to do even if it is consumers that will ultimately get the bill.

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June 4, 2024 11 comments News
Screenshot from ATIP A-2022-00147

Bill C-11 Estimates Revealed: Internal Government Documents Show No Impact on Net Employment, Admit Streamers Already Invest Millions in “Unofficial Cancon”

The government’s support for Bill C-11 has often been framed on economic terms with Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez arguing that the bill will “create good jobs for Canadians in the cultural sector”. I’ve long maintained the government’s claims that the bill will generate billions of dollars in new money was massively exaggerated and that a far more likely scenario would be that the bill would simply lead to a reshuffling of existing expenditures. 

Using the Access to Information Act, I have now obtained a copy of the government’s internal estimates for the economic and production impact of Bill C-11 (methodology, memorandum, PPT), which confirm many of my suspicions. While the government is pinning its hopes on massive spending from Internet streamers such as Netflix, it admits that even if the bill did not pass it would not affect net new employment in the sector. Moreover, internally the government recognizes the claim that Netflix and foreign streamers don’t contribute to Canadian content is false, as it has identifies a new category of “unofficial Cancon” which would qualify as Cancon under every measure but for the fact that it is owned by companies like Netflix and Disney. And as for the payments from social media companies that the government insists are so essential that it has fought for years to include user content regulation in the bill? The estimated economic benefit represents just one percent of its total projection for Bill C-11 with pure guesswork about what percentage of content on the platforms might require contributions.

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April 14, 2023 7 comments News
Netflix_Netflix_regarder en streaming sur playstation by downloadsource.fr https://flic.kr/p/rDqKvP (CC BY 2.0)

Why the Canadian Film and TV Production Sector’s Bill C-11 Expectations Are Wildly Out of Touch With Global Standards

Last week, the ongoing Senate hearings into Bill C-11 featured an appearance from the Canadian Association of Film Distributors and Exporters, who spelled out its expectations for Bill C-11, particularly the contributions from streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime. While much of the Bill C-11 debate has focused on the regulation of user content, the bill’s supposed intent is to bring large streaming services into the Canadian broadcasting system. Fuelled by the government’s dubious claim that the bill could generated a billion dollars per year (even government officials now admit that the number is an estimate based not based on actual data), the Canadian sector came sporting demands wildly out of touch with international standards. Indeed, when compared to European regulation, which is often touted as the global leader, Canada would strongly discourage market entry for streaming services and likely result in reduced libraries of content in order to meet the government and CRTC’s regulatory requirements.

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October 12, 2022 8 comments News
Pablo Rodriguez tweet, May 3, 2022 https://twitter.com/pablorodriguez/status/1521467518149402624

Standing on a Shaky Foundation: What Lies Behind The Near-Impossible Challenge of Updating Canada’s Outdated Cancon Rules

Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, who is hosting a culture summit this week in Ottawa, has said that he is open to modernizing the definition of Canadian content and that he is “open to all kinds of suggestions and ideas.” I’ve devoted many posts to the Cancon definition issue (even creating a Cancon quiz), noting that the current system is a poor proxy for “telling Canadian stories.” This system matters since the government’s Internet regulation policies are ostensibly designed to support Canadian content, but if the existing definitions don’t do that, they cannot reasonably be expected to achieve their objectives.

While I’m supportive of Rodriguez opening the door to reform, I have my doubts the government will make any significant changes to the current system. The challenge is that Cancon policy stands on a shaky foundation that is really three policies in one: an economic policy, a cultural policy, and an intellectual property policy. These three policies are often at odds with one another and used by politicians and lobby groups interchangeably to justify mandated contributions, content regulation, and foreign ownership restrictions. When the data doesn’t support one of the policies, they simply shift the discussion to one of the other policy objectives.

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May 4, 2022 8 comments News