Post Tagged with: "netflix"

https://pixabay.com/en/netflix-remote-control-electronic-2705725/ (CC0 Creative Commons)

Joly’s Digital Cancon Plan: Netflix May Be The Star, But No New Regulations, Taxes or Bailouts is the Story

Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly presented her vision for digital Cancon earlier today, delivering a wide ranging plan that included previously leaked information about a commitment from Netflix to spend $500 million over five years on production in Canada. The Netflix commitment is the headline of the day, though earlier reports inaccurately claimed that the funding would be for Canadian content rather than productions in Canada (the two are not the same given the restrictive approach to Cancon definitions).

The agreement represents a major long-term commitment to the Canadian market which should go some way to appeasing critics who feared that the company might abandon Canadian production in the future. However, since Canada was already one of the company’s top three countries for production, it may not result in a significant increase in funding.

September 28, 2017 — 6 comments — News

What Is it to Be Human in the Fourth Industrial Revolution? by World Economic Forum / Ciaran McCrickard, 2017 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/R5UoT7

Good Politics, Bad Policy: Melanie Joly Sends TV Licensing Cancon Decision Back to the CRTC

Canadian Heritage Minister Melanie Joly announced via Twitter yesterday that the government has asked the CRTC to reconsider its TV licensing decision from earlier this year that established a uniform broadcaster spending requirement of 5 percent on programs of national interest (PNI, which includes dramas, documentaries, some children’s programming, and some award shows). The decision, which would lead to a reduction of mandated spending for some broadcasters, sparked a strong lobbying campaign from various cultural groups who claimed the decision would result in hundreds of millions in reduced spending on Canadian content. While the government’s decision should not come as a surprise – siding with the creator groups against the CRTC makes political sense – no one should confuse it with good policy. Indeed, the reality is that the CRTC’s belief that the digital market would create the right incentives for investment is increasingly borne out by recent developments that suggest Canadian broadcasters have few alternatives other than to develop their own original programming.

August 15, 2017 — 1 comment — News

Summer hasn't even started, fall schedule is up? by AJ Batac (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/ceKE95

Can Cancon Compete?: A Response to the WGC on The Future of Canadian TV Production

My post this week on the recent CRTC’s television licensing decision elicited a strongly worded response yesterday from the Writers Guild of Canada. My original post made two key points. First, responding to Kate Taylor’s assertion that CRTC Chair Jean-Pierre Blais has offered no consistent strategy to the challenges facing the Canadian television production industry, I noted that over the course of the past five years, Blais has charted a very clear path toward making Canadian policy and regulation relevant in the digital age by promoting a competitive marketplace for Canadian creators, consumers, broadcasters, and broadcast distributors.

Second, I defended the recent CRTC decision on several grounds, including the need to address the gap between regulated and unregulated services (such as Netflix), the already-significant public support for Canadian content creation, the incentives for Canadian broadcasters to invest in original content, and the fact that Canadian broadcasters contribute a very small slice of the overall financing of domestic fictional programming which suggests that the harm to the sector from a further reduction is overstated.

May 25, 2017 — 10 comments — News

USTR notice http://www.bilaterals.org/?draft-nafta-notice

Deciphering the U.S. NAFTA Digital Demands, Part One: Intellectual Property

The leak of the draft notice from the Trump Administration on the NAFTA renegotiation, which identifies at least 40 issues, will serve as the starting point for discussions once talks begin. Coverage of the U.S. interests has emphasized tariff issues, rules of origin, and tax treatment, but the digital issues should not be overlooked. The U.S. starting position looks a lot like the TPP, which suggests that we already have a very clear understanding of the text that U.S. negotiators will propose. This post unpacks some of the general language to decipher what the U.S. has in mind on intellectual property issues. A second post will review the other digital issues, including privacy and e-commerce rules.

March 31, 2017 — 4 comments — News

AM16 Seminar: Fiscal Policy in the New Normal by International Monetary Fund (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/MuzgZS

Budget 2017: Why Canada’s Digital Policy Future Is Up For Grabs

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau released his government’s 2017 budget today and while the spending promises may be underwhelming for some, the documents sets out an ambitious agenda for digital policy review. In fact, with changes to copyright, patent, broadcast, telecom, net neutrality, digital taxes, fintech, Canadian media, and Cancon all under consideration, the coming year will have enormous implications for the future of Canada’s digital policies.

The budget does include several spending promises, including $13.2 million over five years to support an affordable Internet access program, $50 million for kids coding programs, $29.5 million over five years for digital literacy, and $14.9 million for digitization of Indigenous language and materials. There is also new money for the growth of artificial intelligence sector and the much-anticipated revamping of innovation funding programs.

Yet the biggest digital implications may ultimately come from the policy reforms. First up may be new digital sales taxes. The budget includes a commitment to extend sales taxes to ride sharing companies such as Uber, a move that seems likely to ultimately lead to a broader extension of sales taxes to digital services such as Netflix.

March 22, 2017 — 8 comments — News