Post Tagged with: "regulations"

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Why the Government’s Bill C-18 Draft Regulations Are Stacked Against Small, Independent, and Digital-First Media Outlets

The problems with government’s Bill C-18 draft regulations involve more than just what amounts to a 4% link tax on Google and Meta alongside little effort to ensure the resulting revenues are used to support spending on journalists and news content. As noted in previous posts, the draft regulations put an end to the claim that the Online News Act involves compensation for news creation since the standards are now simply a function of Internet platform revenues, not news production costs. Given the global implications of a 4% tax on revenues to support media, that approach likely further cements Meta’s decision to comply with the law by stopping news links and increases the chances that Google follows suit.

But the concerns with the draft regulations do not end there. Indeed, the regulations revive the frustration of many smaller, independent and digital-first news outlets who feared that Bill C-18 would harm them competitively by receiving less support relative to larger companies such as Bell, Rogers, the CBC, and Postmedia or be excluded altogether.

September 6, 2023 — 4 comments — News

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The Bill C-18 Regulation Fake-Out: Setting the Record Straight on When Bill C-18 Takes Effect and the Regulation Making Process

The rhetoric around Bill C-18 has escalated in recent days in light of the awful wildfires in NWT and British Columbia. In my view, the issues associated with these tragic events have little to do with Meta blocking news links and the attempt to bring it into the conversation is a transparent attempt to score political points (the connectivity issues with some NWT communities completely taken offline for days is somehow never mentioned). The reality is that Meta was asked about just this scenario at committee and it made it clear that it would not block any non-news outlet links. That is precisely what has been happening and the government’s legislative choices should be the starting point for understanding why compliance with the law involves blocking a very broad range of news links that extend beyond even those sources that are defined as “eligible news outlets”.

The government and supporters of Bill C-18 talking points now emphasize two things in relation to Meta blocking news links: the law has yet to take effect and there is room to address their concerns in the regulation-making process. Both of these claims are incredibly deceptive, relying on the assumption that most won’t bother to read the actual legislation. If they did, they would see that (1) the law has received royal assent and can take effect anytime and (2) the regulation making process addresses only a small subset of Bill C-18 issues with most of the core issues finalized. In other words, the time to shape the law and address many of the key concerns was before the government repeatedly cut off debate in order to ensure it that received royal assent before the summer break.

August 21, 2023 — 24 comments — News

Canadian Anti-Spam Regulations Coming Within the Next Few Weeks

Barry Sookman reports that a CRTC official advised a conference that the Industry Canada anti-spam regulations are now final and should be publicly available in about two weeks. The law will come into force in 2014.

November 14, 2013 — 3 comments — News

Canadian Government Unveils Big Loopholes in Anti-Spam Regulations

Industry Canada unveiled long-awaited revised anti-spam regulations on Friday for the Canadian Anti-Spam Law. The regulations are in draft form and comments can be submitted to the government until February 3rd. Given the intense lobbying by business groups to water down the legislation passed in 2010 and the initial draft 2011 regulations, it comes as little surprise to find that the proposed regulations include several significant loopholes and exceptions that undermine the effectiveness of the law. The key new regulations include:

third party referrals: the regulations include a broad new exception for third party referrals that will allow businesses to send commercial electronic messages without consent based merely on a referral from a third party. This issue was hotly debated when the bill was being drafted and, at the time, the government rejected claims that such an exception was warranted. In the face of intense lobbying, however, the opt-in approach to electronic marketing is being dropped and replaced by a system that allows for unsolicited commercial electronic messages based on third party referrals.

January 7, 2013 — 13 comments — News

The Secret Lawful Access Regs: What the Gov Told the Telcos While Keeping the Public in the Dark

My post yesterday on a secret government – telecom lawful access working group attracted considerable attention with many understandably focused on the revelations that virtually all major Canadian telecom companies (with the notable exception of Shaw) actively worked with the government for months on lawful access legislation. Yet perhaps the most important document is a lawful access regulations policy document that offered guidance on plans for the extensive regulations that will ultimately accompany the Internet surveillance legislation. The specific document obtained under Access to Information is dated October 2010 and was created to support an earlier version of the lawful access bill. However, the same government documents indicate that the policy document was provided to telecom providers last fall, including disclosure to the Canadian Network Operators Consortium in December 2011 after CNOC was at an event a month earlier with Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and expressed support for the lawful access bill.

The regulations policy document are not the regulations per se, but rather a clear indication of planned regulations under the guise of a policy document. The document contains several key sections:

May 23, 2012 — 13 comments — News