Earlier this year, I posted the results of an access to information request to George Brown College (GBC) that sought to explain how the college came to publicly support the FairPlay website blocking proposal at the CRTC. Much like similar documents from Brock University, the George Brown College documents showed a request from Mark Milliere, an executive at Bell-owned TSN, about a week before the deadline sparked the submission. The resulting letter, which came from GBC President Anne Sado, was cited by the Bell-led coalition in its reply letter to the CRTC.
Post Tagged with: "site blocking"
CRTC Truthiness: New Docs Reveal New Story About Bell Meetings with the Commission on Website Blocking
Earlier this year, access to information documents obtained by the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications revealed that Bell had presented its plan for website blocking to CRTC officials months before it was formally filed to allow for public review and comment. As far back as July 2017, Bell pressed a CRTC commissioner for a meeting, which led to a Commission presentation in September 2017. The CRTC downplayed the meeting, telling reporters in response to queries that there was a meeting with Commission legal staff on September 21, 2017.
Site Blocking, The Sequel: After Telling Courts They Can Issue De-Indexing or Blocking Orders, Movie Industry Calls for More in Copyright Act
Representatives of the motion picture association appeared before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology this week as part of the copyright review and called on the government to ensure the law permits site blocking and search result de-indexing rules to address piracy concerns. The representatives, who acknowledged under questioning from Liberal MP David Graham that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Motion Picture Association Canada (MPAC) are the same organization, also argued to increased liability for Internet intermediaries.
The Case Against the Bell Coalition’s Website Blocking Plan, Part 15: It Undermines the Telecommunications Act Policy Objectives
The CRTC has ruled that it will only permit website blocking in “exceptional circumstances” and only where doing so would further the objectives found in the Telecommunications Act. As yesterday’s post noted, even if the CRTC were to think that the terrible Bell coalition website blocking proposal is worth supporting, the plan falls outside the Commission’s stated rules on website blocking since the application fails to make the case that it furthers the objectives found in the Act.
In fact, not only does the Bell proposal fail to make the case that it furthers the Telecommunications Act objectives, but there is a far better argument that it undermines them. As noted yesterday, the Telecommunications Act identifies nine objectives:
Fostering a Vibrant Canadian Programming Market: My CRTC Submission Focusing on Net Neutrality and Rejecting New Taxes, Fees or Content Blocking
Last month I posted on the responses to the CRTC’s consultation on the future of Canadian programming, which yielded over 200 submissions that envision extensive Internet regulation and taxation. The CRTC has published a reference document for the second stage of its consultation that runs until January 31, 2018. My full submission for the first stage of the consultation can be found here.
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