New media hearings, part one

The CRTC held day two of their new media hearings today, with more to follow in a week. The goal is of the hearings is to figure out just what to do with this new fangled media, to discern whether incentives or regulation is required to encourage the spread of Canadian content.

They heard proposals about a levy on ISPs, and applying the same content regulations to the internet that are applied to broadcasts. The latter is ludicrous since you can’t put content quotas on the internet. The most serious recommendation is a levy, though I feel the target is misplaced. The levy could be $5 according to SOCAN, or it could be 3% according to the Canadian Conference for the Arts or Tac.TV.

I’m reminded of a report titled Changing Channels that was posted much earlier and taken into consideration by the CRTC.

Even the major U.S. television network offering the least content (CBS at 55%) offers twice as much programming as the Canadian network offering the most content (CTV at 24%). The CW (80%) offers about three times as much content as CTV, and five times more than Global TV (15%).

…

There was a clear predominance of domestic content at both U.S. and Canadian broadcaster websites, although Canadian broadcasters had much more American content than American broadcasters had Canadian content.

With the lack of availability of “professionally produced content” available I question ACTRA’s figure quoted from their Harris poll which pegs the number of Canadians who watch video online at 70%. I’d like to see the phrasing of the questionaire. I suspect that most video viewed by Canadians is ephemeral video on YouTube and alike. The rationale behind levying ISPs to pay for the production of professionally produced Canadian content is that they profit off of it, but I want to see a breakdown of how much of that video is user generated content first.

Twitter is active on the #crtc hashtag. Here’s a few choice tweets:

drewmack: @mathewi Fact CRTC not on Twitter probably a bad sign for attempt to regulate the internetz. Can we confirm they’re not using dialup? #crtc

hartleyglobe: Just a thought. Maybe instead of applying the Broadcast Act and the Telecom Act to the Internet, perhaps we need a new Internet Act? #crtc

Michael Geist has writeups of day one and day two.

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