A few days ago the CRTC has opened up a public consultation regarding the exemption of regulation for new media. Among other things, new media contains the internet. The old exemption was from 1999 and now the CRTC is trying to decide whether or not it’s still appropriate. User generated content, that is any content created by individuals, looks like it won’t be touched. Broadcast television shoehorned into the internet is open to potential regulation. One of the pieces of research commissioned by the CRTC calls for a tax similar to the one on broadcast television signals, to be harmonized among all formats so that the media trust doesn’t dwindle as users move to IPTV. ADISQ earlier asked for prioritization of Canadian content but have not yet weighed in on this. The other piece of research doesn’t come with a recommendation, but does confirm that Canada is far behind. “U.S. broadcasters are very advanced in terms of making broadcast content available through broadband. Major U.S. broadcasters make between 52 and 80% of their non-news evening/primetime programming available in full-episode format on-demand at their websites. Canada’s two largest private English-language broadcasters, by comparison, offer much less of their content this way (CTV offers 24% and Global TV offers 15%).” That’s right, our best isn’t even half as good as their worst. Even paid content is lagging. My main problem with Canadian content requirements on broadcast mediums is that it cuts down on customer choice. The internet was my way around that: I could finally binge on gabber or ebm which just isn’t found on Canadian stations. I could watch the current season of Little Britain rather than the two year old stuff that made its way onto cable here. None of the proposed solutions would impede my ability to get to any content, and the harmonized tax appears fair. Nevertheless, I’m wary and will be watching the comments as they roll in.
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I posted to imaddicted.ca
Promoting Canadian content through internet regulations: Call for comments
http://imaddicted.ca/internet/promoting-canadian-content-through-internet-regulations/
October 21 2008, 8:01pm | Comments »
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I posted to imaddicted.ca
Plenty of telecom issues but no debate near the election
http://imaddicted.ca/telephony/plenty-of-issues-no-debate-near-election/
photo credit: Seattle Municipal Archives The CBC has managed to round up most of the telecom issues in one post about the election. Among them are the new fees for incoming SMS messages, throttling of third party DSL ISPs, and the lack of competition on the wireless front. The last good point that they made is that too few people know about the ccts. That’s the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services. If you’re at your wit’s end and an executive letterbomb isn’t your style, give it a shot. Filing a complaint is easy. The CBC article missed one thing, though. There are rumours curculating that Bell plans to take back quick GPS locks on some of their mobile devices. There hasn’t been any official confirmation, one of the Bell employees on dslreports.com says it’s unlikely, but even if it goes through there’s a good primer on what might happen from the comments section at a post by Michael Geist. At worst, AGPS might get the axe unless you pay an additional fee. I’d still be able to get a free and accurate lock on my HTC Touch but it’d take a while. I suppose I can live with that.
September 27 2008, 11:21pm | Comments »
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