The role of technology and policy in transforming online culture – chronicled by David Ellis
broadcasting
Open kimonos, closed minds: new risks for Canada’s Internet
58 days
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Artist’s rendering of Big Media opening their kimonos at secret CRTC meetings
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It’s very useful for the commission in our supervisory role to understand what they’re thinking and for them to open their kimonos. Some of them did offer new information, and we were grateful.
Denis Carmel, CRTC spokesman, Nov 25, in The Wire Report
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Fact-finding without the facts: must be OTT
As I’ve noted before (e.g. here and here), the CRTC’s handling of the over-the-top review is a travesty of
due process. It’s based on a fact-finding proceeding that wasn’t a proceeding, and more secret meetings to continue where they left off in March. Denis Carmel’s expression (above) of “gratitude” to the participants for dropping by to grind their own axes, without the bother of rebuttal or outside scrutiny, is a less than comforting way to honor the principle of ex parte meetings. FCC rules require that private meetings with 3rd parties be disclosed, and that the content of discussions be summarized in public minutes. As Free Press noted last July: “The ex parte process may seem obscure to most people, but these meetings have a significant impact on FCC decisionmaking.” (That article was a commentary on the FCC’s proposal to strengthen its ex parte rules.) (more…)
Get yer grimy paws off my Netflix, again (the dance mix)
89 days
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Last week the Wire Report ran a story by Nick Kyonka headlined “CRTC vertical integration rules encourage OTTs to buy sports rights: Gourd.” No prizes for guessing where the chair of the Online Broadcasting Working Group (OBWG) was headed with that worrisome observation:
The CRTC’s new regulatory framework governing vertically integrated companies may have given too much of an advantage to online content providers such as Netflix Inc., Google Inc., [and] Apple Inc.
As I explained in a pair of posts last July (“Get yer grimy paws off my Netflix”), the OTT cabal has shown they will stop at nothing to persuade the CRTC and political friendlies that new, innovative online competitors must be stomped out. They’re bad for the broadcasting system, bad for Canadian culture, bad for Canadian citizens. The group’s claims would be laughable if they weren’t part of a deadly serious attempt to win concessions. To say nothing of the fact they’re doing all this with the publicly acknowledged support of the CRTC. This time, however, the OBWG is trying to put the public interest in double jeopardy.
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Results of CRTC fact-finding on our Netflix agony: there are none!
124 days
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"I've come to suck the soul out of your culture and take your money too"
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Agency fails to find any real bananas on banana hunt – only “inconclusive” bananas
When a public agency tries to scam its way to the conclusion that Canadians need to be protected from the heroin drip of US programming, especially the cheap, innovative online kind, then shit is bound to happen. Or so you might have thought after reading my scary posts from June entitled “Get yer grimy paws off my Netflix: Ottawa’s big OTT scam” (here and here). (more…)
Beyond UBB: the CRTC’s war on Canadian consumers
197 days
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Economic practices are the most transparent ITMPs. They match consumer usage with willingness to pay, thus putting users in control and allowing market forces to work.
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In my previous post, I suggested the consumer ISP complaints revealed recently are bad enough, but only the tip of a much larger iceberg. The more unsettling issue is that the complaints in question were effectively secret and had to be dragged out of the CRTC through an Access to Information request by Michael Geist.
Yet there might be a silver lining in the complaints fiasco. It may prove to be a useful step in moving the debates on Canadian broadband away from the much-coddled incumbents and, at long last, over to Canada’s much-ignored consumers. Peter Nowak wrote a recent post on the fiasco, referring to it as “the net neutrality bombshell” – and suggested von Finckenstein’s inability to create a viable network neutrality framework will be seen as his “biggest failure at the CRTC.” (more…)
Get yer grimy paws off my Netflix: the scam, continued
233 days
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(Updated Sunday, June 19)
This post and the one prior are devoted to a critique of the CRTC’s OTT proceeding, oops, fact-finding exercise – and the role of the Online 
Broadcasting Working Group (OBWG). Of its 11 publicly announced members, I’m looking at 5 in order to illustrate just how far removed from a “factual” exercise this circus will be. They are ACTRA and SOCAN (covered last time), plus Astral, the CMPA and Peter Grant.
Exhibit F – Astral: “The objective is … that we maintain a level playing field within the system—a system that is a very positive and strong element in terms of our Canadian culture, identity and the Canadian economy.” André Bureau, Chair, Astral Media, April 14. OBWG member.
Whenever you hear a Canadian media mogul saying all he wants is a level playing field, while draping himself in the flag, run for cover. Astral owns 22 TV services, including US “wraparounds” like HBO Canada. They have lots to lose in the OTT wave. I wonder what they’ll say to the OBWG and the Commission… Competition? Bring it on!
The old guard will continue to find lawyers who will continue to argue that every “new media” innovation is just another form of broadcasting, and therefore has to be regulated – meaning they, the moguls, have to be protected from anything that might compete with them. Since our moguls couldn’t innovate their way out of a wet paper bag, they harbor much fear and loathing for innovators like Netflix, because innovators are smarter and their business models have legs – unlike, say, being a subsidized, highly protected reseller of US TV shows with no Plan B for the digital age.
Get yer grimy paws off my Netflix: Ottawa’s big OTT scam
235 days
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Canada’s (“frightened,” “alarmed”) media gatekeepers go on a rampage, led by the regulator
So… the CRTC holds sub rosa meetings in March with a roomful of interested parties about the growing “threat” of over-the-top (OTT) Web content. The same 
week, the Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage issues its report on “…The Move Towards New Viewing Platforms,” a compendium of witness statements all arguing new viewing platforms are a threat to Canadians. Shaw e.g. warns (p.5) that “by consuming valuable capacity, over-the-top providers threaten to undermine our significant network investments and impact the quality of service offered to our ISP customers. Finally, consumers will ultimately suffer, with fewer Canadian choices.”
Many of the patriots who showed up for the Standing Committee hearings then become members of the OTT Working Group, alleged to comprise some 35 “industry executives” – we don’t know for sure since their activities and membership are secret, even though they are operating with the sanction of the regulator. They subsequently change their name to the Online Broadcasting Working Group (OBWG) – and with a stroke of the pen ensure that no one will construe OTT content for anything but broadcasting (what they call begging the question, i.e. assuming what is to be proved).
On May 25, the CRTC “responds to Netflix critics” (Wire Report headline) by issuing a notice of consultation – structured not as a formal “proceeding” but a “fact-finding mission” – a nuance with important implications, especially for Ottawa’s tiny consumer advocacy community. Now that the Netflix critics have got their official “fact-finding” exercise, the OBWG does us all a favor on June 6 by revealing who the group’s members are. (more…)
Americans still invading, broadcasters still in charge
734 days
Last week Interactive Ontario hosted its first iLunch of the season, entitled “What is broadcast?” (I was involved in some of the planning.) Buddy Brady Gilchrist moderated in his usual immoderate, provocative and enlightened way. Two things kept jumping out.
First, I was surprised to hear a current of old-fashioned jingoism running through much of an otherwise useful discussion. After radio, TV, movies and magazines, now it’s apparently the turn of Google, Apple and the other US cyber-behemoths to be pouring over the 49th parallel and… messing with our digital media? Apparently we have to face up to this menace or… all is lost?
Apple is a menace because it’s taking money out of the country and creating its own new brand of walled garden. Yes and yes. And so what? Where is the biggest concentration of Canadian movies, TV, music and podcasts on the Web, in one place? If it’s not the Canadian iTunes Store, somebody point the way. There was complaining about rev share (is there another system?) and about the tilt to success for artists who get on the iTunes homepage. Yes, and other artists will be suffering in the background, not doing quite as well. That’s show biz. (more…)
The Future of New Media Cancon (2)
869 days
Here’s my hasty list of Top 10 new media Cancon issues, in no special order.
1 – Technology agnosticism. This was a good approach to policymaking under the Broadcasting Act. Not anymore, because the Internet has got absolutely nothing to do with broadcasting. You can twist that into a pretzel, but interactive, on-demand video, in a medium where personal messaging is still the most popular activity, isn’t broadcasting. That’s exactly what the Commission was telegraphing in its call for a national digital strategy: the old definitions don’t work.
2 – The mass media paradigm. We’ve always treated our cultural industries like mass media, because that’s what they are. But the Internet isn’t and public policy should take that as its starting point. This isn’t a value judgment, that’s just the way it is, based on what real people really do online. (more…)
