There are few things incumbent upon the
media to report. Large disasters. Paris Hilton. The Large Hadron Collider (though that one may fall under
the first category). And ‘Net Neutrality’. So when the Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission makes an open call for
suggestions on how or if the internet should be policed, it’s important we give
a listen and voice the opinions of those that would shape the medium. So when
Quebecor Media (an ISP, among other things) said there are no reasonable grounds “to support
regulation of the Internet, to lift the current exemption orders or impose a
tax on the revenues of Internet Service Providers to finance content
production” than heads should be turning.
The CRTC was accepting briefs on the topic of
regulation up until last Friday. Quebecor was among the contributors, as well as
internet behemoth Google, which said that keeping new media content unregulated
in Canada was paramount to preserving what makes the internet “awesome”: “Without
regulation the Canadian broadcasting policy objectives have been, and will
continue to be, implemented on the Internet. The New Media Exemption is the
best regulatory approach to keeping the Internet awesome.”
The above statement comes via the Financial
Post, in an article addressing the concerns raised in the briefs submitted to
the CRTC. The article goes on to say that “A potential tax suggested in preliminary
discussions with the federal regulator of between 2.5% to 5% of gross revenues
to be levied on Internet service providers that would go to broadcasters was
met with widespread opposition by industry players.”
Quebecor had a little more rhetoric to add
to the notion of an ISP tax: “Quebecor Media opposes any plan to require
Internet Service Providers to divert any part of their revenues to financing of
content that they do not need and whose production and distribution are not
part of their mission…Such an initiative would be unproductive and, in any
case, illegal. To be avoided is any model along the lines of the Canadian Television
Fund, whose limits in today’s world are demonstrated by governance rules and
criteria that frustrate evolution toward a viable system for the medium and
long term that could ensure sustained development in the sector.”
So long as net neutrality is predicated on
ISPs paying as little as possible, the internet may very well remain open and
relatively free.
However, the CRTC recently decided that it
was not within their mandate to protect consumers from ISP traffic shaping, the
likes of which Bell Communications infamously implemented earlier this year. The CRTC
did say that they would launch a further investigation into the matter to
determine the best course of action in the future.
