For many years the CRTC has claimed video sent across the internet is a form of broadcasting, but so far it has had the good sense not to press its luck in the courts by actually trying to regulate video and audio across the internet. To the CRTC and its broadcasting clientele, the internet is a fundamental challenge to the survival of a nationally controlled broadcasting system. In C-10 we see once again that if you can’t beat a new business model, you make it illegal. Or if you prefer, you “extend” and “embrace” the internet by defining video and audio transmissions through the internet as “broadcasting.”
The defenders of the Broadcasting Act and its revisions will say the remedies they propose will not cost much and won’t hurt a bit. They envisage the CRTC using its powers to figure out what could be regulated and what should be left unregulated. But their fundamental proposition is stunning: that freedom of speech through video or audio should be in the hands of the CRTC — including Canadians’ freedom to use the internet to reach audiences and markets as they see fit.
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