The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) was quick to applaud the government’s latest retransmission consultation as a step in the right direction to dealing with companies such as JumpTV.com Canada Inc and iCraveTV.com Inc, though it won’t make specific comment on Ottawa’s proposed options at this time. In a joint consultation paper released by the departments of Canadian Heritage and Industry Canada late last month, the federal government hasn’t ruled out the status quo with respect to Section 31 of the Copyright Act – a loophole being exploited by companies that want to retransmit over-the-air programming via the Internet.

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The Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) is in the midst of working out an agreement that bases wages for directors, location managers, art department personnel and others to production budgets to ease the way for producers to create low-budget programming for the new digital channels and the Internet. This Fall, the organization hopes similar clauses will appear in its deal with the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA).

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The Quebec and Canadian governments are looking to establish a new television channel that will showcase French-Canadian productions at home and abroad. The channel proposal emerged during negotiations that will see control of the U.S. and Latin American markets of TV5 Monde transferred from Montreal to Paris beginning August 1 (CCR, March 14/01).

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A Quebec Superior Court judge has ruled that pirating U.S. satellite TV signals isn’t against Canadian law, and as such, can be hacked with impunity on this side of the border. In a surprising and unprecedented decision released May 29, Justice Pierre Tessier ruled that the Radiocommunications Act makes it a crime to steal signals only from authorized Canadian distributors, Star Choice Communications Inc and Bell ExpressVu. That same protection, he concluded, doesn’t extend to unlawful distributors such as DirecTV.

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Pelmorex Communications Inc has filed a licence amendment in hopes of pushing the CRTC into taking regulatory oversight with regard to interactive television content. As part of the licence renewal of its specialty channels, The Weather Network (TWN) and Météomédia (MM), Pelmorex is proposing an amendment to its condition of licence for the two channels that would make interactivity an integral part of the service.

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