CRTC cannot ‘ignore the reality of the Internet’

The CRTC’s momentous decision this week about value-for-signal did not exist in “a vacuum” and the commission cannot create policies that “ignore the reality that is the Internet,” Michael Geist, the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, told the Commons heritage committee Thursday. Geist appeared before the committee as part of its study on new media in Canada. In response to a question about the CRTC’s decision Monday to create a value-for-signal negotiations regime between the broadcasters and the cable and satellite distributors, Geist said he felt as if it existed “almost in a vacuum.” “I felt that it existed almost in an vacuum, as if the Internet didn’t exist, as if we can create certain kinds of policies designed to support the broadcast television you’re referring to, and assume that consumers will simply move in that direction regardless of what the costs happen to be,” Geist said. “We can’t create policies that largely ignore the reality that is the Internet.” Geist told the committee that he disagrees with the CRTC’s assertion that consumers are ready to absorb potential price increases. “I’m skeptical. It may be true for a certain demographic of Canadians,” he said, such as people who rely on television. But younger Canadians are spending more time online, he said, and use the Internet for much more than communicating, reading, and social networking. “They use it for what is effectively the equivalent of television.” An Ipsos-Reid poll released this week said Canadians are spending more time online than watching television. The poll found that Canadians spend an average of 18.1 hours a week online and 16.9 hours a week watching television. Geist said that if he asks his kids, aged 11 and nine, whether they prefer that he take away the TV or take away the computer, “it’s an easy choice.” Geist also told the committee that the CRTC’s “silo” approach to regulating broadcasting and telecom “has almost completely broken down,” and that the government should revisit the separation of the Telecommunications Act and the Broadcasting Act to come up with a single, broader, “communication act.” “It is certainly true today, and it is only going to be more true in the future, that what we see between conventional broadcasting and what we see as telecom is virtually indistinguishable,” he said. In his introductory remarks to the committee, Geist raised five digital issues that he said warrant the government’s attention: network infrastructure, digitization, more government transparency online, digital cultural policy, and copyright reform. news@thewirereport.ca

CRTC cannot ‘ignore the reality of the Internet’

Briefs | 03/25/2010 10:05 pm EDT

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