‘Avoid the temptation to regulate,’ Glick tells heritage committee

Google Inc.’s Canadian policy counsel, Jacob Glick, told the Commons heritage committee Tuesday that policy makers should not encourage Canadian content rules and other regulations on the Internet. Glick said the Internet is a "good news" story, and acknowledged that its innovation presents challenges to many of today’s content distributors, producers, and providers. He warned policy makers not “roll back the clock.” “You will be asked to roll back the clock on some of this innovation, because of the challenges it presents,” he told committee members. Glick encouraged members to consider whether they are being asked to solve broad problems or simply the problem “that an existing business model has in the new world.” Glick appeared before the heritage committee as part of its study on new media in Canada. The temptation for legislators, he said, is that “when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Instead, Glick advised the committee to “avoid the temptation to regulate. Many of these issues won’t be solved by regulation, they will be hurt by regulation.” He said legislators should encourage and promote the openness of the Internet, and that online advertising is creating models for Canadian artists to profit from their works online. Google’s popular YouTube service, for example, shares advertising revenues with artists if their videos receive enough hits. Bloc Québécois MP Carole Lavallée argued that much of what appears on YouTube does not qualify as culture but as “leisure.” “Leisure is people who play Star Wars in their basement and film one another and put that on Youtube,” she said. “But culture is something else.” Glick said the Canadian content quota regulations for broadcasters are becoming “increasingly unsustainable,” but that Canadian content subsidies on the “supply side” continue to be important and “the more content the better.” “There’s still a case for the subsidization of Canadian content or the continuation of tax incentives for the creation of professional content,” he said. Glick said the role of government should be to subsidize the production costs of Canadian artists, protect copyright, and ensure that Canada has competitive broadband Internet for individuals to share and produce content.

‘Avoid the temptation to regulate,’ Glick tells heritage committee

Brief | March 30, 2010

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‘Avoid the temptation to regulate,’ Glick tells heritage committee

Brief | March 30, 2010

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