Canadian court deciding if ISPs are content providers

Filed under: Business, News, Web

Canada requires the television and radio industries to adhere to Canada's Broadcasting Act, which is governed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Currently, ISPs are not considered broadcasters, and it's pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that they should not be.

However, the CRTC has escalated this issue to the Federal Court of Appeal in order to legally clarify this situation. There is heavy pressure from the content creation community (particularly in the television industry) to see ISPs regulated, arguing that they are distributing Canadian content.

On the other side of the argument are the telecommunications companies: they argue that ISPs are simply a conduit through which data flows and have nothing to do with content distribution. They point out that, as with most things, this seems to be motivated by money. If the court decides that ISPs are broadcasters, they'll be subject to the same taxation that broadcasters must pay, and they must contribute to Canadian content development.

While I can see why the entertainment industry would like to create a bigger pie to get their slice from, it makes no sense at all to regulate Internet service providers based on this one type of data that passes through them. ISPs aren't content providers; if anything, it's companies like Revision3 or TWiT in the US that are the real online content providers, along with the television and radio networks of course. These networks are already regulated in Canada, though, and online-only content providers are in the fledgling stage, where regulation would almost certainly constrain or even completely suppress them. Since they don't have a lot of money (certainly not as much as ISPs do), they're not interesting as a potential target for regulation ... yet.

I would be amazed if this case determined that ISPs are broadcasters and, therefore, subject to all of the things that such a decision would entail. It's kind of scary that there's even a case deciding it, though.

Canadian court deciding if ISPs are content providers originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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