Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described the five stages of grief as one faces one’s mortal end. Personally I am in denial and I hope you are too, but I was thinking of her the other day as I contemplated the reaction of the ideologues of the television production community to the Internet.
She described the stages as
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
I think they have moved from denial to anger. The New Yorker cartoon gets it right, as usual.
“We need to rethink our strategy of hoping the Internet will just go away”.
Bargaining to follow, once they realize the implacable opposition they will face if they make publishing a video an offence carrying a $20,000 a day penalty without a broadcasting licence, or outside the terms of one’s exemption order, which is, as you might expect, so conditioned that you have to say nice politically-correct things to be exempted.
From the Broadcasting Act.
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32. (1) Every person who, not being exempt from the requirement to hold a licence, carries on a broadcasting undertaking without a licence therefor is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction and is liable
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(a) in the case of an individual, to a fine not exceeding twenty thousand dollars for each day that the offence continues; or
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(b) in the case of a corporation, to a fine not exceeding two hundred thousand dollars for each day that the offence continues.
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You may not be alarmed by this prospect, but I am. The suppressors of free speech have never lacked for plausible reasons, and supporters, especially in these times of cultural insecurity and institutional weakness.