Month: August 2015

Nothing changes faster than business. What people want, and how they get what they want, changes on a dime. Thus news that YouTube is presenting cooking shows that draw viewers in the millions and half millions is not a surprise, except maybe to the lawyers for the Canadian broadcasting and media production industries. But of course they […]

Lawrence Strickland, head of the US National Telecommunications and Information Authority, announced that the handover of responsibility for the IANA functions contract, would be delayed. The IANA functions contract is the contract between the US Government and ICANN for the registration of top level domain name root zone changes, and other matters related to protocol parameters, […]

I see that Prime Minister Harper has made taxing Canadians’ access to Netflix an election issue. How could it not be? The Canadian production community would have every Canadian website regulated under the Broadcasting Act if they could have their way. Just a little tax, just a tiny bit of more regulation: it won’t hurt a […]

Today the CRTC issued a hybrid video on demand exemption order. It perfectly illustrates the creeping regulation of speech by means of broadcasting legislation that I warn against. It will not stop; it will only expand, until the day the constitutional challenge is launched against the CRTC’s pretensions that Parliament has the authority to legislate the […]