Peter Miller, a Toronto broadcasting lawyer, published an article in Cartt, the purpose of which was to argue against the positions I have maintained that the Broadcasting Act should not be extended to the Internet. Here is my response.

Mary Ann Turcke, the new head of Bell's media division, thinks we ought to feel shamed and be ashamed of using a VPN to tunnel out of Canadian broadcasting jurisdiction to gain access to the larger stock of video available outside the wire, the large and rather amiable confinement zone which Canadian cultural policy has produced.

The Quebec government intends to interfere in commerce on the Internet, the free choice of Quebecers to choose with whom to do business, and to require ISPs to establish an architecture of censorship, all with a view to driving users willy-nilly to Quebec’s official gambling site.

Our dot ca registry, CIRA, announced this morning that the Canadian Interoperability Technology Interest Group (CITIG) has won a grant to study institutions for next generation 9-1-1. 

A day later and I realize that the admonition to "do nothing" should be limited to not amalgamating the Broadcasting Act with the Telecommunications Act. The rest of the scheme I propose is an active engagement with the meaning of the Internet.

I am at a conference in the University of Ottawa on the subject of "Rebooting Canada's Communications legislation". I was on the first panel. My position on changing legislation is quite simple. Do nothing.

The Financial Post published my response to the Montreal Economic Institute's idea that what we need is exactly three physical cellular networks, rather than four. I find the MEI is a reliable voice of pre-Internet ideas of telecommunications. The number of networks is largely irrelevant; what traffic they carry, and how they interconnect, is the supreme consideration. It is the apps, not the transport, that count. Policy needs to concern itself with less with the number of networks, than with the conditions under which they carry the apps.

The issue is not the creation of a fourth national carrier, however meritorious that idea might be. Nor is three the appropriate number, nor one, nor two, nor six nor any whole integer between one and 10 to the fourth power. The appropriate number of carriers is the wrong question, and I think the CRTC understands this, maybe.

Should video entertainment coming to people through the Internet be regulated under the Broadcasting Act? I debated Jay Thomson of the CMPA yesterday before a group of entertainment industry lawyers. The topic was Resolved: that over the top television should not be regulated under the Broadcasting Act.The scene was in Toronto at the Law Society of Upper Canada's continuing education program.

News of the ruckus at the CRTC came as no great surprise this morning. Raj Shoan, the regional commissioner for Ontario, is suing the organization. On the one hand, the Chairman of the CRTC is utterly dedicated to controlling everything in his environment, lest the unexpected happen, and on the other we have a young Commissioner who will not take being controlled.

Though television is no longer primarily based on a broadcast delivery architecture, and despite or because of the enormous changes in the business model, a huge number of "television" dramas are being made this year. I cite the New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum:

I read that the author of a "landmark $5.2 billion, 12 year licensing agreement to acquire media rights to the NHL is leaving Rogers Communications Inc. effective this summer".

I was contemplating the wreckage that the Internet is making of all licensed systems. Licensing is permission of the state, at whatever level, to perform an activity without which it would be illegal. Broadcasting, practising a profession, driving a taxi, owning a strip club, running a business in a city: all of these require licences.

Irving Gerstein is the chief fundraiser for the Conservative Party of Canada. In the informal constitution he must rank closely behind the Minister of Finance and the Chief Justice of Canada in importance, as long as the Tories reign. He spoke about how the political system works a year and a half ago and I want to pass his message on.

Why does this idea keep being pushed: that combining the Broadcasting Act with the Telecom Act is the appropriate response to "convergence"?

My former colleague at the CRTC, Michel Morin, ought to take a bow. Long before it was fashionable, he was arguing for the concept that the CRTC endorsed yesterday, the idea of "skinny basic": an affordable, small package of cable services.

When I have had time to absorb the monumental FCC decision on net neutrality, I shall have more to say.

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0312/FCC-15-24A1.pdf

In the meantime, John Robson, fearless in his defence of market forces, published a column in the National Post why he was against net neutrality. 

The CRTC got it basically right yesterday. While it did not climb down from its position that video on the Internet is subject to its jurisdiction, it made the correct decision that the broadcasting regime was to be more assimilated to the Internet than the other way around. See its treatment of licensed on-demand services at paragraphs 92 and following of Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2015-86, where what is licensed would be assimilated to the regime of the Digital Media Exemption Order.

"The law surrounds the market and lets it work". I wrote that 20 years ago for a study sponsored by the Competition Bureau on the effect of the Internet on markets. The study argued that the Internet would create, reconfigure and destroy markets with blinding speed. If only I had seen how much and how fast.

In my previous posts I have criticized the legal habit of placing a label on something and thinking that the phenomenon has been understood. Thus, if labelled common carrier, then the rule is non-discrimination. If "broadcasting", then discrimination is both lawful and desirable. More, if the "service" is "broadcasting", then, according to some interpretations, it is broadcasting all the way down through its underlying transport mechanisms. This is the basis of the appeal by Bell in the Klass decision of the CRTC.