Regulation of new media will ‘hinder our participation in new markets’: Corus

OTTAWA—The regulation of new media activities online could hinder broadcasters from expanding their content and reach, Gary Maavara, vice-president and general counsel of Corus Entertainment Inc., told the House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage Tuesday. “Regulation of our new media activities, no matter how well intentioned, can only hinder our participation in the new markets,” Maavara said. Maavara told the committee that broadcasters must be nimble and ready to innovate in a constantly changing digital media environment, and that regulatory obligations get in the way of that innovation. The issue of whether the CRTC has the authority to regulate broadcasting in new media online is currently before the Federal Court of Appeal. The CRTC said last summer that a funding regime or levy on Internet service providers to support Canadian content online “is neither necessary nor appropriate at this time.” But the commission has suggested that it may be necessary to regulate the wireless sector “as it becomes a more important platform tool to access all forms of communications and the distribution of Canadian content.” Liberal MP Scott Simms criticized Maavara’s plea for less regulation. “The way I see it is that, with less regulation, you have an open, free market that sort of bypasses many cultural norms,” Simms said. Simms added that, with less regulation, the American HBO channel could enter Canada without Canadian content regulations, threatening Corus’ HBO Canada channel. Maavara said existing regulations require the company to “report on new media activities,” but he did not specify which reporting requirements. “Frankly, the information we’re giving to the government is irrelevant and it costs us resources to do so,” he said. Maavara would not take questions from The Wire Report following the committee meeting. Also before the heritage committee Tuesday, André Bureau, chairman of the board with Astral Media Inc., said telecommunications, broadcasting and new media should fall under the same agency. “I’ve lived through different governments, and whether at the CRTC or in business, I’ve seen the benefits of having one department in charge of both telecommunications and broadcasting at the time,” Bureau said. “We believe that it’s already complex enough. is going so fast that we need to have one department that will look at all these elements together.” Konrad von Finckenstein, chair of the CRTC, has also told the Commons industry committee that Canada needs a single piece of legislation to cover telecommunications, broadcasting and radio communications. When the CRTC was created in 1968 to regulate the Canadian broadcasting industry, telecommunications was still regulated under the Railway Act. In 1993 the Telecommunications Act was passed as the first legislative scheme to focus on telecommunications. Bureau told the committee Tuesday that there is an opportunity for Canada to “take a lead” by combining broadcasting and telecommunications under one act. Astral Media also recommended that a panel of experts be formed to oversee a review of Canada’s broadcasting policy and make recommendations to the government. Bureau said the expert panel should include people like Open Text Corp. CEO Tom Jenkins, broadcasting and digital media experts, and people who can evaluate the financial and political implications of potential policy decisions. “We need to combine these things in a way that they are not detrimental to each other but where they lead to an even more exciting future for broadcasting,” Bureau said. On Tuesday the heritage committee also heard from Ernie Ingles, president of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL). Ingles said his association needs more funding to digitize Canadian works from research libraries in universities across the country. He said the cost to digitize all university library content and make it accessible to the public is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. “If you come away with just one recommendation from my presentation today, it should be that the government of Canada needs to take a leadership role in preserving Canadian heritage by investing in the digitization of Canada’s documentary heritage,” Ingles said. Ingles added that he fears organizations like his own may have to buy back Canadian digitized content from Google, which has been aggressively scanning books as part of its Google Books initiative. Ingles said CARL supports expanding fair dealing under the Copyright Act. Canada’s fair dealing provisions in the Copyright Act currently create specific exceptions for private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting. “Ultimately I think the more definition we find in legislation, oftentimes it works against us,” Ingles said. “Sometimes it’s better to be a bit vaguer than specific.” But critics such as Barry Sookman, a partner with McCarthy Tétrault in Toronto and a lobbyist for major content owners such as the Hollywood studios and the recording industry, has said flexible fair dealing has been studied and rejected by the EU, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, and that “it doesn’t produce predictability.” The National Post reported last week that the Conservative government is poised to introduce a “heavy-handed” copyright bill this week. The bill is expected to be similar to the Conservatives’ former Bill C-61, which died in the House due to a federal election. “All signals suggest Heritage Minister James Moore has triumphed over the objections of Industry Minister Tony Clement, setting up Canada to march in excessively protected lockstep with a United States that boasts the toughest laws against pirated music or movies on the planet,” the National Post’s Don Martin reported. The House Committee on Canadian Heritage is expected to hold at least four more hearings in its study of digital media in Canada. Conservative MP Gary Schellenberger, the committee chair, told The Wire Report Tuesday that he hopes the committee will have an interim report ready by the summer. jmigneault@thewirereport.ca

Regulation of new media will ‘hinder our participation in new markets’: Corus

Broadcast | May 25, 2010

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