Netflix refuses to provide info to CRTC

Netflix Inc. will not produce some of the information CRTC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais ordered from it last week. “While Netflix has responded to a number of the CRTC's requests, we are not in a position to produce the confidential and competitively sensitive information ordered by the commission due to ongoing confidentiality concerns,” Netflix spokeswoman Anne Marie Squeo said in an email Monday evening. “While the orders by the CRTC are not applicable to us under Canadian broadcasting law, we are always prepared to work constructively with the commission,” she added. The company had been ordered to provide the information by 5 p.m. Monday. During Netflix’ appearance at the CRTC’s hearing into the future of television Friday, Blais repeatedly ordered the U.S. streaming company to provide information, such as its Canadian subscriber numbers and expenditures, which it had refused to do unless it could be guaranteed confidentiality. CRTC spokesman Denis Carmel said at the time that, to his knowledge, this was the first time the CRTC ordered someone to provide information that they had previously refused to give. During the hearing, Blais said that the information would be treated in confidence, but would not guarantee confidentiality. He told Corie Wright, Netflix’ director of global public policy “you are not entitled to a special treatment. We are treating you like every other applicant, intervener, person who appears before the commission.” The CRTC does not publish information provided in confidence, but it does publish a version of documents with the confidential information crossed out, and it has a process that allows the confidentiality of that information to be challenged. Blais told Netflix Friday that if it did not provide the information, the regulator could revoke Netflix’ digital-media exemption order. “You operate under an exemption order that requires you to provide information. Failure to provide information puts at risk your exemption order,” Blais said. In a letter submitted to the CRTC Monday by Wright and obtained by The Wire Report, Netflix said that it had “voluntarily agreed to appear before the Commission in connection with the Commission’s Let’s Talk TV hearing to provide Netflix’s views on the evolving nature of television.” “As we stated during our appearance at the hearing, specific information requested by the Commission, which was ultimately the subject of various orders made by the Commission, remains confidential and competitively sensitive, the disclosure of which to third parties would be highly prejudicial to Netflix,” Wright wrote. “Accordingly, Netflix is not in a position to produce this information.” In the filing submitted to the CRTC in a separate document Monday, Netflix answered some information it was asked for provide, such as that the company has not agreed to pay a video-on-demand tax in France or the Netherlands. However, in response to a question about programming expenditures, the company responded: “Consistent with Netflix’s concerns about confidentiality, Netflix is not in a position to provide this information.” The filing did not make reference to all of the information it was asked for Friday, such as the number of its Canadian subscribers. The document noted: “The filing of the Responses is not an acknowledgment of or attornment to either the jurisdiction of the Commission by Netflix, or the substantive application of Canadian law (including the provisions of the Broadcasting Act) to Netflix.” — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Netflix refuses to provide info to CRTC

Broadcast | September 22, 2014

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Netflix refuses to provide info to CRTC

Broadcast | September 22, 2014

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