Unclear who owns set-top box data, broadcasters argue

Quebecor Inc. hasn’t established that it actually owns the set-top box data at the centre of a new court case filed by the telecom appealing a CRTC decision, a group of broadcasters has told the Federal Court of Appeal. In late June the CRTC ordered Quebecor’s Videotron subsidiary to continue to participate in an industry-wide working group charged with creating a set-top box (STB) TV viewing data measurement system. Quebecor then asked for leave to appeal that decision in Federal Court. It said in the French-language document filed earlier this month that the Broadcasting Act doesn’t authorize the CRTC to force broadcast licence holders to share their property with others. It told the court that the legislation doesn’t have a provision allowing the CRTC to impose licence conditions obliging licence holders to share their property with other private companies, with the aim of giving them a commercial advantage. Videotron said it is able to collect information about linear and on-demand content consumed by viewers using the set-top boxes, and it uses that information to manage its network, for billing and to improve its subscribers’ experience, meaning that data has significant commercial value. The company argued that the data collected is its property under both Quebec’s civil code and common law in the rest of Canada. But in their own filing, respondents Blue Ant Media Inc., Pelmorex Corp., CBC/Radio-Canada, and the Independent Broadcast Group said that argument was without foundation. That Aug. 14 filing, also in French, said the question of ownership wasn’t established by the CRTC in the 2019 decision, or addressed in the administrative process establishing the STB system. The group said Videotron’s argument is based on a presumption that must be tested, but that the Federal Court and this specific file are not the appropriate forum for that debate. “It is not established that Quebecor is the owner of the data” collected by the set-top boxes, they argued. There is not enough information about how the data is collected and organized, and the fact that Videotron does not share the data with others doesn’t in itself lead to the conclusion that it’s the company itself that is the “creator” of the information, they argued. The broadcasters’ filing said there is reasonable doubt about the ownership of the data, particularly in light of the fact that the reason Videotron is able to obtain the viewing information is because it is the holder of a licence granted by the CRTC. They also argued that because that licence condition was first included in a 2018 decision, Videotron has now missed the deadline to appeal it in court. CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this article said that Groupe V Media Inc., and Rogers Communications Inc. were part of the filing. While they are listed as respondents in this case, they were not involved in the Aug. 14 filing. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

Unclear who owns set-top box data, broadcasters argue

News | August 21, 2019

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Unclear who owns set-top box data, broadcasters argue

News | August 21, 2019

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