Netflix refuses CRTC demand to hand over subscriber data
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
This bit scares me. The view of an open internet isn't a 'late 1990s' view, it's the view it should always be.
The CRTC is arguing that Netflix is now a legitimate broadcaster subject to the same laws that govern traditional broadcasters.
Open internet doesn't mean unregulated and lawless.
In fact, we need quite a bit of laws and regulations to ensure an open internet.
Patently false in theory and extremely debatable in practic.
These things don't exist unless you make laws to protect them.
The net neutrality issue is largely due to government granted monopolies and subsidies during the internet revolution era of the dotcom days. Now you have to content with monoliths and a very high barrier to entry by competition.
The same constitution that is regularly ignored and shit on as part of standard practice?
The constitution doesn't mean anything if the government doesn't follow it.
We also don't need a government to tell us we have free speech on the internet; we have that by default. The only thing governments have the power to do on the internet is damage free speech (which they have done with great consistency).
Net neutrality? Maybe. You could argue that network provision is a natural monopoly and therefore needs regulation to keep it "fair".
Free speech? Absolutely not. There is no sensible way a law can make the internet freer (as in speech) than it is in the absence of law. Right now, any lack of free speech on the internet is directly due to laws. Please explain your reasoning.
Honestly, my heart goes very quickly to democratic free speech. And it's not the same thing. We only had it for a short period of time - the wealthy now have more speech again. Can you really have a democracy when speech isn't democratic?
Net neutrality: It's more complex than a monopolistic problem. I would suggest you look more into it.
Democratic "free speech" isn't free. Democracy implies the majority can vote to silence the minority.
The only speech that is truly free is anarchic, where no one can preclude anyone else from speech. That is why the internet, with its lack of hierarchy, is a particularly good vehicle for free speech.
I don't care much for IP, so we may disagree there. I think any system that relies on violent coercion to (try to) incentivize production is undesirable.
Additionally if noone is watching the Canadian shows how does the CRTC determine what % content they require netflix to provide.
The consumer doesn't choose what's on Netflix, they only choose what they watch. They don't choose what they pay for, they pay for what Netflix chooses. This is the same model as every content provider in Canada, which is why Netflix needs to abide by the same laws.
If not - then it's completely incorrect description of how Netflix works. They have one month for free - so you can check for yourself how exactly it functions, before commenting.
(disclaimer: I'm a happy streaming-only Netflix user for several years, and I do not own a TV, my cable subscription is internet-only).
Please explain how a user of Netflix chooses a "channel" and receives the streaming content of said channel without the need to continue to select content to watch.
Each show is not "essentially the same" as a channel. A channel is a curation of related content (by the curator's definition of 'related.') Obtaining a collection of all episodes of a series and making them available for customers to play on demand is pretty much the opposite of curation, in my opinion.
So I'm still not seeing how Netflix is a broadcaster by any existing definition of the term.
How is this a "channel" ?
A more accurate description would be: There is a limited library of content that Netflix licences and you can pick and choose what you watch from that library. This is, for the most part, nothing like existing broadcasters who have finite channels which have finite scheduling space. Thus when CanCon rules state X% of that space must be Canadian it has a clear meaning.
With Netflix, I suppose they could require that X% of the library be Canadian shows, but that seems pretty arbitrary.
In the end this is another example of how much the CRTC panders to the existing broadcast industry in Canada. Much as they did when people tried to subscribe to US satellite television providers. It is protectionism at best, corporate pandering at worst.
There could be several reasonable approaches. E.g. 5% of their content expenditures must be Canadian, whether or not it is watched.
I'll leave the discussion of whether this is desirable alone.
Netflix isn't a broadcaster at all. Netflix is unicast. And yes, that matters in practice, because broadcast spectrum is finite and broadcasters have to choose content on behalf of everyone. With Netflix the users choose what content is transmitted and can choose from arbitrarily many alternatives.
The specifics of the implementation aren't really relevant to anyone but lawyers at this time. The How is less important than the Why.
How questions: Does Netflix have licenses for all possible content? Do they pay it out at per-view level?
Netflix and other online streaming options are replacing traditional broadcasters who were legislated to ensure the continued survival of Canadian content.
The obvious big ones are Uber and Airbnb, but then we get into things like amazon and sales tax.
And then there are companies like Aero , who construct elaborate legal fictions (having a million different antennas does not change much if your service is functionally equivalent to any VOD service by cable companies).
Sometimes regulations are there because of an experiment we already tried, and no amount of iPhone app magic will change human nature on certain points.
A legal fiction is a legal story that doesn't actually match the literal facts.
There argument is a legal fiction in that it doesn't match the service actually being advertised and offered. The implementation doesn't matter, because the end result is rebroadcasting material to members of the public.
When the new company is small, everyone love it. Once it get big and more powerful, government will like to have more control over it and get/use/blackmail some of the power. It is power struggle.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has a mandate to determine whether broadcasters comply with their operating license via a set quota of Canadian-specific content, along with Canadian-content fees. This quote deals with the heart of the matter because Netflix was given an exemption from being classified under the Canadian Broadcasting Act, and one of the conditions to maintain this exemption was that the exempted entity would share Canadian subscriber data.
I don't believe that Netflix needs to release specific subscriber details (e.g. name, number), but would have needed to release anonymized details broken down by province and potentially city. Since Netflix is choosing not to comply at all will make an interesting test of the CRTC's powers (which are typically quite extensive). I wonder how Hulu and other streaming providers are handling this?
A Financial Post article provides a little more detail around this point[1].
[1] http://business.financialpost.com/2014/09/19/sparks-fly-as-n...
Getting to the root of your first question, the CRTC deems that any media delivered to residents of Canada (i.e. on Canadian soil) is within their jurisdiction. I believe most regulatory bodies operate on similar "boundaries" (e.g. United States FCC), other than maritime bodies that need to delineate a 12-mile radius from their coastline to make the distinction between "territorial" vs. "international" waters[3].
EDIT: If you happen to stream content to a private audience, I think you'd be exempt just because you're too small of a target to go after. But if you tried to scale your Canadian streaming operation up, you'll probably run afoul of the CRTC without obtaining either a license or at least applying for an exemption. IANAL.
[1] http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/1999/PB99-197.htm
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Radio-television_and_...
No. The FCC only has jurisdiction over broadband delivery (very limited, is working to expand on this to ensure better service quality through the country), telephone, and over the air programming through its regulation of the RF spectrum.
What the hell Canada!
National Inferiority Complex. The Canadian content laws are bullshit anyway.
Your tone will cause you to get downvoted, but there is a certain amount of truth to what you're saying. I think that some people here like to try to define themselves by how they are not American. Cancon exists, by and large, to stem the fears of a cultural invasion from south of the border. But I think this is the fear of a vocal minority.
I'd contend that most Canadians don't seem to care about this when it comes time to make their choices as to what they'll watch. Most of the highly-rated television shows are American-made, even if they're being shown on CTV, Global, etc. Only hockey and news seem to be the exceptions. Add Netflix to this, and I think it shows that Canadians want to consume US content, and aren't worried about the alleged consequences.
Americans don't need Cancon-type laws because they're the dominate culture. Smaller cultures like Canada need to be protected so that they may be allowed to develop. For example, numerous musical acts in Canada could never have existed if the government didn't fund them and give them a market to grow in.
That's absurd. And it implies extreme mediocrity of Canadian culture, which is also absurd.
As though the 35 million people in Canada aren't going to support local musical talent, from Vancouver to Toronto. They're not primarily going to drive eight hours to NYC and support local American talent or three hours to Seattle instead of going to local festivals or concerts.
The government can only harm the situation by subsidizing terrible products that have almost no demand, to the detriment - no matter how slight - of better products that would thrive without subsidy.
Americans don't force their content on us. The irony is that our own regulatory bodies are the ones seeking to force something on us that we don't seem to want.
>Smaller cultures like Canada need to be protected so that they may be allowed to develop.
Protected from whom? Themselves, apparently. It is, after all, Canadians who seem to be welcoming American content with open arms. They've shown exactly what they want, via their daily decisions of which kinds of media to consume. And this is even with their options artificially limited by entities like the CRTC.
It's in the nature of bureaucracies to attempt to expand their jurisdiction as far as the law will allow and, when a grey area exists, to err on the side of overreaching until they're specifically told they do not have jurisdiction.
So there's nothing specific to Netflix.
However most streaming providers aren't available in Canada. Netflix is the only one who's gone to the trouble of acquiring streaming rights for Canada for major TV/Movies.
Google (Youtube) has adopted a similar position to Netflix, but they haven't faced any requests yet.
This applies to music, film, TV, aeroplanes, and in the case of Quebec even the spoken language itself.
Canada has to move to demand based thinking where if you want to sell Canadian content you have to have a need-or-wants end market for it, not simply force a quota of it on people that was produced with ever increasingly necessary subsidies thanks to how out of touch with the end market it becomes.
Make Canadian content more attractive to everyone (including Canadians) and the problem would solve itself.
This sort of regulation (eventually) does a serious disservice to the industry. I've replaced television (of all sorts) with streamed video content and/or on-line reading. It's not about the delivery method it's about spending my free time watching/reading the most entertaining content.
When I was little, if I hadn't brought books and magazines home from the library, the only "new" content I could be entertained by the television. New regulations on Internet content providers won't solve the CATV viewership problem it will simply push viewers from the (newly regulated) popular content providers to other providers. They're not going back to television unless someone dramatically improves the programming.
As a Canadian though there are few Canadian shows I'm interested in. Maybe the occasional CBC DocZone, but that's about it.
I would like to see more of BBC model over here, it seems to work out swimmingly for them. (Doctor Who, Horizon, Top Gear, This World, and that's before you get to the one-off films)
If they're forced to play Canadian music, it would seem to me that many or most people aren't interested in where the music came from as long as it gets your foot thumping. I'm a Canadian myself and I'm not interested in where it came from as long as it sounds good to me.
I feel like these laws are from a time before Youtube. In an age when anyone can post a video online and be famous if people actually like their work, why do we (Canadians) have to mandate that some of our music is Canadian?
Cultural material is not a simple commodity that you can apply laws of supply and demand to, because cultural products are not economic substitutes for each other. This is one of the few areas where I think some protectionism may be justified, because if you import all your media then it tends to crowd out one's domestic culture, which in extreme cases can lead to social fragmentation. If you don't have any kind of domestic media output then that also limits your country's potential for tourism and inward investment.
I grew up in Ireland and although I was very interested in film from an early age there was very little domestic film or TV production going on; maybe 30-40% of what was on TV came from the UK and >50% came from the US (cheap for programmers to purchase given the tiny size of the market, and for political reasons we did not wish to get too much of our programming from the UK). There was only one TV channel for many years and it was quite demoralizing to realize that how little cultural output of our own there was. Apart from a documentary shot in 1934 by an Irish-American filmmaker, there wasn't a single Irish-produced feature film for nearly 50 years, until 1982 (when I was 12), and even that involved an English director. The domestic industry didn't really get going until the early 1990s.
As a kid, I would borrow library books and read magazine articles about film production but even the notion of 'home movies' seemed impossibly remote - I literally never saw a video or film camera until I moved to London. It didn't occur to me to pursue a career in film as a youth because the domestic industry simply didn't exist. Even with cheap digital technology available today, making a film is quite an expensive undertaking - there's no guarantee that filmmakers will simply bootstrap themselves as the inevitable result of market forces.
I think your way of thinking ties too closely with the failed multiculturalism experiments of the 20th century. Trying to artificially make media fit for various demographics leads to low quality media, tax increases, and ultimately a certain level of isolation.
In the USA in the 70s and 80s, we tried this sort of thing. There was a cola for black people, urban newspapers for the black community, we encouraged them to go to traditionally black colleges, we encouraged them entering traditionally black jobs, staying in traditionally black communities, staying out of the suburbs, etc. Instead of trying to integrate them into the mainstream, we isolated them. It was a disservice. The same thing is happening all over the world, especially with Muslims immigrants. We can see the multicultural mindset causing problems in Europe, especially in the UK and France.
Even if we took your argument on face value, what then? Some kind of quota for Irish directors? So we turn down an English director with great ideas and lots of talent for some Irish director because you feel, as an Irish person, that somehow you can feel his "Irishness" via his directorial decisions? So if he made a sci-fi film about the future on another planet, you'll absorb some level of Irishness from this? That's absurd.
I think its time we put multiculturism down and accept that a certain level of assimilation is normal and healthy. If your entire cultural identity is at risk from a Michael Bay film, well, that sounds like it wasn't too strong to begin with. My parents were immigrants. I feel only a superficial connection to their culture. I don't see why that's so terrible. Their great grandparents came from another culture as well. The idea that we need to protect those from a certain culture from change is highly questionable.
This is pretty much the opposite of what you are complaining about.
There is plenty of evidence that the "market" is NOT always right. Where is your evidence that is is correct in this case?
In addition, there is a big difference between "no demand" and "so much cheaper to buy somebody else's."
Like many things, movie production has an economy of scale. Peter Jackson proved that by basically subsidizing an entire movie industry in New Zealand.
Also, I thought the 70s and 80s were about DE-segregating people. I thought that's what the Freedom Riders went South for.
There is already more than "a certain level of assimilation" going around in Canada, for example. Content laws are there to make sure it doesn't turn to total assimilation.
Well, the thing about that is that it's simply not going to work if Canadians themselves don't buy it to begin with. But that's already happening and a few silly media laws requiring the production of content almost nobody wants isn't really going to turn back the tide.
I mean, Tim Hortons sold out. I'm pretty sure that the handwriting on the wall is up to at least 'מנא, מנא, תקל' by now...
How about American (not USian) making content for Americans? Or Terran, making content for Terrans? Why this divide?
As someone who lives in Canada, why should I let someone else decides what I'm going to watch?
Why should Québec and New Hampshire be so different? They are geographically close. It would make sense for them to tend to become more and more alike. If anything, those laws are artificially creating different cultures.
It's not 'assimilation', it's living with other people. Do you think of yourself as 'assimilated' if you start playing the same games as one of your friends?
THe only problem is that if you don't put these restrictions on netflix then you have a harder time justifying it with legacy television providers.
There are some Canadian winners out there if you look for them.
And I don't believe RIM are in it.
There was a time around 2006 when I lived half in Montreal and half in Brixton, and at that point Arcade Fire could sell out the Brixton Academy (concert venue of about 4000 capacity), while simultaneously getting absolutely no attention in Canada at all. They aren't my taste, but it was curious that one of the great success stories of recent Canadian music was in spite of the fact they didn't secure Canadian radio play until they were popular elsewhere.
I can go on about the bad side of Canadian business, but there is a fear among the more intelligent side that unless Canada snaps out of this trap it looks a lot like a third world resource extraction economy. That this is at least discussed is a cause for some optimism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michael-geist/crtc-netflix_b_58...
Yes, those terrible 90's where a massive industry was born thanks to the internet. An industry that continues to enrich the lives of the entire civilized world while creating tons of wealth. This nightmare must be stopped! Seriously, there may be reasons for a regulated internet, but this particular argument seems silly.
So many reasons for the modern, massive welfare state to hyper regulate the Internet. They've resented the freedom it represents almost since the day the Web was born.
Why exactly does the CRTC need subscriber data? If it's Canadian content they're worried about then maybe they should look at the content not the subscriber?
And hey: I'm a subscriber. Don't I get a say in whether anyone but Netflix gets to have access to it?
I probably wouldn't be so bothered if the CRTC wasn't made up of people who used to work for Bell, Rogers etc… (conflict of interest?)
"Wright said Netflix was concerned that private corporate information submitted to the commission might later find its way into the public sphere, which could make the service vulnerable to exploitation by its competitors."
To do business legally in a country, you need to abide by that country's rules. One of Canada's is the "Canadian Content" requirement of broadcasters that says that a certain amount of content being broadcast in Canada to Canadians must also be Canadian.
Whether the rule is dumb or counter-productive is immaterial at this juncture. Rules is rules.
Netflix quacks like a broadcaster so it falls under the rule, no? Not quite. There's a "new media" exemption that says, in return for giving the CRTC, when asked, statistics on the Canadian consumers of your service, you can be exempt from that particular scrutiny.
Netflix was asked. Netflix didn't give the information.
Now we see what the CRTC will do. It has every right to ask for an injunction from the courts to shut down Netflix's Canadian operations. But it doesn't want to, because Canadians like Netflix and bringing this to the courts might just be the opening Netflix needs to strike down the information requirement (allowing it to operate in the clear with no conditions until a new regulatory framework is built and approved).
If Netflix were a broadcaster then at 8PM local time, everyone watching Netflix would be watching the same show. Assuming that Netflix was only a single channel, anyhow.
But hey, let's suppose that Netflix has not a single channel but say, 1000 channels. That's way, way way more than cable or satellite or anything like that. Okay, but Netflix has nearly 7000 movies and a bunch of TV shows, so it's not a 1000 channel broadcaster.
Let's say that Netflix has one channel for every movie and every show in their collection. That's something like 10000 or more channels (which is way way way more than any other broadcaster in the history of the world has ever offered) and it STILL wouldn't work!
Why not? Because you can start watching a Netflix title WHENEVER you want. But let's be reasonable, let's say that they'll run as many channels as they need so that you never have to wait more than a minute to start streaming. Since most of their titles are movies and a movie is on average around 90 minutes long, that's 10k*90 = 900k channels.
There you have it folks! In order for Netflix to be a "broadcaster" you've got to assume that they're roughly equivalent to a cable company with in excess of 900,000 channels.
If that could be considered "quacking" like something then I quack like a billionare!
I am not convinced.
Most broadcasters in Canada broadcast on a few channels. The cable companies operate a few hundred, but they make no decisions about the programming of any one particular channel; they're aggregators.
In order to argue that Netflix is a broadcaster you have to fit them into the "channel model" because that's what makes "broadcast" broadcast. On a particular channel only one thing is playing at any one particular time, and it's the same everywhere. So trying to shoehorn Netflix into that model you have to make some crazy assumptions about how their service works (that aren't right) and then you get a channel count approaching or exceeding a million.
That's patently absurd which nicely makes the point that Netflix isn't a broadcaster. Do you know how much bandwidth it takes to broadcast a TV channel? It's 8MHz. 8Mhz * 1mm channels = 8 Terahertz of total bandwidth if they're broadcasting over the air, which according to all folks who are reasonable, is what a broadcast is.
If Netflix is a broadcaster than so is anyone who operates any website which doesn't block Canadian visitors. If they are going to go after Netflix I would appreciate them applying the law evenly and going after literally everyone else on the internet too.