Authoritarian communist Pablo Rodriguez fails to define “Canadian” content and “commercial stuff”, aims to infringe on Canadians rights to freedom of expression and consumer choice by attempting to ram through legislation in Bill C-11 after it already failed multiple times to make it past legislation as Bill C-10.
On Wednesday at a press release Minister Rodriguez told us how big of baby he is and gets triggered by everything so he wants to control what you’re allowed to see online. Trudeau has approached the NDP and Bloc Quebecois demanding they help rush through this unconstitutional bill without obstruction from Conservative Party opposition.
When first introduced, C-10 would have expanded the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) regulatory reach to include streaming services and online content providers such as Netflix, Crave and Spotify. Reducing Canadians choice of what media to consume online even more. The CRTC already controls what Canadians can watch on TV and hear on the Radio and we all know how much of a massive failure that is and non consumer friendly.
While the Liberals are looking for total control of the media Canadians consume online they want to force major web services to pay for government-picked Canadian media content and even to alter their algorithms to promote that propaganda.
The Liberals were trying to claim this will modernize the Broadcasting Act to today’s digital standards, it’s really just another step in the Liberal Governments authoritarian agenda for censorship.
Both CRTC ex-chair Konrad von Finckenstein and former CRTC commissioner Timothy Denton signed onto a petition blasting the bill as a step towards authoritarianism.
“It appears Canada is not immune to the growing trend of government intervention to curtail freedom and seek to control parts of the internet’s infrastructure in ways reminiscent of actions taken by authoritarian governments,” the petition read.
Authoritarian Rodriguez and his department of propaganda insisted the new Bill C-11 addressed the concerns raised with Bill C-10 and that Canadians could be assured that regulating user generated content is off the table. But this is simply not true. The bill is now named “Online Streaming Act” adding a new exception leaving a backdoor for CRTC regulation. The claim that user generated content is out is absurd. The door was wedged open where content users generate on platforms like TikToc, YouTube, Facebook etc…fit nicely within the exception to all the CRTC to regulate the content as a “program”. Most of the safeguards have been removed, the CRTC has been granted enormous regulatory power over Internet services around the world given that the bill’s jurisdictional scope features few boundaries.
How it effects social media
“this does not apply to individual Canadians and online creators post online” He said
He claims no users or online creators will be targeted “Only the companies themselves will have new responsibilities”. He thinks the CTRC is about fairness. LOL what a joker. The new regulations allow the user generated content to be regulated as a “program” therefore subjecting them to censorship.
Questions
When reporters are him to define what “Canadian content” was, for example can someone create the content somewhere else but use a Canadian artist “After the bill is tabled he will write to the CRTC chair to look at modernizing to define what is Canadian content” said authoritarian Rodriguez. He is telling us, we don’t need to know what the definition is until the bill is blindly push threw. This sounds a lot like how Joe Biden’s Build back better plan was introduced. We won’t tell you what it is until it passes, it’s currently top secret and he still needs to ask the CRTC what “Canadian” content is. It’s very irresponsible and sketchy to consider a bill without know what it is first. Why do they need to consider the bill before letting us know what it is? He never got in to that because it’s top secret. So much for transparency from the Government. Maybe this is a reason why people have distrust in the government and corruption rating in Canada went up with the Trudeau government.
Critics warned that, under the watch of the CRTC, content posted by individuals or small media projects could be removed at the government’s whim and even prevented from being viewed at all.
He was asked to define what commercial content is because he was mentioning commercial content will be targeted for censorship. A reporter asked if commercial content is popular content that is not by professional. With an incoherent statement that makes no sense “Commercial is commercial stuff” Rodriguez said, s he continued to answer “is it a song from the weekend you will find on YouTube but also you will find it on on Spotify.”
This makes no sense because anyone posting videos or music on YouTube has a chance tp earn revenue using google ads within YouTube or product placement by a sponsor such as mentioning for example “if you want to protect security and privacy online you should be using a VPN. Go to ‘insert VPN website name here /theirname for a promo code’ to generate affiliate marketing revenue. Why do we have a someone trying to make laws for digital content that clearly sounds like they have never used a platform as a creator?
“the users are excluded in 2.1 and the content is excluded in 4.1, it is mostly about professional music professional movies and professional series that you will find else where. It’s not about the users.” Rodriguez stated, clearly demonstrating how out of touch with the content creation and artist industry he is. We are in 2022, people have been making professional content in their bedrooms on a laptop for 10 years. Someone of them do a better job that a performer that records in a studio.
This doesn’t sound like being professional or not it’s just how much money you make will determine if you are subject to censorship or not. So what how much money do you need to be earning in revenues before you are upgraded from armature to a professional?
“it’s not about the threshold, it’s for example. You find the exact same song, a weekend song” Rodriguez said. but never tells us what a so called weekend song is. Continuing with his out of touch answer ” It’s about if you find them play on youtube but also spotify it’s commercial stuff. It’s commercial stuff that is to be treat equally on those platforms”
Does thins mean if i made a beat on fruity loops studio and just scream in to the mic for the lyrics and upload it to multiple platforms I am now a professional because my shitty content is on multiple platforms making a few dollars per month?
There is a lot of issues with this regulation and ripe for abuse. We recommend reading Michael Gesit review of the new bill here. Michael Geist is Law Professor & Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law. He breaks all the details down and compares the new C-11 to the old C-10.
