The Internet is not television, but Quebec is sure hell bent on legislating it like that anyway with Bill 109.
Throughout the Bill C-11 debate, one of the long running themes throughout is that politicians are desperately trying to make the internet nothing more than television.
Experts and those involved in the internet continuously tried to explain how the real world works to politicians, pointing how that the internet is not television. This includes explanations about how television has a limit of 24 hours in a day and how the regulations put in place for television was in response to the limited ability to create ones own television station. Conversely, the internet is entirely on demand as you can watch anything at any time. The only real limit is the individual viewers time more than anything else. If anything, the legislation is an unconstitutional mess likely to get challenged (and struck down) by the courts after as Canadian users see the content they worked hard on get downranked as a result of the government algorithm meddling, thus triggering free speech concerns.
The response from politicians pushing this legislation? You’re just part of a global conspiracy by “Big Tech” to get platforms out of “paying their fair share”. Those particular criticisms had nothing to do with money and everything to do with free speech and how people’s content gets surfaced. None of that mattered to them. Politician’s pushing the bill basically gave a collective “fuck you” to Canadian creators, going so far as to demand “investigations” into anyone daring to criticize their holy bill that must be passed at all costs. Sadly, the bill did pass and is currently before the CRTC where greedy lobbyists and political insiders are trying to further rip off the platforms by sharing tall tales about how the platforms are somehow ‘stealing’ money from them and that they need to “pay back” that money to Canada’s mainstream media corporations.
While the process is still ongoing, it seems that Quebec has foolishly decided that they need their own version of Bill C-11. It appears to be a rerun of the entire debate that was found at the federal level. They basically want the platforms to showcase a certain percentage of content from Quebec specifically in their recommendations. This apparently comes in the form of Bill 109. A PDF of the current version of the bill can be found here (PDF). Here’s some snippets of the bill:
15. Digital platforms and manufacturers referred to in section 2 must see to it that, by default, the interface of the digital platforms, television sets or devices enabling access to online cultural content is in French, according to the terms and conditions determined by government regulation.
20. To ensure that the objectives of this Act are achieved, the Government may, by regulation,
(1) establish criteria for determining what constitutes original French-language cultural content;
(2) establish the quantity or proportion of original French-language cultural content or of content available in a French version that must be offered by digital platforms
42. The Minister may, on the conditions set by the Minister, order a digital platform or a manufacturer to take the measures the Minister indicates where the Minister is of the opinion that the platform or manufacturer is failing to perform its obligations under this Act, a regulation made under it or, in the case of a digital platform, under an agreement referred to in section 21.
The Minister may, for the same reasons, issue an order against a third person that, on behalf of a digital platform or a manufacturer, carries on the platform’s or manufacturer’s activities or performs its obligations.
This is basically a carbon copy of the algorithmic manipulation of what is found in the Online News Act. In short, the government wants to pick and choose what speech must be promoted on platforms. This while downranking everyone else in the process including local content producers. It has the exact same constitutional problems as the Online News Act.
The thing here is that there is a unique twist to the situation. This is a single province we are talking about, rather than an entire country. As a result, the sway the province has is greatly minimized. That means that Quebec citizens are much more vulnerable to the platforms ditching the province altogether rather than restructuring their whole platform to appease one particular government. I mean, this was also a threat for smaller platforms at the national level, but the cost benefit analysis will differ significantly once scaled down to a single province.
Either way, Quebec is clearly overplaying their legislative power here. After all, it isn’t a local television station we are talking about. It’s a platform that has a global audience. They seem to think that passing a law will magically solve everything even though that clearly isn’t the case in this scenario. I can only see a whole lot more pain coming Quebec’s way if they actually do pass this bill.
(Via @MGeist)
