Should Canada Regulate Net?http://web.archive.org/web/20000824113647/www.wired.com/news/...1 of 21/13/07 7:02 PM

Should Canada Regulate Net?

byArik Hesseldahl

3:15 p.m. Aug. 7, 1998 PDT

The federal agency that regulates Canada's radio, television, and telephone industries has formally askedCanadians if they want their government to start looking after the Internet as well.Last week, theCanadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission(CRTC) called for publicdiscussion on what role -- if any -- it should have in regulating matters such as online pornography, hatespeech, and "Canadian content" on the Web.One electronic rights and freedom advocate did not mince words in condemning the plan."Fuck the CRTC," said David Jones, president of Electronic Frontier Canada, an organization devoted topreserving theCanadian Charter of Rights and Freedomsin the digital age.Jones said that Canadian bureaucrats have increasingly seen the Internet, with its streaming video andaudio content, as a broadcast medium. As such, the CRTC might be able to impose some measures on Netcontent providers to "protect Canadian heritage," he said."The CRTC has a paternalistic view that it knows what is best for Canadians and that the Canadian people areincapable of making their own decisions," said Jones, a professor of computer science at McMaster Universityin Ontario.Canadian radio and TV broadcasters are required by law to carry a certain amount of programming createdby Canadians. The regulations are intended to preserve Canadian identity in the face of what manyCanadians see as an overwhelming American media influence. But Canadian media have always been fickleabout the rules.For example, one radio station in Toronto includes, in a tongue-in-cheek tone, "mandatory Canadiansegment" during broadcasts of

The Howard Stern Show

. In addition, non-Canadian broadcasters like CNNoften find their advertisements removed and replaced with ads for Canadian advertisers under the principleof "simultaneous substitution."Jones called such protectionist measures "government sanctioned censorship" and feared the CRTC may belooking for the authority to impose similar requirements on Canadian Internet service providers (ISPs)."A content producer should be able to have their message presented the way they intended it. I don't thinkan ISP or anyone else has a role in messing with that message," Jones said.Rick Broadhead, co-author of theCanadian Internet Handbook, said that the question of government regulation of the Net is not new, but this is the first time that the feds have officially asked for public input."I think [Internet] regulation wouldn't be a bad thing to have," said Broadhead. "It will have a limited impact-- by its very nature the Internet doesn't have any borders."I think it would be great if the CRTC would get involved in regulating junk email on the Internet -- that'sone of the areas where it could have great impact," Broadhead said.But the CRTC may first tackle the question of how to extend Canadian content, or "CanCon," regulations toWeb pages. And Richard Rosenberg, vice president of the Electronic Frontier Canada, said they might havean easy time doing so."Canadians worry, and I think rightly so, about US content overwhelming us," Rosenberg said. "The CRTCmay have made some bad policies in regard to this, but this part of the CRTC mandate is likely to be, I think,more readily accepted by Canadians than other regulatory functions of content."Chris Axworthy, the Member of Parliament who represents part of Saskatchewan in the House of Commons,