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Results: 1 - 5 of 5
View Rick Dykstra Profile
CPC (ON)
Thank you, Chair.
Thanks, Minister, for being here and kicking off the renewal of our committee structure and our committee meetings, which were, I guess, non-starters leading up to our time back in the House in September. I'm sure it's good to know that you're kicking off the start-up of really our first official meeting this fall.
Minister, one thing I see in the estimates when I go through them is a lot of transfers in funding taking place during the year and appropriations moving from one of our top-level ministries to the agencies that we support, including the CRTC, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. A couple of things that have happened over the last year were included both in the throne speech and also in comments and statements that you made, including some earlier this fall, regarding the government's opposition to a Netflix tax. I know that some members of the opposition parties have indicated they don't support you or that position, so I thought it would be at least apropos to give you an opportunity to explain to the committee where this started and what our plans are regarding that issue.
View Shelly Glover Profile
CPC (MB)
You're right that we did indicate both in our Speech from the Throne and in budgets—not only this budget but previous budgets—that consumers should come first. This is a government that believes in that, and we don't just say it. We act on that. You've seen that in budget 2014 as we try to eliminate things like pay-to-pay policies. Of course, we are looking at unbundling channels. That's something the CRTC is presently studying and getting feedback on from Canadians.
The CRTC has been clear in the past that they did not support a Netflix tax. They did come out recently after doing more consultations to say they still don't support it. Our government has been clear that we will not raise taxes on Canadians. We believe that the 180 times we have reduced taxes for Canadians have in fact helped them to prosper and have helped their families to secure what they need for their children and for themselves. We will continue to look to a low-tax agenda because doing so is in the interests of the economy and in the interests of all Canadians, and particularly in the interests of families. When it comes to trying to regulate the Internet, that is a vast system. It would be almost impossible for an entity to regulate the Internet, and we have no interest in taxing Canadians in order to try to do so. But we do welcome our broadcasters giving their input. The CRTC is continuing its consultations and Canadians are free to visit the website or send information to the CRTC as it does so.
Jason Kee
View Jason Kee Profile
Jason Kee
2011-11-21 16:25
It's primarily to protect the content itself. The biggest challenge we have when people discuss tying the notion of circumvention to infringement—because the issue is that we prohibit circumvention of these digital locks, these TPMs—is that from an enforcement perspective, which is the practical way we are looking at it, it makes the provisions almost useless to us. The problem is that there are these services that exist out there that literally hack the Xbox. They hack the various devices, and basically do so for money, to enable people to play pirated games. People can go onto the Internet, download a free copy of the game, and play that instead of actually going to the digital retail store to download the proper, legitimate copy of it.
By tying those two together, the people who offer those services will basically just say that they don't know what anyone is doing with this product; they're just doing the hacking and not enabling anything. It basically makes it impossible for us to actually enforce. That's the biggest challenge. So it's a matter of trying to hold that line and find where the balance is there.
In our view, the TPM provisions, the anti-circumvention provisions, in legislation as crafted actually are balanced, because they do include a wide array of specific exceptions to deal with specific circumstances. They have a regulation-making power that allows additional exceptions to be added as needed.
The important things is that the big challenge for all of the content industry is that we're in a massive period of transition, which your first question highlights. As we move into the online environment, the notion of actually having to make a backup copy or transfer is actually fading away.
When you are a Netflix subscriber, for example, you have access to Netflix across all devices. You pay a subscription. You get access to it everywhere. It doesn't matter that you need to make a transfer or don't have to transfer, because there's nothing to transfer any more. You literally are just watching the movie and downloading it or streaming it as you go. Similarly with the digital distribution platforms for games, what happens is that you buy the game online. You get the digital copy of the game that can sit on your PlayStation or Xbox. You can delete it and you can download it again. There's no notion of needing to make a backup, because you have a perpetual backup. It's stored in the cloud. In fact, it means you don't have to worry about the physical media any more. It's already permanently stored for you because you bought that game. As a result, a lot of—
View Scott Armstrong Profile
CPC (NS)
Technology is changing, and it seems like a big part of your plan is trying to adjust to the changes that are happening now and how people will view their content, and anticipating changes that may happen over the next few years.
How is the impact of over-the-top media like Netflix, Hulu, and these other mediums affecting CBC, and are you maybe adjusting your plan to deal with that?
Hubert T. Lacroix
View Hubert T. Lacroix Profile
Hubert T. Lacroix
2011-10-25 9:59
It doesn't affect us that much, except that we actually sold inventory to Netflix. We have an agreement with them. We've provided them some content that the other Canadian players didn't want. So actually for us it was additional revenue. We sold them inventory that nobody wanted to see any more, and they used it--only on the CBC side. We looked at certain things with respect to Radio-Canada. We're not there yet. So frankly, at the end of the day, it's very incidental in terms of how that affects us.
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