MONTREAL - Canadians are watching more and more videos and TV shows that aren't required to have home-grown content via their computers and cellphones, but after a decade of explosive Internet growth the CRTC will review its hands-off approach to the medium.
The federal broadcast regulator will begin hearings on Tuesday in Gatineau, Que., to review its policy of allowing broadcasting content to be unregulated on the Internet and cellphones.
Predictably, there are those who want rules to ensure Canadian content on the Internet and there are others who believe home-grown content already has a presence on the Internet without the encouragement of regulations.
"If Canadians don't encourage Canadian content on the Internet, who will?" asked Ian Morrison, spokesman for the watchdog group, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.
Traditional radio and television broadcasters are regulated and subject to Canadian content rules.
Morrison said the Internet has changed from being text-dominated since 1999 when the CRTC decided to take a hands off approach.
"So a decade has gone by and the Internet has morphed into something where as you know the audio-visual side of the Internet is ubiquitous," he said.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission also exempted broadcasting services that are received on cellphones and other mobile devices in 2007.
A decade ago, cellphone use wasn't widespread. Now the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Agency says there are more than 20 million cellphone subscribers in the country.
Search engine giant Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG) likes the status quo.
"When you look at the amount of Canadian content online, when you look at the diversity of that content and when you look at the ease with which Canadians can now access, promote and distribute content, you can see that the online world has opened up amazing possibilities," said lawyer Jacob Glick, Google's Canada policy counsel.
Glick noted Canadians producing original content for video sharing site YouTube, owned by Google.
"If you just look at YouTube, there's more Canadian content just on YouTube than all three major TV networks combined, assuming that they broadcast Canadian content 24/7," he said.
The growing dominance of the Internet is causing the CRTC to take a look at what it calls the "new media environment."
However, there is already Canadian broadcasting content on conventional websites run by CBC, CTV, Canwest and TVA, the French-language network owned by Quebecor Media (TSX:QBR.B).
The CRTC has said high-speed Internet access is now available to 94 per cent of Canadian households and has been adopted by more than 60 per cent.
Alan Sawyer of Toronto-based Two Solitudes Consulting, said that after a decade it's time for a review, but he added it would be difficult to regulate content on the Internet and cellphones.
"It's unwieldy," said Sawyer, who provides consulting services to Calgary-based MoboVivo, which licenses and distributes TV programming online. Its MoboVivo iPhone TV is a popular iPhone application.
"It's not impossible to do and it's certainly within the CRTC's authority to do," he said, adding it would provide some certainty to businesses.
Sawyer also said the CRTC could take an "incentive-based approach" to make more Canadian-produced content available on alternative distribution channels.
He noted that foreign ownership requirements now don't apply to new media on the Internet while they do apply to traditional broadcasters.
Watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting supports the idea that some kind of fee be levied to ensure there are resources for a Canadian presence on the Internet.
"Our fundamental position is that this is a public space and that the Broadcasting Act does cover elements of what happens on the Internet and that the prime responsibility of the CRTC almost before anything is to ensure that in Canadian homes and workplaces that a certain amount of the content available to them is Canadian."
