The regulatory body announced that streaming services like Spotify and Netflix will need to register their information with the CRTC.
Podcast critic Nicholas Quah, policy expert Vass Bednar and podcast host Mattea Roach talk about how the podcasting industry, both in Canada and abroad, has reacted to the news.listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.
I think fear comes from the uncertainty, and the uncertainty comes from the fact that these details are going to be hammered out in the regulatory process, not the legislative one. So when you have a piece of legislation that's poorly rationalized … there's a vacuum, and fear will fill that vacuum. You'll hear words like "censorship," and we'll talk about free speech, which sort of pollutes what this whole policy was even trying to do in the first place.
I think the reason why there's some fear among people working in the podcasting space, though, is we've just seen some clumsy digital regulations that have had unforeseen externalities. With Bill C-18, the Online News Act, that was trying to do revenue sharing with Canadian news media organizations…. What we've seen happen in response to that is that Meta has just restricted all access to news for Canadians.: Exactly.
But I think we can risk losing sight of what the rules and what that relationship is supposed to be or could be between the state and these digital firms when they threaten us and when they have the power to threaten us like that. And so it's creating fear because it's so destabilizing. We should think and talk about their market power as well and their ability to do that and sort of threaten us. Maybe that's a reason we need to rethink the broadcasting system of the future.