Bell Canada Calls For Piracy Crackdown, Tax On Netflix (But Not CraveTV)
By Daniel Tencer 05/29/2019 17:33 EDT
The telecom’s proposals would risk starting a trade war with the U.S., a University of Ottawa professor is warning.
A prominent expert in Canadian digital law is warning that Canada could find itself in a trade war with the U.S. if it applied the telecom policies that Bell Canada is advocating.
That’s just one of many problems that Michael Geist, the Canada chair in e-Commerce and Internet Law at the University of Ottawa, sees with Bell’s recent submission to a committee looking at overhauling Canada’s telecom laws.
“The running theme from Bell is a simple one: regulate others, but not us,” Geist wrote in a blog post.
He obtained Bell’s submission through an access to information request. The federal review panel hasn’t made submissions publicly available. Some of them are available on the website of the Forum for Research and Policy in Communications.
Among the issues Geist highlights is Bell’s assertion that the law “should be amended … to create a system that disables access in Canada to sites that are blatantly, structurally or overwhelmingly engaged in content theft.”
Bell is also calling for a new law that would make it a crime to “operate, advertise, supply or sell or offer to sell” an unauthorized streaming service. Such a law would mean “widespread criminalization of anyone even tangentially associated with unauthorized online video streaming,” Geist wrote.
Source: Huffington Post