State-sponsored censorship (14 Jun, 2022)

[aardvark_admin]

This column is archived at: https://aardvark.co.nz/daily/2022/0614.shtml

Is it reasonable for Canadian politicians to attempt to shape their citizens' view of the world by way of quotas on streaming media?

What will happen to the huge number of full-time YouTubers in Canada who stand to lose a significant portion of their revenues if this bill passes into law?

Isn't this sort of state-sponsored censorship an affont to the very concepts of freedom and democracy?

How long before our government tries the same crap -- after all, they did it with music didn't they?

[hagfish]

If they really want to put a thumb on the scales, an 'Artist UBI', backed up by one-off grants for production/equipment would actually see stuff getting made. For the price of a single fat-cat executive, they could fund 50 starving artists. Granted, most of them won't come up with much, but the odds are better than just shovelling money to off-shore shareholders and hoping it will trickle down or whatever.

Grass-roots, bottom-up approaches are often the most effective and resilient. Heavy-handed top-down diktats are much more difficult at every step of the way, and then they fail. But they sound more impressive than 'we just gave them some cash'.

[paulw]

I wonder if the Canadians will us VPNs and DNS redirection services to watch non Canadian / US streaming services same as I do for US Amazon video.
I wouldn't put it past this government if they get back in again to do the same here . Adern and Trudeau seem to speak from the control freak playbook.

[roygbiv]

I don't see how they can limit content to within Canada. Plus, how will it manage Netflix, YT searches. Failing that the Canadians will resort to VPNs to access overseas or non bias content.