Ontario Government Wants To Regulate the Internet

An anonymous reader writes This afternoon, the Ontario government appeared before the CRTC as part of its future of television hearing. Michael Geist reports that it issued a clear call for new regulation of so-called new media companies such as Netflix and Google. The government states: "In order to create a more level playing field, the ministry recommends decreasing this regulatory imbalance. The ministry believes the best way to accomplish this is to expand the regulation of new media TV, rather than by lightening the current regulation of traditional TV." What does the expansion of regulation involve? For the Ontario government, it includes regulating foreign online video services such as Google and Netflix, but exempting Canadian services.

Comments

And all movies MUST be subtitled in French

[Anonymous Coward]

And all movies MUST be subtitled in French. By law. Because they're the government, they have the guns, and they know best.

Re:And all movies MUST be subtitled in French

[ColdWetDog]

I'm French! How do you think I got this outrageous accent?

Re:Ontario == China

[Anonymous Coward]

When users try to visit a blocked site they are met with a screen politely asking them not to go to the website?

Re:An American's opinion

[quantaman]

Not to sound harsh, but Canada is a shithole and I would move to North Korea before I'd consider going up north.

Some people think Canadians are extraordinarily nice for how we deal with people like this, the truth is we simply have different ways of dealing with problems.

Consider the topic of justice and how to deal with bad people. The US is big into angry retributions and capital punishment, making sure people are punished harshly and everybody knows it.

Canada on the other hand simply tries to put bad people in a place where they don't bother anyone, and when someone does have to be punished we don't talk about it as much. In fact we're big believers in rehabilitation. Quite often we'll give the guilty something they really really want, hoping that in time they'll realize how terrible it is and discover the error of their ways.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I understand your anger and I'm sorry, we both know the US has been responsible for some terrible things, global warming, the Iraq War, NSA spying, etc, the list goes on for a while.

But sending Justin Beiber was definitely overkill.