Weekend reads: Do not comply

A plan to subject more digital media, including podcasts, to CRTC oversight and regulation isn't going to end well. We don't have to make it easy for them.

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When journalists Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney founded The Line in 2020, the range of acceptable ideas in our mainstream media had narrowed, and it took an enormous amount of guts to push back. Their must-read Canadian commentary site has since amassed a big following, offering a plethora of viewpoints on the country’s most pressing issues — plus key reporting during the trucker crisis — and has succeeded in widening the Overton window of allowable discussion. I’ve said this before: Jen and Matt showed me it was possible to take a stand for liberal values, robust debate, and open inquiry, without losing your career (or your mind!).

This July, I invited Jen on the podcast for a one-hour special on the crisis in the Canadian media. Jen’s episode was so popular with listeners, it inspired a summer-long series, talking to Canadian journalists and media observers about the moment that we find ourselves in. Jen has been a thoughtful dissenting voice on Canada’s new Internet legislation; I’m thrilled to reprint one of her powerful essays today, on Bill C-11 and podcasters, at a pivotal point for independent media in this country.

— TH

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Having recorded such roaring success in its attempts to fix the Internet to date — she wrote, after watching a Line post disappear into the abyss of Meta thanks to C-18 — our dear regulator, the CRTC, has decided that the best way to get over one bad bill is to get under another. In this case, C-11, which is now demanding that podcasts, among other online undertakings, register with the government for the purpose of coming regulation. 

Some have, and will, argue that mere registration is a benign step, not some precursor for folding swathes of freewheeling independent media and content under the aegis of the Broadcasting Act. And if anyone is seriously naïve enough to argue that point, I'd encourage them to say so publicly; if they prefer, they can send us an email so we can register them in a Line database of people to scold in the near future. 

We will note that C-11 was initially billed as a bit of legislation aimed at "web giants," and there was no plan to put "user generated content" under the CRTC's authority. The regulator is sticking to this talking point, insisting that users themselves won't have to register. 

Indeed, only companies that generate more than $10 million per year will be subject to disclosure. The Line, for example, is (far, far) too small to qualify. Rather, the CRTC is going to capture companies like Spotify and Apple Podcasts and YouTube. 

"Oh, so not nice independent media like you!" say our dear readers. Oh, sweet, sweet summer children. 

There are two big objections to this move; the first is practical, the second is philosophical. Let's start with the first: The CRTC doesn't actually seem to have a clear grasp on what, exactly, it is seeking to regulate. Very few Canadian digital content creation studios are large enough to meet the financial threshold. Instead, this mandate is largely going to capture the distribution networks that small podcasters and the like rely on to gain audience and traction. This is simply regulation of user-generated content by a stealthier route.

Due credit to Warren Kinsella who, I think, correctly identified the key risk this presents in his recent column. 

Namely: CRTC regulation would open small podcasts and commentators to being punished or delisted from major distribution outlets as a result of bad-faith complaint bombing. If a Canadian podcast or video channel doesn't meet the editorial expectations imposed by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and its codes of conduct, or if it annoys enough people to face a bombardment of coordinated complaints, then, what? You think Apple Podcasts, or any of these other major American companies, are going to go to bat with the CRTC for The Line's right to publish and distribute on their platforms? 

Lol. No. 

The end result is a chilling effect. Goodbye candid, freewheeling conversation and F-bombs, everybody. No one will risk offending Canadian sensibilities if it means the risk of losing access to Spotify et al. Remember, these aren't hobbies, even for relatively small media producers. Revenue from our content is how we pay the mortgage. 

And there’s a worse outcome to consider: that largely American distributors may simply opt out of all Canadian content rather than fall under the aegis of the Broadcasting Act. This is the choice Meta made, and your Facebook feed is already feeling it.

The second, philosophical objection, is no less important. 

And that is: what the fuck is the CRTC playing at by trying to impose itself in this arena at all? 

I don't necessarily jump to the worst-case conclusions, here — I don’t assume that the chilling effect is the point of all of this. 

The intent could be more banal. Once a regulator is created, it will do everything it can to ensure its own continuation. This may simply be a regulator desperate to expand its raison d'etre to the digital realm as analog media enters its senescence.

At its inception, the logic of a Broadcasting Act was rooted in scarcity. Radio and television stations rely on over-the-air broadcasts — frequencies of electromagnetic spectrum — which are considered a public good to be allocated wisely by a public regulator. Too many stations all using the same frequency in too confined an area would muddy reception.

Digital media doesn't work like this. There is no finite digital bandwidth that requires public managing or allocating. Quite the opposite, in fact. Digital space is largely a private good, limited only by constraints on private capital — which, in practice, amounts to virtually no scarcity at all. Digital bandwidth is, effectively, infinite. 

Given the logic of the Broadcasting Act, it has never made any rational sense to allow the CRTC to expand its authority into this realm. 

(The legacy media outlets who tried to play the government to extract rent payments from Google and Facebook via C-18 made a deal with the devil. This week, we see the devil begin to demand his due. The regulator is starting to eek its way ever closer into “print” newsrooms. These outlets will regret their alliances in the end.) 

Podcasting in Canada is a thriving industry with a low barrier to entry. There is no market failure that requires addressing; no Cancon rules that can mitigate the risk that regulation will impose. The CRTC has already demonstrated that it is foaming at the mouth to play censor in the Canadian market. The technocrats in government, and the politicians who empower them, are desperate to bring a wild informational landscape to heel. 

This isn't going to end well. Again.

To paraphrase Douglas Murray in his recent Post column: people who think it proper to shut the bank account of a Freedom convoyer while applauding a literal, actual Nazi in Parliament have neither the intelligence nor the moral credibility to regulate the information we consume. 

The gross absurdity of this country's political theatre offers only one recourse: resist. Don't comply. 

If you are a consumer of Canadian media, educate yourself on VPNs and Tor networks. Equip yourselves with the tools that will allow you to bypass future government regulation and censorship. Do it now while you still can.

I mean it. 

To fellow my content creators, and the companies that serve them: don't register with the CRTC. Civil disobedience is not only appropriate in this case, it's necessary. 

We do not have to make it easier for the government to regulate us. The CRTC may come after us, but this will take resources and, more importantly, it will take time. 

Time gives us a chance to organize and adapt; time increases the probability the government will change, and with that change will come an alteration in the CRTC's priorities and mandate. 

Sooner or later, everybody has to decide when to draw a line. This is as bad a time as any. 

Jen Gerson is a founder of The Line, and a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail. She and Line co-founder Matt Gurney will be in Toronto on Wednesday, October 18, for a live event, Has Toronto Gone Nuts?, at the Royal Canadian Military Institute. Tickets are $125 and doors open at 5pm. To attend, RSVP at eventcoRSVP@gmail.com.