Trudeau tries to bring back online censorship bill
While the details of the bill maybe needs another iteration, I feel the spirit of the bill makes sense to me, and I think the issues around it should be discussed.<p>Legislature hasn&#x27;t caught up with the internet.<p>&gt; The CRTC will develop and implement regulations to ensure that both traditional and online broadcasting services, including web giants, offer meaningful levels of Canadian content and contribute to the creation of Canadian content in both official languages<p>That&#x27;s generally been what the CRTC does, it makes sure that broadcasters have enough Canadian made content compared to non-canadian made content, and to also make sure it has content in both official languages, as well as to help support and promote content from minorities. And that the content meets some expected standards, like not advertising things to children or medical that aren&#x27;t allowed in Canada.<p><pre><code>    &gt; Protection of children.
    &gt; Restrictions against hate speech.
    &gt; Protection of national production and national culture.
    &gt; Right of reply.
    &gt; Restriction on the quantity of advertising, of ad for certain products (tobacco, pharmaceutical drugs), and on product placement
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These are the regulations currently applied to broadcasters.<p>The problematic ones for the internet would probably be the first two. The last three, I think most people would be quite happy to see more enforcement around for internet platforms.<p>Now for the first two, you can argue that the fine line between protecting children and hate speech could be used to censor anything that opposes the current ruling party. This greatly depends if you believe in Canada&#x27;s institutions as fighting for democracy and liberty, which I think is more common in Canada, or if, like most Americans, you believe in the government institutions as constantly being the enemy of democracy and liberty and something the citizen need to constantly take upon themselves to watchdog.<p>That said, I believe there are other checks and balances that can be put in place here. As long as there would be mechanisms to challenge rulings, and that all such regulations was still done transparently. And that there were relatively unambiguous guidelines. And that there were still clear ways to publish things on the internet that are bad for children and hateful but wouldn&#x27;t fall under broadcasting regulations, such as say your own website, email, downloadable content, etc.<p>In any case, I&#x27;m not here to spin my opinion of this, I&#x27;m not sure exactly what the reasonable set of rules and regulations should be here. But I&#x27;m just saying I think it needs to be discussed. Most people probably don&#x27;t know that broadcasters currently must abide by this regulation, and that internet streaming platforms don&#x27;t have too. So I think educating about these and discussing what regulation makes sense and what doesn&#x27;t needs to happen.