CRTC New Media Request for Comments

The CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commision) has determined that "New Media" (audio/video content) on the internet somehow falls under their mandate. So far they seem to have left it alone, mandating in 1999 that they would exempt it from their regulation. Now (press release of October 15, 2008) they want us to comment to them on some specific questions they dug out of a fairly minimally answered call for comments back in May/June of this year.

You'll find the full text of my answer to them here. I urge any and all of you to also comment to them.

My opinion of the "New Media" on the internet is that it is far more akin to today's version of carrying on a conversation across the back fence than it is "broadcast". Yes, the traditional broadcasters are adding the internet to their distribution facilities, but their content is already regulated - the vast majority of the audio and video on the net, as found on YouTube, Wavelit, Blip.TV and other similar sites - are low-budget, minimal production value pieces aimed at audiences as small as tens or hundreds of viewers, and many times engendering "answering" or "take-off" pieces that continue the theme and "conversation".

In any case - read on for my comments...

October 16, 2008

Pitt Meadows, B.C.

Canada

 

Written comments from Richard C. Pitt regarding Canadian Radio Television Commission's public hearing on the topic of regulation of “New Media”

 

 

“The Commission invites written comments and proposals, with rationale and supporting evidence, on the issues identified below. The Commission anticipates that many of these issues can be adequately addressed through written comments and will not require further examination at the public hearing.

 

The Commission is seeking responses to questions surrounding the following six main themes:  

I. Defining broadcasting in new media
II. The significance of broadcasting in new media and its impact on the Canadian broadcasting system
III. Are incentives or regulatory measures necessary or desireable for the creation and promotion of Canadian broadcasting content in new media?
IV. Are there issues concerning access to broadcasting content in new media?
V. Other broadcasting or public policy objectives
VI. The appropriateness of the new media exemption orders”

 

Background of the writer, Richard C. Pitt, with regards to media in general and “New Media” in particular.

 

• Built and operated radio transmission and audio amplification equipment

• Participated in Film Society activities including 16mm production and presentation at UBC, 1968-69

• Operated and serviced television production equipment including cameras, mixing, sound, tape, etc. at various times and for many different events.

• Worked for B.C. Telephone company installing phone switches and subscriber equipment

• Participated in stage and theatre as an amateur at various times

• Worked as a professional photographer for several years (part time)

• Sold and serviced microcomputer products since 1976 including 3 years selling via Radio Shack computer centers, 2 of these as store manager

• Worked with some of the first “personal computer” video digitizing products on projects including remote video via telephone and internet technologies (mid 1980s)

• Partner in Canada's first commercial Internet Service Provider, Wimsey.com (started 1986)

• Employee of iSTAR Internet (purchased Wimsey in late 1995), a national Canadian ISP

• Consultant to several companies involved in audio and video production and distribution via the internet during 1990s

• Employee of Lineo Inc., a software provider to several set-top-box manufacturers, during which time I participated in specification and creation of projects involving internet media distribution.

• Technical consultant and webmaster for Hancock House publishing and later Hancock Wildlife Foundation's bald-eagle and wildlife live streaming video productions (40,000+ concurrent viewers of live streaming video for over 4 months solid during 2006 eagle breeding season (over 2 million different viewers during that time) and similar numbers each season since)

• Consultant to ISPs specializing in re-broadcast of satellite carried video via internet infrastructure (outside of Canada) including creation and deployment of internet “set-top-box” technology

• Currently in the business of creation of live video from cultural and social events via internet infrastructure.

 

As you can see from the above background, I have been in and around the technologies of media for over 40 years; mostly as a technician and manager or “behind the lens” but sometimes in front.

As an owner and active participant in Wimsey Information Services, I wrote some if the first “Web” pages in Canada, starting in 1993, and have continued to be active in the creation and hosting of web sites of all types to this day.

 

I address each point in turn:

 

I – the definition of “Broadcasting in New Media”

 

First, let us define “New Media” - new media is any media that requires technologies for creation or distribution that did not exist prior to approximately 1970 – specifically, the personal general purpose computer, communication between personal computers via telephone modem (Bulletin Board Systems or BBS), peer to peer networking of personal computers (Local Area Networking or LAN), and internetworking of LAN networks (Wide Area Networking or WAN) which now culminates in what we know as the internet. The commission, in its New Media introduction at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/media/media.htm adds “cellular telephone and personal digital assistants via point-to-point technology” however I'll point out that these services are in transition from a wireless “switched telephone” technology to a pure wireless internet technology and thus for the future may be simply lumped in as part of the internet.

 

Examples of New Media by this definition (not exhaustive) include:

• text, graphic, audio, video creation and manipulation using computer technology in general and the personal computer in specific as a critical part of the process

• text, graphic, audio, video creation/manipulation by participation of multiple persons in different locations, in real time or in time periods shorter than physical movement of individuals from their normal locations might allow (round-robin story creation is one such activity I observed in the period between 1983 and 1993 for example, using e-mail and file transfer technologies to hand the work around. Another is real-time multi-person orchestral playing) – i.e. Creativity where “the network” is critical to the task

• live/near real-time streaming audio/video via computer network

• audio/video archive viewing/listening by request via computer network

• any/all publication/presentation of any/all types of “content” where such content is presented in a fashion and at a time typically dictated by the viewer, including but not limited to aspects that control required bandwidth such as resolution, frame-rate, quality, continuity (pause, rewind, skip, etc.) portability (iPod, cell phone, PDA, MP3 player, etc.)

 

Second, let us define “Broadcasting” - broadcasting is the creation of a signal using a technology which is by its nature only able to be viewed as “one source, many receivers” and I would further note that when the CRTC was created, the identification of whether the receivers were even turned on, let alone actually receiving or otherwise in use, was not possible. In effect, broadcasting is throwing something “to the winds” such that it may fall on fertile or infertile ground (be picked up by a receiver and heard/viewed, or not be picked up at all)

 

I note the definition in the Broadcast Act:

"broadcasting" means any transmission of programs, whether or not encrypted, by radio waves or other means of telecommunication for reception by the public by means of broadcasting receiving apparatus, but does not include any such transmission of programs that is made solely for performance or display in a public place;

 

I, as an acknowledged expert in the technologies of not only today's internet, but also radio, TV, telecommunications, cable distribution and public/private switched networks, take exception to the application of the term “broadcast” to any aspect of the internet or its infrastructure. There is only one aspect of a local area network that deals in broadcast, that of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) which allows a system new to the network to ask for (by means of a broadcast which is limited by dictate of the specification of any router to not “leak” out to the internet) provision of an Internet Protocol (IP) address.

 

There is an aspect of the internet called “multi-cast” but it bears no relationship to true broadcasting in the radio/TV sense, is hardly used, and in large part is being made unnecessary by the growth in available bandwidth for direct one-to-one transmission for real-time audio/video reception and by peer-to-peer file transfer for other applications.

 

Thus, we have the result that by these definitions, there is no such thing as “Broadcasting in New Media”

 

Be that as it may, and recognizing that the CRTC already has in hand the paper by Eli M. Noam (TV or Not TV: Three Screens, One Regulation?) which postulates that there is such a thing as “Broadcasting New Media” I will stipulate that there is ONE and only ONE limited definition that allows for this:

 

Broadcasting in New Media involves the real-time or archival on-demand making available via internetwork of content that is or was created and originally distributed under regulations of the CRTC using “traditional” broadcasting technologies – radio, TV, and channelized cable distribution (as distinct from internetworking which also happens to use the cable infrastructure but is not done in near synchronization with the radio/TV signals that “traditional” cable infrastructure carries as if it were “in the air”)

 

II – the significance of broadcasting in new media and its impact on the traditional broadcasting system

 

In the hierarchy of technologies that traditional broadcasting has used in getting its content from source to destination, there have been 3 distinct steps prior to the advent of internetworking, the transmission medium of “New Media”:

1. Terrestrial Radio Waves – amplitude modulated initially and then frequency modulated, but no matter, subject to the inverse square law of power vs. distance such that for the most part (in the CRTC regulated radio and TV bands) there is a limited distance beyond which the reception of the signal is either impossible or problematic (or prohibited.)

2. Satellite broadcast – generally limited to line of sight and regulated to be limited in “footprint” by orientation of transmission antennas and satellite orbital placement.

3. Community cable infrastructure – broadband transmission of what (originally) would be identical signals to those that might in excellent reception conditions be received by a normal radio or TV antenna – now vastly extended by inclusion of regulated additional content which might be brought to the community by either satellite reception or other real-time means (fiber optic, microwave, etc.) but only including content that is “traditional” and which is highly regulated by time, source, content, advertising and subject area.

 

Each of these technologies has inherent distance limitations or regulatory limitations that take distance and source community (country, province, city, etc.) into consideration. They limit and allow enforcement of physical community. In general, they also have in common the characteristic that the “broadcaster” has no idea if anyone is listening. There is no direct feedback loop.

 

Applying internetworking to the distribution of content that is otherwise “traditional media” removes both the distance and time constraints from the technology equation:

1. Distance is eliminated because it requires no different technology to send the content across the world than it does across the room – no more power, and generally speaking, no more cost.
   I can attach a “Sling-box” to my traditional TV cable connection and watch CBC evening news from my hotel room in Abu Dhabi – or I can log onto the CBC site and listen to last week's Radio 2 concerts “on demand” from my office in New York or at the South Pole.
   Likewise I can listen to Polish-language news here in Vancouver if that is something I desire.

2. Time is eliminated because the fact that the content has been rendered into digitized form means that it can (and will likely) be stored any and everywhere, at the whim of the internetworking technology as well as both the original creator and the potential viewer, until the viewer decides to watch any/all of it, in any order, at any time, in as many sessions as desired. The concept of “you watch it now or when we decide to re-run it, or possibly never” disappears.

 

The significance of this “additional channel” of distribution (note that these comments presume that the relationship between the traditional media originator and the internetworking is arm's length – more on this later):

 

This opens up the potential audience of traditional broadcasting to include those who are physically distant from the community to which they traditionally are limited. It also complicates the financial model by making the typically localized advertising potentially less advantageous but opens up other advertising potentials in similar fashion to “network TV/radio” in the traditional sense of common content sent out via many different transmitters in various locales.

 

This also potentially limits the number of people who will watch a given traditional broadcast simply because there was nothing else available – another step along the path that has been growing since community cable started adding “extra” channels from distant places.

 

III – incentives or regulatory measures for the creation and promotion of Canadian broadcasting content in new media

 

Since I do not admit that it is possible to broadcast new media, in order to comment I will take this point to mean either or both of:

1. Should there be incentives and/or regulatory measures for the creation and promotion of traditional Canadian media via internetworking?

2. Should there be incentives and/or regulatory measures for the creation and promotion of Canadian new media by the CRTC or possibly some other agency?

 

The answers to these two questions break down into two distinct areas:

1. what gets created

2. whether what is created gets to the audience that wants it

 

On the question of whether incentives should be made available;

 

I will allow that promotion of Canadian values, arts and other manifestations of national identity is something that is within what I expect/allow my government to do. That being so, I take the position that if the government decides to fund expansion of Canadian values in some fashion, then aiding in the creation of New Media by Canadians should be considered at least equal to that of other activities such as theatre, music and other “arts” and activities.

 

On a personal note I will say that imposing as little bureaucracy on such promotion as possible is a goal I expect to be aspired to.

 

Canada already funds film and other production activities that are “traditional” media. I don't believe that much, if any additional funding is necessary to extend the reach of this traditional media to the internetwork. This is as it may be for anything prior to the “distribution” phase of its existence.

 

Distribution of any New Media, or in fact any media by internetwork is the subject of the second area of these questions – whether what is created gets to the audience that wants it.

 

Here we come up against a similar situation to that of the telecommunications industry: telephone, telegraph – the concept of “common carrier” where, by regulation the telephone company has to carry any/all customers' traffic without either intercepting it (listening in) or interfering with it. In exchange for this, the telephone company can not be charged with any criminal activity that was aided by the communication infrastructure they own and operate. This is a somewhat simplistic portrayal of the concept, but a useful one.

 

Applying this concept to today's internetworking infrastructure, we (and other countries) have been nibbling around the edges of the liability problem for over 15 years now, largely without actually putting in place laws that protect the ISPs from general liability. Only in the area of copyright has this so far been addressed – and not to my satisfaction but that is another story.

 

On the other hand, we have also not addressed the concept of ISPs being forced to carry any/all traffic without interception/interference. Instead we have law suits here in Canada between small ISPs and their larger “backbone” provider, Bell, over Bell's interference with certain types of traffic (peer to peer in this case but this is just an example)

 

Taking this to its logical conclusion (as several people did in the discussions earlier this year referred to in the Nanos Research “eConsultation Report”) I note that there are several companies involved in traditional media that also have internetworking facilities which New Media traverse; sometimes in direct competition to their traditional offerings. This aspect of media on the internetwork is an area where regulation appears to be required, and where I feel it appropriate that an agency such as the CRTC might apply itself.

 

The problem is that the technologies involved are completely different from those of the traditional telephone company's in one vital way;

In general, and until recent adaptation of internetworking facilities to telecommunications, telephone facilities are deterministic in their nature. They are built upon the concept of dedicated point to point “circuits” with specific overall characteristics that do not change from beginning of call to end of call, and which are common to all calls. This used to be a direct copper circuit back in the days of the Strouger switch (my job included installing these in 1969/70 at BC Tel) and then evolved to the 64k bits/second “channel” in time-division-multiplexed circuits such as ISDN and the T1, T3 circuits that have all but disappeared now, to the virtual channels on Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) time slots with their 53 byte cells.

 

In contrast, today's standard for internetworking, TCP/IP, allows for and in fact was designed to hide vast differences in the size and routing of individual packets that make up data conversations as they wend their way from machine to machine. The machines that sit at the edge of the internet and connect the vast majority of participants, and the machines at the core of the internet are designed to “route” individual packets by the best possible route, determined on a moment by moment basis. These are routers, as distinct from telephone “switches” which set up a path once and then don't touch the circuit again, and it is precisely because they CAN route and deal with individual packets, that it is possible for their owners and controllers, the ISPS that connect the Canadian public, to decide to interfere with some types of packets and/or some destinations.

 

The technology available in today's routers is such that, unlike their original forebears that could (and did) only look at the destination address portion of packets, they can do “deep packet inspection” and look not only at the address, but also at the type of data and even the actual content of the data inside the packets – and even replace some of the data “on the fly.”

 

• Inspecting the type of packet and acting upon this information allows the ISP to give preference to one type of connection over another – in the case of Bell and its downstream ISPs the type of packet is one that is used in peer to peer networking. This is akin to the phone company listening in and making either unintelligible or of less quality a conversation between a subscriber and a rival telephone company

• Inspecting the data in the packet and acting upon this information allows the ISP to substitute its own advertising for ads that the initial data provider might have put in (and expected to get paid for) or add additional advertising to (for example) a margin surrounding the original data that the viewer was expecting to see unadulterated – somewhat like the telephone company adding shouted words in the middle of a conversation; such words being ads for the telephone company's benefit.

• Inspecting the data to discover “interesting” information about what the ISP's subscribers find interesting – topics, sites, etc. so the ISP can pitch their own ads and content in a more targeted manner. At minimum this is an invasion of privacy. It is also anti-competitive.

 

So to the question of regulation required for New Media to flourish:

 

Only if the internetwork facilities used by New Media are regulated to be “common carrier” quality will New Media, or for that matter anything, be truly useful and available in the future. I believe that a single governmental agency should be tasked with all aspects necessary to make this a fair and balanced environment, balancing network neutrality with removal of ISP liability for the traffic they carry.

 

In the alternative, the ISPs must be made liable for the fraud of packet content manipulation/addition/replacement and culpable if traffic that they have inspected proves to be illegal and they do not report it. In fact this is not an alternative since if such a regulatory environment were to be put in place there would be no ISPs since they would not accept such potential liability.

 

IV – access to broadcasting content in new media

 

I will take this point to be the question “Should there be any impediment to accessing otherwise traditional broadcast media via the internetworking infrastructure?”

 

This breaks down into two different areas:

 

1. If the broadcast media is placed on the internet by its creators or publishers

2. If the broadcast media is “found” on the internet, having been placed there by someone who doesn't own its rights.

 

If broadcast media is placed on the internet by its owners, then it should be subject to exactly the same common carrier regulations that the rest of the media on the internet should be subject to. It should not be limited by source or destination, and its content should be regulated only up to the point where it is so placed on the internet – as with its traditional media regulatory environment.

 

The result of this is that Canadian content should be available to those in other countries (Canadian or otherwise) and vice versa. The consumer is the sole judge of whether what they consume is what they want, and in today's geography-free peer-group social networking environment (as opposed to physical peer-group networking of the pre-internet era) the content has to stand on its own merits and search out its own viewing population instead of being presented as “this is what you get, take it or leave it.” Government and regulatory bodies today cannot put the internet back into Pandora's box; China is the epitome of failure in trying this, and if Canada tries it I predict social upheaval that will give the lie to the concept of “the laid-back Canadian.”

 

I note that there are currently “traditional” programs that are getting twice as many viewers on the internet as they do in traditional TV release.

 

The second aspect (media “found” on the internet having been placed there by someone who does not have the rights) is that of copyright violation.

 

I do not believe that CRTC and through them ISP regulation should have anything pertaining to copyright. If ISPs are common carriers then they should not be part of the process of dealing with copyright except as necessitated by standard court-approved methods.

Only on presentation of court issued appropriate documents should an ISP be allowed, let alone required, to log or inspect any traffic that passes through its facilities. This applies whether the suspected illegal deed is copyright violation, child porn, terrorism, or any other criminal code matter.

 

V – other broadcasting or public policy objectives

 

I have no opinion at this time on other broadcasting or public policy objectives that might fall under the mandate of the CRTC.

 

VI – the appropriateness of the Commission's exemption orders for new media and mobile broadcasting services

 

Telecom Public Notice CRTC 99-14 in its note that the internet is “predominantly of alphanumeric text” no longer holds true and hasn't for several years now.

 

It's note in the same Notice that “some new media services fall under the Broadcasting Act's definitions of "program" and "broadcasting." ” is one I take exception to in the strongest terms.

 

I feel that nothing about the New Media content of the internetworking facility called the internet falls under the term “broadcast” by the very nature not only of the technology, but also of the evolving and predominant paradigm of the presentation and use of audio and video content on today's internet represented best by the great majority of video content on the likes of YouTube, Wavelit, Blip.TV and other such sites. Audiences in number less than 100 are reason enough for many to put up video and audio content. Virtually none of the content is presented in real time, and aside from “traditional” media, which is already content regulated, the production values and capital outlay is typically minimal.

 

For the CRTC to decide that the New Media audio/video content of the internet is covered under their mandate I must consider that such decision is entirely self-serving in that it serves solely to perpetuate and extend their jurisdiction over something that is as different from broadcasting as the sun is from the moon; both are “out in space” but one is a source of heat and light while the other is cold and lifeless. The “New Media” on the internet is a source of creativity and community, while the traditional broadcast environment is one-sided and all but lifeless.

 

New Media on the internet is far more akin to communication by speaking, either in person or by telephone. It is a means of expression and is becoming more and more a part of the daily lives of people all over the world. To try to regulate it would be like trying to regulate speech. I don't believe the Commission should go there.

 

There is NO ROOM at the trough to pay, either in fees, time wasted, or energy, for intrusive bureaucracy of any kind. There is also no stomach for intrusion by bureaucracy, and I predict that a backlash will ensue if it is tried.

 

The only way that bureaucracy can deal with the New Media that exists and is developing on the internet is to make the facility more inviting by mandating a level playing field and getting out of the way of the mass of creators.

 

Lead, Follow, or get out of the way – you will find you can't push or pull or regulate New Media content on the internet – but you can make it leave the country and you can stifle its creation. I don't believe that is anywhere in the mandate of the CRTC or any Canadian government body.

 

I therefore state that the CRTC should continue to exempt itself from any regulation of the content of “New Media” and instead concentrate on leveling the playing field of the distribution facility that media uses by establishing and enforcing “common carrier” status on its providers and being watchful that non-arms length providers of both traditional and new media are not allowed to be anti competitive in any way.

 

Respectfully submitted for your consideration

 

Richard C. Pitt

richard@pacdat.net

http://blog.pacdat.net (where a copy of this submission will be posted shortly after it is submitted to you)