> Ostensibly the amount of the fee was to be left to negotiations between the platforms and the publishers. But if it was not already evident what a sham this w

> Ostensibly the amount of the fee was to be left to negotiations between the platforms and the publishers. But if it was not already evident what a sham this was – the negotiations were to be backstopped by that most impartial of arbiters, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission – it became clear with the release of regulations setting a minimum fee of 4 per cent of revenues for linking. Minimum, mind you: There is a floor, but no ceiling. > Step this way, Bill C-11 – the Online Streaming Act! Where C-18 merely imposes a tax on links with little justification and less possibility of enforcement, C-11 purports to apply Canadian broadcast regulations to the entire internet: not only in Canada, but around the world. The stated reason: to promote Canadian content. The stated target: once again, the big online platforms, this time not Facebook and Google so much as Netflix and Amazon. But Canadian content is not in need of promotion – the internet is awash with it, including on the major platforms, instantly available to anyone who can type “Canada” into a search field. > Ah, but the government has saved the best for last. Still in the works is yet a third bill: the Online Harms Act....An early draft of the bill, for example, would not only have allowed the authorities to order the deletion of offending material, but would have allowed it to be suppressed even before it appeared. Anyone, that is, who “reasonably fears they could be a target” of “hate propaganda” would have been able to apply to a judge to prevent its publication. And then one day for no reason at all...