Bill’s C-10 & C-11. If we aren’t talking about it already, shouldn’t we be?

Tecumsehsbones

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Do I need to add that it is not necessary for other journalists or news organizations to agree with Rebel News, to admire or esteem its style or approach, in order to come to its defence, when the very principle of a free press is being invaded by the national government? A genuine free press does not depend on taste, nor is it contingent on one’s views about a competitor.
Of course.

“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
--Biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire
 

Serryah

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If D-Cup is actually for that, I have to agree. Banning speech is an attempt to ban thought. That's what's going on with the "Don't Say Gay" laws.

At some point, we need to stand on the notion of "sticks and stones" or accept that our ideas can be criminalized.

There can be other, narrower ways to prevent incitement of a crime. Hey, there's an idea! We could make incitement or solicitation of a crime themselves a crime! Oh. . . wait. We already do.

Incitement, solicitation, conspiracy. . . all these concepts are and have been ways to take on the incredibly fraught-with-peril attempt to set up a system that lies somewhere between the Wild West and the Crushing East (Germany). Let's continue to develop those, following the lead of educated, sensitized jurists who at least understand that any kind of categorical "you can't say that!" works more harm than good.

The "slippery slope" and the "parade of horribles" are always suspect arguments, but would you really want to set up a system where anything you can't broadcast on CBC, you can't say on the internet, lest the website or the ISP you're on be fined or shut down by the CRTC?

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Thomas Jefferson

TJ had his good days.

I'll reply to this more fully later.

However while I agree you've got points here, overall I'm looking at the nature of human stupidity and one person's 'free speech' is another person's "approval to be violent onto death"

But this is why I'm torn on the subject because while I think free speech should be protected, the darker places of the web take that to the extreme of breaking the law or voicing things that could be breaking the law is okay.

It's a which is better, to stop violence before it starts, or after someone gets hurt; and I see both sides of the legitimacy of that.
 

Serryah

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If D-Cup is actually for that, I have to agree. Banning speech is an attempt to ban thought. That's what's going on with the "Don't Say Gay" laws.

At some point, we need to stand on the notion of "sticks and stones" or accept that our ideas can be criminalized.

There can be other, narrower ways to prevent incitement of a crime. Hey, there's an idea! We could make incitement or solicitation of a crime themselves a crime! Oh. . . wait. We already do.

Incitement, solicitation, conspiracy. . . all these concepts are and have been ways to take on the incredibly fraught-with-peril attempt to set up a system that lies somewhere between the Wild West and the Crushing East (Germany). Let's continue to develop those, following the lead of educated, sensitized jurists who at least understand that any kind of categorical "you can't say that!" works more harm than good.

The "slippery slope" and the "parade of horribles" are always suspect arguments, but would you really want to set up a system where anything you can't broadcast on CBC, you can't say on the internet, lest the website or the ISP you're on be fined or shut down by the CRTC?

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Thomas Jefferson

TJ had his good days.

To continue from earlier.

I bolded the part above that I think not only expresses the problem but also the solution of the situation.

Using blanket statements of "You can't say that!" do not solve the issue of actual problems with free speech. Hurting feelings doesn't mean you should be able to hold someone to some sort of crime.

But the web is full of people who use it to promote terrorism, racism, bigotry, etc. that the current laws that, I think, don't cut it. Sure you could use incitement, solicitation and conspiracy to try and charge people, but online, when you can't get part of the context of what a person is saying, or their meaning, being able to blow it off by claiming "oh it's just words" or "It's just blowing off steam" seems to be too common.

If someone says outright "Kill all the Jews!" (and I'm using that since that phrase would get more reaction than suggesting killing all Muslims), and someone writes it, who is more likely to be charged and convicted?
 

Tecumsehsbones

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So….how does this fit with what’s currently going on in Sweden? There seems to be a free speech issue between an extremist (?) political party…..& an extremist religious part a religious group….and who’s expression should be censored and who’s shouldn’t???

I just started a thread about this but there’s not much in it at this point, but it ties back to the free-speech question here in this thread.

OK, looked into it. If this was happening in the U.S., we're done and dusted. Texas v. Johnson, the flag-burning case.

If you own a flag, or a Koran, you are free to burn it. It's your property to dispose as you please. Similarly, if you own a police car, burn it if you choose (certain peripheral safety and environmental laws apply).

If you don't own the cop car (or the flag or the Koran), it's theft, malicious destruction of property, and if the item is big enough (like a cop car), possibly some low degree of arson. If you do it in concert with a bunch of your buds or random strangers, that's riot.

Piece of piss. You are free to say (or otherwise express) whatever you like. You are not always free to act.

Some categories of speech amount to action, the classic "shouting fire in a crowded theatre." That's where inciting, fomenting, and solicitation come in. The "words as action" doctrine is complex and difficult, but at least it doesn't ban entire subjects.

"X should die" is not a crime. "Let's kill X" may be. "Hey, guys, X is in town tomorrow night. Let's get together and go kill him" is.
 

Ron in Regina

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I’m going to post this in it’s entirety just for those that aren’t able to get around a pay wall for the link. The issue is that it has more than 10,000 characters so it doesn’t allow this to happen though so I will have to edit it somewhat:

It was such a lovely idea, the internet. A borderless, bodiless refuge for free expression, beyond the censor’s reach; a place of infinite capacity and zero cost, where anyone who wanted to express themselves could, in whatever medium, at whatever scale; where a book or a song or a film could be distributed with equal ease, to one person or billions; where artists had the world for an audience, and audiences could choose from among all the world’s creators. Who wouldn’t want such a thing?

Edited out a chunk, still found at the link below though….

….So it seemed possible to hope that, with the intercession of the last election, the government might have taken the chance to rethink them. Alas that has not proved to be the case. All three are back, and while the government claims to have made modifications here and there, they are in every essential respect unchanged. Each on its own would represent a breathtaking regulatory grab, an unprecedented expansion of the state’s role as arbiter of what Canadians might see or say online. Taken together, they amount to a vast overreach, at great potential harm to free expression and a healthy media environment.

The attempt to apply Cancon rules to audio and visual content on the internet is contained in Bill C-11, the successor to the last Parliament’s Bill C-10. Much of the controversy surrounding that bill focused on the relatively narrow question of whether it would apply to user-generated content – that is, to the audio and video clips that users share on social-media sites. Critics had ample reason to fear this, after a clause exempting such content was removed in committee. And while the government claims to have restored the exception in the current bill, the bill contains, as communications law professor Michael Geist notes, an exception to the exception: User-generated content is not subject to regulation, unless the CRTC decides it is.

That’s the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, now in its 54th year of regulating everything that moves on Canadian “radio-television,” which the bill would assign wide latitude to regulate, well, the internet: not only the big audio and visual streaming services like Spotify or Netflix, but any number of other services, from podcasts to audiobooks to news channels, and not only those based in Canada but anywhere in the world. This is surely the far greater concern. Whether the users of these services are subject to regulation in their capacity as content posters – and so far as the services are compelled to give greater prominence to certain content, its users can hardly be unaffected – they are certainly subject to it as consumers.

The bill would preserve all of what is most nonsensical about Cancon – notably, the impossibility of defining it with any consistency – with none of what might once have justified it. In the pre-internet, pre-satellite, pre-cable world, where there were only a few radio or television stations, all of them broadcasting over the air, and financing their activities through the sale of advertising, there was a role for regulation. Advertisers wanted the largest possible audience, and the largest audience might not be interested in certain types of content, including Canadian content.

But when users can pay directly for content, that no longer applies: Every type of taste can be supplied, as it is in most other markets. And when the potential audience for a program is no longer confined by national boundaries, then arguments that foreign producers enjoy an insuperable advantage in the Canadian market because of economies of scale also fall to the ground: The world is our market, as much as it is theirs.

If Canadians want to watch Canadian content, in short, there is nothing stopping them, and no need for special measures to require/encourage them to do so. The notion, in particular, that Canadians need government assistance to “discover” Canadian content online is frankly bizarre. How hard is it to type “Canada” in the search bar?

If C-11 is superfluous, unworkable and probably illegal under international trade law, Bill C-18, the Online News Act, is simply bananas. The premise, that the problems of the newspaper industry can be traced to search and social-media platforms like Google or Facebook “stealing” their content, is utterly false. The platforms don’t take our content. They link to it: a headline, sometimes a short snippet of text, nothing more. When users click on the links, they are taken to our sites, where they read our content. Much of the traffic on our sites, in fact, comes from social-media links, which is why we go to such lengths to encourage readers to post them – indeed, we post such links ourselves, hundreds of times a day.

So the notion that FaceGoogle should be made to pay us for the valuable service they provide us for free has things exactlybackward: If anything, we should be paying them. The bill professes merely to provide for negotiations on the issue, but who’s kidding whom: Not only does it allow the entire industry to bargain collectively, as if it were a union, but, in the event the two sides cannot come to an agreement, provides for a settlement to be imposed. By whom? By the CRTC! As if it were not busy enough regulating the global internet, the CRTC would also be responsible for nursing the news business back to health. Are we to imagine it would be an impartial arbiter?

This elaborate sham is intended to apply a veneer of due process to what is in fact nothing more than a crude revenue grab. The actual rationale for forcing Facebook and Google to underwrite the Canadian newspaper industry is very simple. It is the same as the one for forcing Netflix to underwrite the Canadian film industry, as in Bill C-11: because that’s where the money is.

FaceGoogle didn’t take anything from the newspaper industry. They simply offered advertisers a better product. Rather than adapt and improve, however, the industry cried to government, first for direct subsidy (an awful idea, on which I’ve written on other occasions), now for indirect subsidy, to be extracted from their competitors. The implications in either case – for press independence, for fair competition, for the future of an industry whose willingness to save itself can only be impaired by the availability of government help – are the same.

The online harms bill, still in development, at least stems from a valid underlying concern. The harms social media have enabled or made worse, from disinformation, to invasion of privacy, to child pornography and beyond, are real and well documented. But it’s far from clear that new legislation is required to address them. The legitimate exceptions to freedom of speech – fraud, libel, incitement to violence etc. – are already covered under existing law.

No doubt social media raises new issues, and may require new remedies. But in this case the remedy – direct state regulation of content – promises to be worse than the disease.

Indeed, as first drafted, the bill would have gone even further. Not only would it have made online speech once again subject to complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission – a provision rightly abolished a decade ago – and not only would it have provided for the deletion of the offending material from the internet, but it would have allowed material to be suppressed even before it appeared.

As an accompanying briefing paper explained, anyone who “reasonably fears they could be a target” of “hate propaganda” could apply to a judge for a “peace bond” to prevent its publication. Yes, the Attorney-General of the province in question would have to endorse the request, and yes, the judge would have to agree, but still: gag orders? For material that has not been shown to be hateful, indeed may not even exist?

Perhaps that particular provision will not survive the current round of consultations. But as with the other bills, it isn’t the most extreme provisions of the bill that mark it as bad law. The whole thing is extreme.

Add them all together, and the picture that emerges is a bleak one, for free expression and the independence of the media. Far from the free and open internet we were promised, the government would be everywhere online, involved in everything, directing everyone – subsidies and regulations; applied to platforms, providers and users; with regard to video, audio and text; backed by both criminal and civil law sanctions.

Worse, this whole illiberal enterprise, however controversial it may have been the first time around, has gone almost unnoticed on its return. There’s a war on. The Liberals and the NDP signed an agreement. The Conservatives have embarked on a leadership race. Is anyone going to mount any serious opposition to this – will the Conservatives commit to repeal the lot if they are elected – or will it all slide through while we are distracted by other things?

 
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petros

The Central Scrutinizer
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The Great Digital Snowbank of Canada.

It's time to turn the tables and demand the PM, MPs, party employees and contractors submit to daily Dn'A testing.

No sober person would follow China's draconian policies into the censorship abyss.
 
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Ron in Regina

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Trudeau’s idea of, for example, disinformation could simply be news that he wishes hadn’t been published.

Remember this doozy of a line the PM uttered back in 2019: “The allegations in the Globe story are false. Neither the current nor the previous attorney general was ever directed by me or by anyone in my office to take a decision in this matter.”

Fake news in the Globe & Mail? We can’t have that, now can we? Better shut them down, or, at the very least, have their questionable story taken down and fine them so they learn their lesson.

Hold on though. Those allegations — about the SNC-Lavalin affair — were later proven to be more accurate than Trudeau would admit.

The Liberals have already faced considerable criticism from non-partisan experts for legislation that sounds nice at first but would in fact empower the government to censor the Internet.

There are already laws on the books for things like defamation and threats. While it would be nice to think everyone can become more polite online, it’s not the government’s job to enforce that.

Besides, as the Lavscam anecdote shows, Trudeau should focus on his own disinformation problems first.

 
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Ron in Regina

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…Meanwhile, and more worryingly, we have the unholy mess of Bill C-11, which is impenetrably complex internet regulation legislation that this government refuses to chuck in the nearest volcano and forget about. Instead it is shamefully trying to ram it through with as little debate as possible before everyone in Ottawa heads to the cottage.

What exactly C-11 is supposed to do or might do in practice — for everyone from big-business online content producers to individual TikTok and social media creators — is very difficult for laypeople to discern. Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez even disagrees with CRTC chair Ian Scott on whether new regulations cover “user-generated content.”

“Absolutely it (does) not,” Rodriguez told the Heritage Committee the week before last (You would think he was testifying in front of the emergencies act committee or something here….).

“Section 4.2 (of the act) allows the CRTC to prescribe by regulation user-uploaded content subject to very specific criteria,” Scott told the same committee the week before that.

Rodriguez calls all the blowback “misinformation,” although the Liberals seem just as guilty of spreading that. Section 4.2 says the CRTC must only regulate content “in a manner that is consistent with freedom of expression” — whatever that means — but then instructs it to consider factors including whether content (user-uploaded or otherwise) generates revenue.

How much revenue? What’s the threshold? We have no idea, but if the CRTC thinks it can regulate something, it’s a safe bet it will try. The only relief is knowing almost for certain that if the Liberals are still in government, it will blow up spectacularly in their faces.

Presumed Conservative leadership frontrunner Pierre Poilievre pledges to ditch all this: repeal C-11 and any other attempts to regulate speech on the internet and simply “leave it to law enforcement to enforce the Criminal Code online.” None of his rivals should support anything different. But as Waugh’s private member’s bill demonstrated, many across the Canadian political spectrum desperately need a refresher on the many benefits of only limiting free speech — online or off — when absolutely necessary. Nothing mentioned above even approaches that threshold.
 

Ron in Regina

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The federal Liberal government plans to shift gears (?) on its controversial proposal to regulate “online harms” to an approach that puts the onus on digital platforms to deal with potentially harmful content. The move comes after critics warned the original plan would amount to censorship, and new documents released from a government-appointed advisory group show it supported a change in approach.

However, most “if not all” members of the advisory group appointed by Heritage Canada have suggested that the categories of harms targeted should be broadened to include, among other things, “misleading political communications,” “propaganda,” and online content that promotes an “unrealistic body image.” The government has not yet indicated whether it will accept all of the group’s recommendations.

(I read that last paragraph and I just keep thinking of both the WE & SNC Lavatory Inquiries, and the liberal spin that was eventually exposed….but the exposure would have been censored by the CRTC via Bill C-11 if it was already in place)

The government’s first attempt at regulating content was widely criticized in a consultation held last year. Internet experts, academics, Google, civil liberties groups and research librarians cautioned the proposed plan would result in the blocking of legitimate content and censorship, and would violate Canadians’ constitutional and privacy rights.

“The regime would set baseline standards for how harmful content is defined and, in turn, monitored and moderated by regulated services,” according to a government-released worksheet. The idea is that as long as the platforms have adequate systems in place, they wouldn’t be penalized for “arriving at a reasonable conclusion about whether the content meets the legislated definitions of harmful content.” (???)
 

taxme

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This has to start somewhere, so might as well start with a Wiki summary of C-11 (as C-10 got squashed when the last election got called):


The Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11) is a proposed Canadian federal legislation. It was first introduced on November 3, 2020 by Minister of Canadian Heritage Steven Guilbeault during the second session of the 43rd Canadian Parliament as An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act (Bill C-10), which passed in the House of Commons on June 22, 2021, but failed to pass the Senate before Parliament was dissolved for a federal election. It was reintroduced with amendments as the Online Streaming Act during the first session of the 44th Canadian Parliament in February 2022.

Bill C-11 is a Marxist agenda. It seems like our Marxist politicians in Ottawa are always out to control what we can say, and what we can do, and where we can go. Who is the boss here? We the people or our politicians? Today, it would appear as the latter. Since Covid, they have being using Covid to try and suppress freedom of speech and assembly. If we the people allow those Marxist in Ottawa to keep getting away with their Marxism control over us, we will all pay a heavy heavy price for our ignorance and stupidity and keep having an attitude of who cares or what can I do about it.

As far as I am concerned, Covid was just the start. A test run so to speak to see as to how far the globalist elite can proceed with their globalist plans. This is why we must try and get all Covid mandates and restrictions removed now because if we do not, they will remain in place, and may well come back and haunt us sometime in the future, and things may even get worse. The truckers convoy was the beginning of the fight for freedom and assembly. We cannot let it endthere.
Just my opinion of course. :unsure:
 
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Serryah

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So... if I think this entire thing is stupid and the Libs are idiots for even proposing it and thinking it'll pass...

Am I still a "liberal"??
 

taxme

Time Out
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So... if I think this entire thing is stupid and the Libs are idiots for even proposing it and thinking it'll pass...

Am I still a "liberal"??

We must all see by now as to what liberalism and socialism and communism has done to Canada and Canadians these days, especially since Covid came along. The amount of freedom that was lost and taken away from us was incredible, and this should never be allowed to happen ever again.

Where and how could the freezing of someone's bank account be something that was needed in Canada which happened to some people during the truckers convoy protest? We have no idea as to how many more people may have had their bank accounts frozen? No access to your bank account, you are in big time trouble. But yet, this is what that Marxist dictator in Ottawa did too so many Canadian patriots who did nothing but peacefully protested. We all have to take note that one day this could happen to one of us also. Just you try and think about what life would be like to live without money, and watch your kids suffer in the process. It's not a joke anymore. This is serious shit going on here in Canada today, and we the people must put an end to it now before it becomes too late.

In China, they have what is called a social credit system, and this system can take away someones freedoms by just lowering their credit score if they do something that displeases the communist party of China. If some Chinese persons score goes too low, then they would hardly be able to live at all.

for anyone today who calls themselves a liberal or socialist has to be six bricks short of a load in their heads. Just saying. :(
 

taxslave

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So... if I think this entire thing is stupid and the Libs are idiots for even proposing it and thinking it'll pass...

Am I still a "liberal"??
Yes, u are still a liberal. just not a very good one.lol.
Before pappa turdOWE there was nothing wrong with being a liberal. Things changed when we elected? a leader that clearly hated both sides of the country.
 
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