TORONTO – On the heels of the CRTC new media hearings, a new survey from Angus Reid Strategies says a proposed levy on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to support the development of Canadian TV programming would be a tough sell to consumers.
The online survey of a representative national sample found 79% of respondents said that this type of levy would be “an unnecessary and/or inappropriate fee that would end up being passed along to consumers.” Only 21% said that a levy would be “a worthwhile initiative to help ensure that there will continue to be high quality Canadian TV programming in the future.”
The survey also found that online video viewing has become mainstream, as nearly two-thirds of Canadian Internet users (65%) reported that they viewed short videos clips on their computers that they downloaded or streamed from the Internet in the past 30 days.
This figure is highest in younger demographics (74% among 18-34 year-olds), but more than half of online consumers aged 35-54 (60%), and 55 or older (52%), have watched brief video clips from the Internet in the past month.
In related news, Angus Reid Strategies found that the majority of Canadian Internet users do not see a problem with peer-to-peer file sharing, and most reacted negatively to the notion of a levy on ISPs that would help to compensate musicians for the music they create.
Nearly half of the online survey respondents (45%) say those who use peer-to-peer file sharing services to download music and movies are “just regular Internet users doing what people should be able to do on the Internet.”
An additional 27% admit these people are “doing something they shouldn’t be doing”, but say “it’s not a big deal.” In contrast, only 3% agree with what has often been the music industry’s position that file sharers “are criminals who should be punished by law.” And one quarter of Canadians (25%) feel that “technology should be developed to stop this.”
Among Canadian Internet users, 23% say they have downloaded free digital music files from peer-to-peer file sharing sites in the past 30 days, 12% have paid a fee to download digital music files from an online music store such as iTunes, while “a significant proportion” of online Canadians have not bought into the idea of paying for online music.
