LET’S TALK TV: Netflix, Google, refuse CRTC demands for Canadian customer data; is exemption order (still a form of regulation) at risk?

GATINEAU – Being exempted from regulation, CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais said in 2013, is still a form of regulation. So, one shouldn’t get the sense that just because Netflix on Monday refused the Commission’s order to provide data about its Canadian users, the chairman feels he has no arrows left in his quiver.In May 2013, during the third day of the hearing analyzing Bell Media’s second attempt to acquire Astral Media, CRTC chairman Blais said this: “I never talk about regulated and unregulated. I always talk about licensed and unlicensed for the very fact that one couldn't have exempted programming...