OTTAWA – Lobby group OpenMedia.ca took centre stage Tuesday at the House of Commons Committee on Canadian Heritage concerning the future of media.
In an effort to “ignite Canada’s digital media revolution”, OpenMedia.ca said in a statement that it brought “citizen voices to Ottawa” on issues such as net neutrality, media ownership, independent media, and broadband access.
The Committee on Canadian Heritage is exploring the developments in emerging and digital media, how these developments are affecting Canadian cultural industries, and what federal institutions could do to assist Canadians and Canadian cultural industries.
The group is also scheduled to appear at…
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OTTAWA – Edward W. Boyd is the newest member of the board of directors of CBC/Radio-Canada, Heritage Minister James Moore announced Monday.
Boyd has been CEO of 58ninety Inc., a Toronto-based agency that provides digital marketing solutions to clients such as Unilever, Molson Canada, and Expedia, since 2006.
Prior to that, Boyd worked as principal at Counterpart dsr, an agency specialized in maximizing the use of Internet and direct marketing, and also served as president and GM of Iceberg Media.com, a pioneering Canadian Internet broadcaster and provider of custom streamed music solutions.
www.cbc.radio-canada.cawww.canadianheritage.gc.ca
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TORONTO and ST. JOHN’S – As Canada’s music industry gathered at the annual Juno Awards, recording artists and songwriters called on the federal government to amend the copyright legislation to ensure that artists are compensated for private copies made of their works.
"Canadian artists are no longer being compensated for the hundreds of millions of copies made of their works," said Annie Morin, chair of the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC), the organization which collects and distributes the private copying levy. "It’s time to bring the Copyright Act into the 21st century and to reflect how copies of music are…
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COLOR US A LITTLE MIFFED. After a number of days asking and re-asking Industry Minister Tony Clement for clarification on the digital television transition question, we were told it was a file for Heritage Minister James Moore to deal with, as we reported here April 1st.
Then Wednesday, we saw this story from Canadian Press where Minister Clement addressed the issue after all.
The story yesterday, which appeared on the Globe and Mail’s web site, raised the same issues we raised last week (and have been talking about for at least a year) about the lack of information…
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TORONTO – After officially opening its doors on April 1st, the Canada Media Fund (CMF) will stage information sessions across Canada to further explain its new funding guidelines and answer questions from potential recipients.
The first of the outreach sessions are scheduled for Victoria and Vancouver on April 12, before crisscrossing the country. Click here to register to attend one of the 15 sessions.
The meetings will be led by Nathalie Clermont, director of CMF program management, along with Roxane Girard, director of CMF program administrator/Telefilm Canada, Francesca Accinelli, director of the English market, and Stéphane Consantino, director…
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AS OF YESTERDAY, there were 17 months left for Canada to make the transition from analog over-the-air TV broadcasting to digital. Given the lack of action so far, hitting the August 31, 2011 deadline for the shut off of analog TV is now nearly impossible.
Everyone in and around the industry knows it. Everyone. It was openly talked about during the two CRTC hearings in the fall. It was as if the deadline meant nothing. But few want to acknowledge the industry’s and the federal government’s failure to act. In fact, as you’ll read, the federal government still hasn’t even…
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TORONTO – The Documentary Organization of Canada has asked the Sasketchewan government to reconsider its decision to shutter the provincial educational broadcaster SCN.
In a letter dated March 30th, the group said that it was “extremely disappointed” with the decision which it says "affects not only Saskatchewan but also the independent production community across the country”.
“In an era of multiple channels and large conglomerates, SCN stood out as the only channel actually representing the Saskatchewan public to itself”, the letter reads. “Its unique regional voice provides Saskatchewan citizens access to their culture and history while bringing Saskatchewan culture to the rest…
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TORONTO – With its official launch less than a week away, the new Canadian Media Fund will pay out over $350 million in funding support to Canadian content through two distinct streams.
An ‘Experimental Stream’ will invest in content and software applications for eventual integration into mainstream Canadian media platforms, while a ‘Convergent Stream’ will fund the creation of convergent television and digital media content.
Flanked by CMF board chair Louis Roquet, and president and CEO Valerie Creighton, Heritage Minister James Moore said that the CMF’s mandate is to champion the creation of successful, innovative, Canadian content and software applications for current and…
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OTTAWA – More than two dozen organizations representing creators, innovators, educators, scholars, students and consumers are calling on the government to make copyright fair.
Specifically, the groups have asked Industry Minister Tony Clement and Heritage Minister James Moore in an open letter to adopt a flexible approach to ‘fair dealing’ in order to “to better accommodate Canadians’ expressive and innovative values in a digital age”.
Fair dealing is a defense under copyright law that allows the use of copyright-protected content without permission of the copyright owner in certain circumstances. But not all fair dealings qualify under the defence as currently drafted.
“Right…
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IF YOU TALK TO ANYONE under 20 they will consider it quaint to hear tales of phones that were connected to walls; notes that were sent with a stamp; and televisions that were housed in large cabinets offering four channels, if you were lucky, accessible with the turn of a dial.
Online and offline; wired and wireless, the world is a dramatically different place than it was 19 years ago. Yet the Canadian media market is still governed by broadcasting legislation from 1991 at a time when urgent action is needed to bring regulation in line with technology to meet…
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