(OTTAWA) Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez on Thursday slammed Google and YouTube for behaving like bullies as they posted a blog the day before attacking proposed legislation to regulate internet giants. web.
Posted at 12:09 p.m.
“I find it special that a foreign multinational comes here to try to scare, to intimidate Canadians through its words,” he said on his arrival at the cabinet meeting in Ottawa.
Bill C-11 seeks to modernize the Broadcasting Act in order to integrate internet broadcasting platforms such as YouTube and Spotify.
Asked about the risk of reprisals, Mr. Rodriguez felt that we must “return to it” since Bill C-11 calls for “common sense”.
“This bill there, it is very simple. This bill, we are asking streamers, which we love, Disney and others, to contribute to Canadian culture, he summed up. Facke, scare campaigns don’t really impress me. »
Wednesday, the chief product officer of YouTube, Neal Mohan, posted a blog on the Google Canada site in which he says that if the bill is passed it would harm the ability of his platform to provide a “personalized” experience in which users are offered videos that “you want to watch” and that “will be of value to you”.
“In its current form, Bill C-11 would require YouTube to manipulate these systems and display content based on CRTC priorities, rather than the interests of Canadian users,” reads the plea titled “Canada: Preserve your YouTube”.
In other words, argues the platform, Internet users will be offered “content that a Canadian government regulatory body has prioritized, rather than content that interests them”.
Mohan invites readers to sign an electronic petition asking senators to respect the “choices” of Canadians and leave their “posts and streams alone.”
During a parliamentary committee meeting in June, Minister Rodriguez stated that his bill would generate spinoffs of $1 billion a year. He has also long denied any claims that platform users are being bullied into sharing content.
Pablo Rodriguez has always maintained that the bill would not give the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) the power to regulate user-generated content like “cat videos”.