The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, or the CRTC for short, clears Netflix and similar content streamers of all charges.
It would appear that the Canadian government has some store of good old common sense: they will not be legislating painful regulation of Netflix-type companies without proof that TV broadcasting companies are hurting because of the OTC content streamers.
Instead, actual research will continue to be collected in order to shed light on the perilously shifting tectonic plates of technology and its flourishing entrepreneurs.
The independent agency, the CRTC, declared on October 5 that their research has indicated that consumer response to Netflix-type services is relatively unknown.
Netflix alone has over a million subscribers in Canada and is burgeoning their global market daily. And so Canada will monitor the broadcasting industry and the ever evolving use of streaming media companies, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu Plus, but they will not unnecessarily impose content restrictions for the foreseeable future.
The CRTC report stated that there “is no clear evidence that Canadians are reducing or canceling their television subscriptions” due to OTT services, such as Netflix.
Canada is allowing for local Canadian companies to step up and offer their own content streaming product for the ever-hungry Canadian consumer (and the million plus Netflix subscribers proves this, folks).
Limiting restrictive efforts in the form of legislation against OTC companies would only squash this opportunity for small businesses before they get their product moving, and it would also remove the freedom and the much less censored content that is available via streaming providers.
Right now, consumers are merely enjoying streaming services alongside their traditional boob tube cable companies, as the report revealed: online and mobile programming appears to be complementary to the content offered by the traditional broadcasting system, at least as far as we the couch potatoes are concerned.
