There was news today on how here in the Canada the CRTC has officially announced a plan that would require streaming services such as Netflix that operate in Canada must give up 5% of the domestic revenue to contribute towards the domestic broadcasting system. It is estimated that this would bring in about $200 million dollars a year. I actually haven’t read a lot of positive support for this as it raises the debate on how if you become too successful as a business then you are going to be taxed to the point where a lot would purposely try and stay small to avoid being too successful.
As well, it does raise the [point of competition such as how the funding for this in terms of who gets it isn’t clear as at the end of the day it could still go to another large business that is theoretically struggling to survive without government funding. In that sense, should that not be a case of let the market decide in regards to who sinks ad who flourishes?
It’s little different if we are talking about a company that has a monopoly and specifically pushes out competition through questionable means. That would probably require some kind of government intervention. But for categories like these it makes you wonder if the government should be trying to fund organizations that don’t seem to be producing what people want. If anything, with the recent story of the Google search algorithm being leaked I would rather see investigations on whether or not platforms are specifically suppressing content in relations to this funding where the notion is supposed to help Canadian providers. That is probably a bigger deal in a digital age of distribution.