I know I know, I haven’t blogged for a while. I blame it on the redesign. It’s taking me a while. I’ve also been thinking of how to refine what I talk about on this site. Anyways, a topic for another day.
Over the past few days, I’ve been increasingly aware of talk by the CRTC to push Canadian content online. The recent threats and denouncements by federalists and separatists in Quebec around historical interpretation and expression caused me to think about the issue a little more. As much as I am a proponent of Canadian ideas — I think the fundamental point of view behind such a push for the CRTC to play an active role in the internet is fear — which is very unfortunate. The internet is a massive leveler that allows anyone to be creative with and through so many means. The key is whether or not they want to do what they are doing online.
Photography by alexindigo
Starting with Flickr and YouTube, all the way to Amie Street and Vimeo — there are so many people around the world (many Canadians included) who are utilizing their creativity and expressing it in manners that we rarely see (or even have the opportunity to) anywhere else. If this isn’t Canadian culture influencing the world and vice versa — what on earth are these organizations representing artists talking about?
It is interactive media after all… do they understand that?
Canada, for much too long, has been afraid of outside influence on our culture — hello? immigration anyone? Our country depends heavily on immigration. Apparently this doesn’t count because these individuals are in Canada already? The intricasies of how one culture influences another cannot be understated — but is redirecting tax dollars from internet service providers to a group of artists going to do anything? Not only is it very wrong for punishing the end customer (heck Canadians already have to deal with net neutrality issues with their ISPs already, why don’t you do something about that CRTC?) but also the intentions are mis-directed. Have they not learned about the word of mouth over the internet?
In a related case, Marc Coté wrote in the Globe and Mail that people are pointing fingers at the book publishing industry for lack of awareness of Canadian authors. He states that his publishing company is using all the web 2.0 tools available to help promote the books and lists them out accordingly from Facebook to book trailers, etc., etc..
My opinion? Woopie. We can all use tools to help promote books and get reviews but what does that mean to anyone? It’s not the tools you use, but how you use them that is important. What’s the context? The book publishing industry in Canada, just like every other publishing industry in the world is spamming the world with content. These are considered creative outlets but how many books in English are published a year? How many are even read? Might I add that this of course is aided by our government grants which don’t necessarily help regulate the quality that is coming out of book publishers.
Wait. So we’re spamming content and “art” via government grants?
Not working too well huh? So I guess we need to stimulate access to content by imposing a tax so that we can give more grants and hope that there will be something good that happens?
I’ve yet to see the reasoning.
Drop the nationalistic stance for a moment and understand that people just want good content, not more Canadian content — just good relevant content. Content that is worth our time passing on from person to person, from generation to generation — can we say that for a lot of our Canadian content? Comparatively, on a day to day basis, with our semi-united consciousness and accumulated “Canadian-isms”, fellow Canadians share their experiences, thoughts and ideas from coast to coast and beyond on different social media that doesn’t only reinforce Canadian culture — but inadvertently pushes it to the international realm. Why do we need the CRTC?
Personally, I think tax payers would much prefer investing CRTC funding into the CBC and seeing some innovative productions — or more Rick Mercer Reports.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Well said my friend, totally agree.
While we’re at it, let’s stop censoring American Superbowl commercials too!
haha… oh man, censorship is another thing that irks me
Another post for another day.