Stingray Digital operates a pay music service under the brand Galaxie. Stingray didn’t like the idea of competing against CBC’s free online music service, CBC Music, and it asked the CRTC to shut it down, arguing that CBC was granting itself undue preferential treatment thanks to government funding and access to a preferential copyright license fee.
In a decision earlier today, the CRTC rejected Stingray’s application.
The CRTC received hundred of interventions, mainly supportive of the CBC’s service, but most failed to address the actual issues being adjudicated:
While very few addressed the substantive undue preference/disadvantage arguments advanced by the parties, a very large number of the interventions highlighted the uniqueness of the CBC’s service, including its distinct emphasis on the promotion of Canadian artists and emerging Canadian talent.
I am somewhat biased. My son is an avid user of CBC Music, using it as a link to Canada while he attends school away from his home and native land. But, the CRTC needed to assess the Stingray application on its regulatory merits.
In the end, the Commission determined that CBC did not confer a preference to itself in either case: the receipt by the CBC of government funding; and payment by the CBC of different copyright rates than those paid by Stingray.
With respect to government funding, the Commission noted that CBC’s funding is set by Parliament and it is quite clear that it is not under the CBC’s control. Since its inception, CBC has had government funding to operate, often in competition with commercial broadcasters. With respect to the copyright rates, the Commission noted that these rates were set by the Copyright Board, not the CBC.
As such, the CBC did not engage in any action to give itself a preference, so the Commission had no choice but to deny Stingray’s application. It is important to note that granting a preference to itself would not necessarily have been a violation of the rules. The rules say that the preference cannot be “undue”. In this instance, the CRTC did not have to test whether a preference was undue, since no preference was found to have been granted by CBC to itself.
I wrote last week that “People like free“. What if the CRTC had found against CBC?