During November hearings by the Canadian Radio television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC, equiv to U.S. FCC
), the CEO of Rogers revealed in an offhand side comment that the company has plans to uniquely identify the activities of television viewers in the future.
The CRTC is holding hearings, primarily concerning the massive content piracy being perpetrated by the country’s largest broadcast delivery undertakings including cable and satellite companies. The breathtaking hypocrisy of these corporate pirates is evident in the testimony of the various pirates during the hearings.
Their argument is this:
Yes, the over the air broadcasters have purchased exclusive rights to exhibit a television series in their market.
They then take that exclusive right and, by broadcasting it free to any consumer with rabbit ears, renounce their ownership rights in exclusive exhibition. according to the major corporations the moment the broadcaster exercises the rights for which they have dearly paid, they lose those very rights.
To show their principled opposition to piracy, these same corporate experts testified that they were putting unprecedented resources into cracking down on internet piracy. Citizens using the internet to download episodes of “House” or “CSI” are breaking the law and should be punished.
Except these same witnesses had already testified that it was perfectly okay for them to take those signals and use them for their own personal gain.
The argument reduces to, if the corporate oligopoly steals content, it is okay because after all, they fight piracy. It a citizen downloads content, they are thieves, because after all, they’re just individuals.
What was perhaps most worrisome however, was the casual slip that the cable companies have a plan to tie personal television and other cable service uses together with their customer billing files so they know exactly what person in what house is doing with their service. The example provided was that a person in their home could be viewing special content. If an advertiser has paid the cable company a fee for the purpose, then the viewers name, address and phone number would be provided to the advertiser out of the cable company’s billing database.
The scenarios are unnerving. A couple that watches adult pornography a few times a week as part of their plan to keep their marriage hot could easily be profiled in an unpleasant and misleading way. A hostile neighbour would have the ability to subpoena the personal viewing records and attempt to make their “perverted lifestyle” part of some legal action. At best the couple would suffer irreparable harm.
They are planning for it now. And you know if the Canadian cable companies are on this it is a sure bet that the American companies are well passed the planning stage and are now working on implementation.
