英语论文网

ation This survey is offered online. Unit 5: Week 9 Communication and Law Keywords: . common carrier and carriage . content providers . intellectual property . trademark, patent, copyright . copyleft 1. Context and Perspective: Canadian Telecommunications and Broadcast Law Law and policy are the means by which governments intervene in our cultural environment. Though their influence is invisible to the person watching TV or making a cellphone call, law and policy have enormous consequences for communication as we know it. Electronic communication in Canada is defined by two major pieces of legislation: the Telecommunications Act of 1993, and the Broadcasting Act of 1991. Telecommunications refers to telephone, telegraph, data networks, satellite, and the Internet; broadcasting refers to radio, television, cable, pay, and specialty TV. The federal regulatory body that supervises adherence to both acts in Canada is the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, better known as the CRTC. A link to the CRTC is offered in the Rogue’s Gallery. The Criminal Code and the Competition Act govern things like libel, slander, and hate law, and monopolistic practices among media companies, respectively. Together with the Telecommunications and Broadcasting Acts named above, these four pieces of legislation provide the basis of communication law and policy in Canada. a. defining telecommunications and broadcast media Telecommunications involves those institutions that serve as “common carriers,” i.e., institutions that serve to convey communications content but that themselves have no responsibility or influence over what they transmit. They provide “carriage”–meaning they carry content like e-mail or voice messages--but do not develop content. An example is Telus, a private firm that normally has no liability with regard to what telephone users say when they make a call. Broadcasting institutions like TV and radio stations are “content providers.” They do have editorial oversight relative to the material they communicate to their publics, and as such have legal liability for the content of those messages. Given the very different historic role of common carriers and content providers, the Telecommunications Act and the Broadcasting Act recognize this difference in law. The general trends affecting policy and law in both telecommunications and broadcast are as follows: (a) technological convergence, whereby digitization allows for previously distinct technologies and industries to merge, e.g., CanWest’s newspapers providing digital content to the Global TV network, as both are owned by Winnipeg’s Asper family; (b) the trend toward a greater commercial—rather than public--framework for communication and media networks in an era of deregulation; (c) international trade agreements such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) that have fostered expanded global free trade in communication products and services. We’ll now address legal and policy trends in telecommunication and broadcast media separately. b. telecommunication trends Since the invention of the telegraph in 1837, the telecommunications industry has been organized on a monopoly basis in North America. Western Union dominated the telegraph industry; Bell and, later, AT&T were the chief monopolists in North American telephony; R