Censorship in 2007: Regulation of the Internet Dangerous

A group of artists based in Quebec has determined that the internet needs to be regulated to protect Canadian content and should be subject to the same rules as TV and Radio. I ask, is this really necessary? There's the obvious argument here that Canadians aren't interested in Canadian content at all. The proof in the pudding is all the Canadian programs on the CBC that get very low ratings yet remain on the air just because it's Canadian content. Is such regulation really protecting Canadian culture or is it just another form of censorship?

Canada is unique in that we are supposedly a multicultural society. I argue that based on this, regulation of TV, radio, and the internet in order to preserve Canadian content is inherently un-Canadian. We are supposed to be embracing other cultures and any limits placed on our ability to do so is counter to this. So what if we are swallowed by American culture. We already have been. This art group is only attempting to have the internet regulated because they are not good enough to compete on the global stage. It's typical socialism. If we can't compete, lets force everyone else out.
Regulating the internet to require a certain amount of Canadian content is an impossible task since it is so large and there are literally billions of websites in existence. The only way to do so would inherently require censorship by blocking websites from the states or forcefully redirecting Canadians to Canadian websites even though they do not want to visit them. The CRTC already does this forceful redirection with TV broadcasts and that too is wrong. The internet was supposed to be an open arena to access information. Any kind of regulation or censorship is dangerous and un-Canadian.

Besides, as the internet is an open arena, there are no restrictions on what Canadian content can go up there. Professer of Law and Technology Michael Geist at UofO correctly pointed out that there is a lot of Canadian content online and a lot of it is from Quebec. In fact, Canadians are some of the biggest internet users on the planet, all adding their thoughts and creative ideas to forums, podcasts, Wikipedia, Youtube, etc. All this is viewable by anybody in the world, unlike TV and Radio. Also unlike those other two mediums, putting content online is relatively cheap. It costs nothing to post an art film on Youtube so why would they need government regulation and subsidies to help them. Based on the National Post article, scholars are not on board with this. Once you open the door to regulation, it doesn't end there. Not only do you start regulating what content goes up there, but who can post it and what kind of content is allowed and what isn't. This same issue is strongly evident with the issues over the FCC in the united states where a bureaucracy and a handful of special interest groups control what's exceptable to put on TV and radio. If you regulate the internet for any purpose, you destroy it.