I want to share with you what I wrote to The Honourable Steven Guilbeault.
Dear Honourable Steven Guilbeault
Minister of Canadian Heritage
Thank you for your work for all of us. It is not easy to avoid getting ripped off these days. By failing to publicly fund access to media content we have allowed a massive private industry to evolve into a wild west system where predators and scammers thrive at others expense.
Despite the challenge we face now, I have hope. I have a dream for better way to access what we want from what is becoming an ever expanding library of digital media content.
In Canada … in the past we have created new public services that have proven to be fairer to everyone and more cost effective than the private services they replaced. The best example being our Canadian public healthcare system.
Presently I may be the only person speaking up to say we need a new public service that gives people universal access to digital media content of their own choosing and that automatically pays the producers and owners of the digital content for peoples use of media content.
It is my opinion that financing the production of media content with advertising or subscription fees weakens democracy. Not only that, there are good reasons to suspect that a publicly funded media access service would lower people’s cost of living by more than it would cost people to finance the service with general tax revenue.
The weakening of democracy comes from the fact that relying on advertising to finance media content access services creates a huge opportunity for wealthy people and their organizations to buy advertising which is buying the opportunity to influence people’s commercial and political choices. Should it not be clear that this is absolutely not democratic?
Attempting to solve this democratic deficit by regulating or prohibiting advertising has to be difficult if not impossible given that we have freedom of expression guarantees which I hope we would want to retain. That difficulty does not take away from the fact that it is wrong in a democracy that wealthy people and their organizations have the opportunity to push and amplify their preferred opinions and views.
My view which comes to you here absolutely un-amplified is that we can solve the democracy deficit simply by publicly financing a new service that gives people free access to their desired media content. I call this new public service The Digital Public Library.
— The Digital Public Library (DPL)
a place online where we can go and access all content
- any book,
- any movie,
- any song,
- any newscast,
- any sports event,
- any text book,
- any academic paper,
free of charge we will be able to access it
free of advertising
and not only that this public service will pay
whoever has produced our content
for our use of it
Essentially the DPL does just two things
- Provides access to desired media content
- Provides remuneration for the owners and producers of media content people use
The status quo Commercial Media does three things
- Provides access to desired media content
- Provides remuneration for the owners and producers of media content people use
- Provides the opportunity for wealthy people and their organizations to advertise
In 2017, the Canadian Institute for Health Information reported that healthcare spending was $242 billion, or 11.5 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) for that year.
I estimate funding The Digital Public Library would cost 1.9% of GDP or $ 40 billion a year. (perhaps $ 6 billion for Alberta)
I claim this service will save people twice as much by reducing their cost of living as it will cost them in extra taxes to finance the public service.
Digital Public Library? To be clear I am talking about a nonprofit, publicly funded but independent media-content-access service to provide everyone with the access to media-content that is now being provided by, to name some majors; YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and and many more. We need a service that lets us access all content (including text books and academic papers) without having to pay a fee and without requiring us to consent to being surveilled and exposed to predatory advertising pitches intended to manipulate and influence our political and commercial choices.
This service also needs to provide remuneration for the firms and individuals that produce media content and the remuneration should be democratic, based on people’s self-chosen use of media content. In the digital content realm, the remuneration can be automatic when transactions are triggered by real identifiable individuals’ use of media-content, and when the payments are made to real identifiable owners and producers of the media-content. Addressing the issue of privacy, it should be noted just as is done by Statistics Canada, general measurements can me made without tracking individuals’ identities.
I am not talking about a total socialization of media industries, just the access arm of the industry. I am fine with the production arm of the media industries remaining a mix of for profit and nonprofit organizations with part of their revenue streams coming from both public and private donations or grants, but mainly I see the production industries being sustained by use based royalties being paid by the public access service (The Digital Public Library).
The argument for making democracy stronger and fairer, by publicly funding a digital public library service, is probably most important for everyone to understand.
Why is it not recognized that within what we call “the media” there are two very different industries, the production industry and the access to content industry?
Why is assumed that the access to content industry can best serve the public if it is provided by private businesses that finance their access enterprise with advertising or subscriptions as opposed to having a publicly funded but independent media content access service?
I have several questions regarding the financing of media access services that seem to be being ignored or overlooked.
It is assumed the commercial system we are using is overall economically beneficial. There is no hard proof that it is. I have a hunch it is not at all of economic benefit to ordinary people.
- We need an academic study with hard data showing that the commercial system is or is not raising people’s cost of living.
- We need a study to show that a publicly funded system would or would not lower the cost of living by more than it would cost in taxes to fund a public system.
- We need to show that it is true or not true that the constant exposure to advertising creates artificial demand. (It makes people want things they would not naturally be wanting).
- We need to show that it is true on not true that the resulting artificial demand raises the cost of living for ordinary people and by how much.
- We need a good explanation, that if it is not coming ultimately out of consumers’ pockets, then where are the billions of dollars coming from that are seen as profits by the major commercial digital platforms that have monopolized the media-content-access industry?
Cost is of course important but even if my hunch is wrong that relying on a commercial system makes life more costly, what should we be willing to pay to have a strong and fair democracy?
Not only as a more economically efficient communications system but also as a system that strengthens democracy I am proposing that we should create a new public service through legislation. I call this public service —
The Digital Public Library Proposal
Thank you
Breezy Brian Gregg