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Retail internet service providers, such as Rogers and Bell, that provide end?users with access to broadcasting over the internet are not subject to the Broadcasting Act because they have no control over the programming transmitted, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

Under the act, those that provide “broadcasting undertakings” are assumed to have some measure of control over programming.

However, internet service providers (ISPs) that provide the mode of transmission to broadcasting, both video and audio requested by end-users, "take no part in the selection, origination, or packaging of content," the top court said in a decision Thursday.

ISPs merely act as a conduit for information provided by others, and so cannot themselves be held to communicate the information, the court ruled.

"We’re very pleased that the court made the right decision," said Leigh-Ann Popek, a spokeswoman for Rogers, told CBC News in an email.

The appellants, which included the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, the Canadian Media Production Association, the Directors Guild of Canada and Writers Guild of Canada, had argued that ISPs form part of a single broadcasting system that is subject to regulation under the act.

They based their argument on the 1978 Capital Cities Communications Inc. v. Canadian Radio-television Commission (CRTC) case.

Under a 1968 version of the act, the CRTC had amended Rogers Cable’s licence, allowing it to delete and substitute the television advertisements in the U.S. broadcasts it received before distributing them to Canadian viewers.

The American broadcasting stations attempted to sever the function of receiving television signals from the distribution or retransmission of those signals within a particular province. The court rejected this severance of reception and distribution, ruling it was a single system coming under federal jurisdiction.

In making the ruling Thursday, the top court upheld a 2010 Federal Court of Appeal decision.

In a 1999 report, the CRTC concluded that the term “broadcasting” included programs transmitted to end-users over the internet, but that it was not necessary to regulate broadcasting services provided through the internet.

It exempted these “new media broadcasting undertakings” from the requirements of the Broadcasting Act. However, in 2008, after public hearings, the CRTC revisited the exemption.

One of the issues raised was whether internet service providers — ISPs — were subject to the act when they provided end-users with access to broadcasting through the internet.

The respondents in the Supreme Court case included Bell Aliant Regional Communications, Bell Canada, Cogeco Cable Inc., MTS Allstream Inc.,Rogers Communications Inc., TELUS Communications Company,Videotron Ltd. and Shaw Communications Inc. The CRTC had intervenor status.

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Internet providers not subject to Broadcasting Act

'Governments have always struggled to legislate for the online world'. Photo: Nic Walker

Legislators with little knowledge of internet privacy will do more harm than good.

THE protest against the American Stop Online Piracy Act recently, where Wikipedia and 7000 other websites went dark for 24 hours, made two things plain.

First, online activism can be effective. Before the protest, 31 members of Congress opposed the act. After the protest, that number swelled to 122. The bill died overnight.

More importantly, the protest emphasised that the internet is not the Wild West. Domestic laws and international treaties pervade everything we do online. And bad laws can cause profound damage.

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The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is an example of legislative over-reach. SOPA would have given the US government broad powers to shut down access to foreign sites that were suspected of hosting material that breached copyright. This would have given governments the power to interfere with the internal workings of the internet. Such a power would have been an unconscionable threat to free speech.

Yet SOPA is not alone. The internet is surprisingly vulnerable to laws that, with good intentions or bad, have the potential to stifle online liberties. Take for instance, the European Union's proposed ''right to be forgotten''. Changes to data protection laws now being considered by the European Parliament would give internet users the power to force websites to delete information about them.

There would be privacy benefits from this law. No question it would be lovely if we could make websites remove embarrassing photos or uncomfortable facts years after we uploaded them.

And yes, we need to keep pressure on social networks to protect our privacy. Too many companies are reckless with user data. Yet the EU's plan goes way too far. A legislated ''right to be forgotten'' would be, like SOPA, a threat to freedom of speech. These new rules would, according to the American legal scholar Jane Yakowitz, ''give EU residents an unprecedented inalienable right to control and delete facts that were once voluntarily communicated''.

In the age of social media we all happily put information about ourselves in the public domain. A right to be forgotten is actually an obligation for others to forget things they've been told.

Apart from being unworkable (erasing stuff from the internet is a lot more complicated than politicians seem to believe), this new obligation would envelop the internet in a legal quagmire.

The law would turn every internet user into a potential censor, with a veto over everything they've ever revealed about themselves. Every time media organisations referred to freely obtained information, they would have to be sure they could prove they did so for a ''legitimate'' news purpose. This would create enormous difficulties for journalism. Censorship to protect privacy is just as dangerous as censorship to prevent piracy.

But unlike SOPA, there has been no outcry about these new rules. No blackout of popular websites, no mass petitions.

SOPA was driven by American politicians in the thrall of an unpopular copyright lobby. The European data protection rules are being driven by social democrats claiming to protect people's privacy. And, in 2012, privacy is a value that many people claim to rate above all others.

By contrast, free speech seems daggy and unpopular. Even our self-styled civil liberties groups have downgraded their support for freedom of speech. Now other rights - privacy is one, the right not to be offended is another - are seen as more important. So these new laws could slip through with disastrous consequences.

Should Australians care what the European Parliament does? Absolutely. The big internet firms are global. If a legislature in one country or continent changes the rules of the game, those firms have to comply. The easiest way to comply is by making global policy changes, not regional ones.

And regulations introduced overseas have a habit of eventually being introduced in Australia. Already our privacy activists are talking up the EU scheme.

Whatever the EU decides about a right to be forgotten, it will have significant effects on the online services we use in Victoria.

Free speech isn't the only problem with the EU's proposed privacy laws. As Jane Yakowitz points out, people trade information with corporations all the time - for discounts or access to free services. No one compels us to share stuff on the internet. We share because we think we'll get something out of it. The new right to be forgotten would make such trades virtually impossible. It could cripple the information economy overnight.

Governments have always struggled to legislate for the online world. Not only do politicians have little understanding of the technological issues, but the internet doesn't take very well to regulation: according to one old tech saying, ''the net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it''. So legislators over-compensate.

The internet is complex, borderless and dynamic. Laws are inflexible and heavy-handed. Too many attempts to protect privacy or combat copyright infringement take a brickbat to freedom of expression and internet liberties.

Chris Berg is a research fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs.

Twitter: @chrisberg

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Internet laws a sledgehammer approach to privacy

Internet users in Iran are reporting error messages when trying to access major websites from inside the country Friday.

Gmail, Google Reader and Facebook are just some of the blocked sites, according to The Washington Post.

[More from Mashable: Grammys 2012: Who to Follow on Twitter]

Some Iranians are guessing their connectivity woes are being caused by the Iranian government. The country celebrates the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution from mid-February until March every year. The government may be restricting Internet access during this politically charged event to prevent anti-government demonstrations from forming online.

All the websites being plagued by error messages use HTTPS, a more secure version of the HTTP protocol that helps keep Internet users' information private.

[More from Mashable: Twitter: Now You Can Tweet By Satellite]

Other encrypted sites are also being blocked, including that of proxy servers, which some Iranians use to circumvent government blocks of Western websites, according to The Verge. Some are fearing this mass block is the first stage of Iran's "national Internet," a government plan to isolate digitally savvy Iranians from the rest of the Internet.

The Internet has played a vital role in Iranian political rallies in the recent past. Mass protests after a disputed election in 2009 were dubbed the "Twitter revolution" because protesters used the social network to organize themselves. The Internet slowed to a crawl during 2010's anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. And Iranian protesters used the Internet again last year to coordinate solidarity marches with Arab Spring demonstrations in the Middle East.

Do you think governments should shut off encrypted websites before potentially explosive events? Sound off in the comments below.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Iran Reportedly Blocking Internet