Toronto Star

A group of more than 75 Web-focused companies and organizations, including such heavyweights as Google, eBay and Amazon, are calling on Canadian regulators to develop a "nuanced" approach when it comes to the thorny issue of phone and cable companies that manage Internet traffic on their networks.

Canadian cultural policy has long relied on two levers to promote Canadian content. First, regulators require broadcasters and cable companies to allocate a portion of their revenues to help support the creation of new Canadian content.

For most of the past two years in Canada, the Network Neutrality issue, which focuses on equal treatment of Internet traffic, was limited to academics and consumer groups pointing to the dangers to the public of a two-tier Internet.

The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, Canada's broadcast watchdog, will hold public hearings next year into the thorny question of extending its purview to the Internet, a medium that it deemed a regulatory-free zone nearly a decade ago.