The Inefficiencies of Regulatory Arbitrage
Senior Scholar Eric Fruits was cited in this blog post by Mark Goldberg on regulatory arbitrage and FCC regulations. Read full story here.
A recent article on the Truth on the Markets blog was written about FCC regulations in the US, but most of the article applies equally in Canada.
The article talks about differences in regulating traditional broadcasters as contrasted with unregulated streaming services. “While consumers increasingly access video content through streaming platforms subject to minimal oversight, legacy media providers continue to operate under restrictive regulatory frameworks designed for a bygone era. This regulatory asymmetry creates economic inefficiencies and distorts competition.”
Sounds familiar, right? Canadians wouldn’t know that the author, Eric Fruits of the International Center for Law and Economics, was talking about FCC regulations in this article, rather than the CRTC.
“The inefficiencies of regulatory arbitrage multiply when different services that serve similar functions—such as broadcast, cable, and streaming—are regulated under different frameworks. As technologies converge, disparities among the regimes erected to regulate those technologies become increasingly problematic.”