Open Media is a well known Canadian activist group that tries to keep the Bells and the Rogers of the world honest. They’re constantly asking for money “to keep up the fight”, which is where they lose me. But on Wednesday, I received the following email, making this claim:
 
“Radio stations are refusing to run our ads educating Canadians about Bell’s proposal for extrajudicial website blocking. Why? Because they’re afraid the ads would give the CRTC ammunition to remove their licence.
 
What a cold and hard reminder of why it’s so critical to keep the Internet free of censorship like this, which makes it easy for a small handful of powerful entities to police what we can and can’t say online.”
 
(Bell has asked the feds to allow them to block websites that 'encourage or enable' piracy. Open Media worries, with good reason, that it's just the start of allowing the big telcos to censor any websites they don't like.)

Still, radio stations are free to turn down anyone they want. But if what Open Media says is true, then it smacks of the privilege of using their very exclusive airwaves to block dissenting opinion solely for corporate and monopolistic reasons. But without knowing exactly what’s in the copy, I’m not quite clear how running such an ad would threaten anyone's licences.
 
Of course, the plaintive ad quoted above ended with a plea for a donation. Proving, like the often heavy-handed tactics of Bell and Rogers, some things never change!