Newsgroups: can.general
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.ai.toronto.edu!tjhorton
From: tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton")
Subject: American magazines in Canada (was Re: Unix Review...)
Message-ID: <89Jun19.002358edt.11715@neat.ai.toronto.edu>
Summary: Are we doing this to ourselves?  Anybody know?
Keywords: Canadian periodicals law
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Distribution: can
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 89 00:23:46 EDT

I was under the impression that Canadian law favors Canadian magazines,
and that one major side effect is the several thousands of home-grown
publications that we have here in Canada.

I imagine that all this may have changed, or will change over the next
10 years, under Free Trade, but I seem to remember exclusions for this
area -- as a "cultural" thing?

At any rate, I believe that the historic policy of our great country is
one of paternal protection for our own periodicals, and it may be that
Unix Review is at the mercy of just this very law.  (The rationale being
that there's no other way our own companies could compete fairly, or that
the Unix aspects of Canadian culture would be threatened :-)  Maybe it's
the case that "you can't keep out the other's guy's cake and eat it too."

But I don't think that the barriers are anywhere nearly high enough to
justify the Unix Review policies.  After all, "Time" basically repackages
it's american mag in a slightly Canadian dress, and competes head-to-head
against Macleans's (though 'borrowing' so much reduces costs, of course).
Does anyone out there know the truth about how the cards are stacked?