Canadian Telco Admits to Blocking Union's Website

Nogami_Saeko writes "Canadian telephone company and ISP "Telus" has admitted that they are blocking all attempts to access a website set up by the employee's union (who is currently "on-strike" or "locked-out", depending on your point of view). Currently no customers of the Telco's ADSL service (or any other ADSL service provider who leases lines) can access the union's webpage. Is it reasonable for an ISP to censor webpages they don't agree with during contract negotiations?"

Comments

No.

[Max Romantschuk]

These companies are providing what is essentially a public service, Internet access. They should not interfere with the content/data itself. Period.

Re:No.

[aussie_a]

Actually, I hope they keep this up, so they can then be sued, have charges pressed for minors being able to gain access to porn via their service. By blocking out a certain website, they show an inclination to censor access to the internet, so they should be forced to censor porn, at least upon request. They can no longer say "we can't do that" because they've shown that actually, they can and are willing (in certain circumstances) to censor access.

Re:No.

[terrymaster69]

Perhaps somebody from Canada can enlighten as to the "public service" status of Internet access? Is it regulated as a public good?
Not trolling, just don't know. I suspect this is part of the fear of making Internet access public in the US as well - if government regulates, "think of the children!" takes over and everybody loses. A few other posters have already mentioned that voting with dollars makes more sense, provided you have alternatives.

Re:No.

[Total_Wimp]

This is the exact reason it was so important to force the guys with the fat pipes to be forced to sublease their pips to other ISPs. If This were Verizon DSL, I could switch to Covad, but if this were Cox cable, (my current provider) I'd just be stuck.

Letting these guys run their businesses this way is tantamount to letting the guys who run the toll roads just not allow vans from their competing companies run on their roads. We'd never allow this on other critical infrastructure, why the heck should we allow it on the internet, THE crictical infrastructure for the 21st century.

TW

Re:No.

[typical]

These companies are providing what is essentially a public service, Internet access. They should not interfere with the content/data itself. Period.

Unless it is more profitable to do so.

For example, cell providers could simply provide a data service instead of application service. $N for x MB of data (and maybe $M for y MB of real-time data), and the rest is up to you. That would produce a market in which many companies are trying to figure out how to build and sell the applications that consume the least amount of data. Instead, though, cell providers would prefer to be able to price discriminate based on application usage. So instead of being a data transport service, they retain their vertical monpoly.

I mean, if I could get away with it, I'd do it too. It's profitable.

Re:No.

[Super Nicko]

I have to agree. The internet is a public service, and should not be controlled by private or public entities except as provided under law (eg kiddyporn).

In Australia at the moment, Telstra is one of the biggest ISPs and is 51% owned by the government. Most other retails resell Testra products or use Telstra datapipes in one way or another.

Imagine if Telstra, under the direction of the Government, were told to stop access to any sites of opposition parties, unions who didn't agree with their stance, etc. It would be outragious.

It might be that the situation in Canada is different; however, if one company can stop at this, then why not bigger companies and even governments?

Re:No.

[Andrewkov]

Usually I would RTFA and have something intelligent to say, but while reading this article I cliked on the like to the Sunshine girl (left side, half way down) and got distracted.. damn.

Re:No.

[iter8]

You can complain to the CRTC (Canadian Radio-televison and Telecommunications Commission) at this site.

Re:No.

[BVis]

This raises a point regarding objectionable content. IMHO once you've taken it upon yourself to say "We filter some content" you've taken on a responsibility to filter it all; the problem is, you're never going to completely match all of your customers' expectations of your filtering. This concept goes far beyond the realm of telecommunications; the analogy is Wal-Mart refusing to carry music with parental warning labels on it. By taking a stand against "immoral" (or whatever) content, they've created a perception that whatever is bought from their store will not have any objectionable content. ISTR that they were sued recently over a CD bought by a minor that had the F-Bomb on it. While I disagree with Wal-Mart on this topic (as well as most other topics), I cannot argue that they have a right to stock whatever items they want, as a private company. The trouble is now they're dealing with the consequences of their actions. (I found it kind of funny that when I had a contract to replace some parts in their cash registers, I noticed that every store I worked in had no trouble stocking M-rated video games, such as the now-infamous Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Yay for hypocrisy.)

Lots of people thought that lawsuit was frivolous; I think that it served an important purpose. Wal-Mart prides itself on its "family values" (while ironically keeping many families firmly in the category of the "working poor"). The suit reminds them that there are consequences for taking on the role of moral arbiter, and they may get more trouble than they bargained for.

Of course, if anyone can afford to take the hit, it's the biggest retailer in the world.

Re:No.

[TCQuad]

Now all the attention has led to someone partially defacing the articles section of the VFC website.

In the event this is reverted, the descriptions of two articles were rewritten in large red font to:

• You used ASP and Sequel Sewer on a publically accessible web shite! Shame on You!
• Telus, why do you blackhole this shite, rather than simply hax0ring it

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't be sued for shutting down a site that is defamatory towards you, IF you own the network servers etc. Especially if the customer doesn't pay -- give me a break -- some people, the moment they don't like the decision or it doesn't jive with them - SUE!!!

Have you ever been to a Union's Web site and seen what takes place? It's no wonder they didn't shut the server down the moment they broke off talks.

First off, Union's suck. I know all you "liberal socialist" folks out there will hoot and yell about how I'm spouting off, but if you track how Union's work and how they take advantage of big businesses by holding them hostage or if you've ever owned a business (like I have) that dealt with Union's, you'll start to see the seedy and dark side of how Union's work -- ALL of them.

Union's are basically nothing but a bunch of crooks who get paid a lot of money to make sure the "pack" gets just enough to be happy. Mostly they negotiate contracts that better the Union management and mainly throw a bone to the union members so they can get free health care, better benefits and basically lots of pay for otherwise menial work that anyone can do.

Let's face it, Union's were important 100 years ago, now they are costing businesses big money and it all boils down to the cost of goods -- which we end up paying.

I have experience with this first hand and I'll tell you what, the moment my executive team started talking about "replacements" was the moment of clarity for the company when they realized that they would not pushed around by a mob that was trying to make them pay OUTRAGOUS benefits to people who were lazy and living the good life getting paid $34 an hour to basically stand around. The sad reality? Over time, these "workers" were replaced with college kids, immigrants and people that looked at the job as a "stepping stone", not a frigging career with Union benefits that they could stay for 20 years and cost the company millions. Basically, the company went non-union and hasn't looked back. Sure, it pissed off a lot of people and there were Union threats, bottles and rocks being thrown, death threats and anything you'd imagine from a bully Union.

Some people reading this would start down the path of "maybe people like those jobs". Bullshit, nobody likes to stand there for 8 hours and put a cap on a jar, or move something along an assembly line. But hell, if they were being paid $34 an hour plus full medical, you'd have a line waiting for people to grab the job. The problem is, the product price has to go up, and the profits go down. The job was never built for someone to make that kind of money and the company (which is family owned) got forced into accepting the union into their business back in the 50's and it up until the end, the Union was costing them millions and millions of dollars.

Re:No.

[Mwongozi]

For example, cell providers could simply provide a data service instead of application service. $N for x MB of data (and maybe $M for y MB of real-time data), and the rest is up to you. That would produce a market in which many companies are trying to figure out how to build and sell the applications that consume the least amount of data. Instead, though, cell providers would prefer to be able to price discriminate based on application usage. So instead of being a data transport service, they retain their vertical monpoly.

FWIW, this is how things work in the UK. While the cellphone networks are application carriers as well - they also sell raw data, if you want it.

Re:No.

[Pulse_Instance]

In college we got that news paper for free. The sunshine girl made between classes just a little bit more interesting. However the paper was just useless 90% of the time for news purposes.

Re:No.

[yamla]

This is a good idea in theory but will not work in practice. It is technically illegal in Canada for minors to use the Internet. It's an old and obscure law which prevents minors from being able to use telecommunications to access content with curse words, believe it or not. Anyway, every ISP I have used in Canada has explicitly stated in their terms of use that only people 18 or over may use their services.

Therefore, if you have a minor child who accesses porn, _you_ the parent are responsible because you have failed to prevent the child from accessing the Internet, as you promised to do and as you are required to do by law. Obviously, virtually nobody does this.

In any case, I am planning to write a letter to the CRTC asking them to strip Telus of their common-carrier designation.

Re:No.

[eriksays]

internet access is not a public service anymore than cable tv is a public service.

making sure you can download pr0n, play World of Warcract; or, god forbid, post on slashdot, at the fee of taxpayers does not qualify as a public service

Re:No.

[alex_guy_CA]

"Is it reasonable for an ISP to censor webpages they don't agree with during contract negotiations?"

Is this a poll?

I vote: No

Re:No.

[meatpopcicle]

They should not be allowed to do this. As a carrier they should simply provide access. By restricting that access they are in affect censoring the internet. That is not their role.

Maybe I want to view the website, or lets say that the website is an opposing carriers website then what?

How can I be informed as the consumer if the news they publish is also censored? Newspapers and TV can do this based on what they report to a certain extent, but internet service should not be.

What if they blocked all access to Shaws website? Or since they are in the cellular market blocked all access to competing networks (Fido, Rogers, etc.)?

Obviously they are not a common carrier. They should be charged.

Re:No.

[I8TheWorm]

Internet access is only public in public buildings, such as the local library. If you buy it for your home, it's private.

Furthermore, they're not the only company that you can host sites with or that provides internet access.

Do I think it's morally wrong of them? Definitely.
Do I think it's legally wrong? I don't have the first clue about Canadian laws.

Do I think it was stupid to host a website with a company that you're on strike against? Monumentally.

Re:No.

[Breakfast Pants]

That suit had an important purpose, a big effect, was ironic, etc. etc. but that still doesn't save it from being what it was: frivolous.

Re:No.

[boarder]

Although I agree that it is important to go with Covad or another CLEC instead of Verizon/ILEC, that would not solve this issue. If you read the story (not the article, just the blurb up top), it says that even ADSL companies leasing their lines are getting filtered content.

I think this is a good place for a lawsuit to happen. One of these line sharers could sue because THEIR customers are getting screwed by the filtering of another company.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, Union's suck.
track how Union's work
that dealt with Union's
dark side of how Union's work
Union's are basically nothing but
Union's were important

"unions", "Unions".

Re:No.

[Harik]

Hey tard-tastic, please read the article. They're not hosting with the ISP, the ISP is filtering out their webpages to all the ISP customers. Since that includes nearly everyone who wants to unionize, it's a pretty big blow to the effort. This is known as "abusing monopoly powers" and is the kind of shit that you shouldn't let them get away with. I'm not a citizen there, so not much I can do.

Re:No.

[rtelfairm]

By blocking out a certain website, they show an inclination to censor access to the internet, so they should be forced to censor porn, at least upon request. They can no longer say "we can't do that" because they've shown that actually, they can and are willing (in certain circumstances) to censor access.

IANACTL [I Am Not A Canadian Telecom Lawyer], but I think we should not assume without more authoritative information that Canada's laws are the same as or similar to the US laws vis-a-vis ISPs-as-common carriers.

From TFA: "[Company PR flak] McArthur says the company has the right to block access to certain sites under a service agreement it has with customers." It may be that Telus has both the legal and contractual right to do this. TFA also notes that the affected Union has filed a complaint with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), so there probably will be some determination about the legality of this action under Canadian [i.e., non-Slashdot] law.

My CAD 0.02

Re:No.

[Dell Brandstone]

The content is being blocked because the union is publishing photos of people crossing picket lines.

Telus alleges that the act is a matter of security, and if you've ever seen union picket lines before, I think you might understand why posting pictures of people crossing the line is dumb.

Keep in mind, Telus management is attempting to deal with a group of people who are running around the city randomly cutting critical telephone line cables in order to screw Telus customers and make the company look bad...

Play fair? Bite my hump.

-DB

Re:No.

[despisethesun]

I work for Interbaun Communications. We lease our lines from Telus to provide DSL and none of our customers can reach that site either. Letting other companies sublease hasn't solved this problem at all, it's just affected more people.

Re:No.

[adavidw]

It is technically illegal in Canada for minors to use the Internet.

Cite?

Re:No.

[despisethesun]

Cutting telephone lines? First I've heard of it. Got a link?

Re:No.

[yamla]

Grrr, I cannot find the source to cite. My belief was that it was part of the Telecommunications Act but I can find no reference to it in there. It is entirely possible that this part has been superceded as I read about this in the EARLY 90s.

Basically, it was illegal to use telecommunications services to provide access to forums containing profanity, to anyone under the age of majority. The law was written back in the days of BBSs but also applied to the Internet. As it would be impossible to prevent access to _all_ such forums, the end result is that it became illegal to allow people under the age of majority to use the Internet.

Interestingly enough, it also used to be illegal to route IP packets from a Canadian source to a Canadian destination through any foreign country, including the U.S. This may no longer be restricted.

I expect that you will view these claims with suspicion as I am not able to cite them. I'm truly sorry about that, I really did search for a source. You should rightly consider that I may be inventing this story or that it simply no longer holds true.

Re:No.

[I8TheWorm]

Nice name calling... it certainly makes me respect your opinions...

It's only abusing monopoly powers if they, in fact, have a monopoly. Again, I said I didn't think it was right, but there are almost certainly other providers in the area.

It sounds more like a bad business decision to me.

Re:No.

[dryeo]

I hate Telus and use a different provider. My ISP leases lines from Telus and surprise, I can't access the site either. They do have close to a monopoly in areas without cable access and especially here where even the satelites are blocked by big mountains.
BC is quite large and mostly rural with Telus owning most of the infrastructure. They inherited the infrastructure from BC Tel when it was privatized

Re:No.

[Feztaa]

Telus has been pretty evil lately. In April they stopped deducting union dues from our paycheques, forcing us to pay the union dues manually. I see this as well as blocking the union website as a direct act of hostility towards the union.

We have been without a contract for 1,666 days or so now, the contract that Telus is trying to shove down our throats is completely unacceptable, and they are not willing to negotiate. I'm glad that we're striking, I hope Telus loses tons of money and gets really screwed over this. ;)

Easy answer - No

[DrSkwid]

"Is it reasonable for an ISP to censor webpages they don't agree with during contract negotiations?"

No.

Re:Easy answer - No

[Hal_Porter]

Great minds think alike.

Even after I read the article, I still think the same too.

Re:Easy answer - No

[adamjaskie]

"Is it reasonable for an ISP to censor webpages [for any reason]?"

No.

Re:Easy answer - No

[Alcilbiades]

Hmmmm it is not cool to censor the internet but nothing says that a carrier has to carry every site. If the site in particular will do harm to their business either financially or physically why should they allow it. Personally if I was a telco I wouldn't allow access to Union pages if they were striking against me.

Re:Easy answer - No

[jacksonj04]

I'll second that.

Re:Easy answer - No

[surprise_audit]

First paragraph from the linked article say:

Telus has blocked access to a union-run website, claiming it posted confidential information and was attempting to harass and intimidate workers by publishing their pictures.

Apparently the photos posted are of non-union employees, which could endanger them, and Telus also claims the site encouraged union members to tie up the call center with bogus calls. If true, that puts them on the side of the good guys, right??

Re:Easy answer - No

[Fujisawa Sensei]

"No"

See Previous posts on Common Carrier.

They should have to do what any other company has to do, and send the union a cease and disist order while sueing them for making a DDOS attack on the call center. The employees pictured need to sue the living crap out of the union for endangering them.

Re:Easy answer - No

[Alcilbiades]

ah you fail to see my point. If I control the access you have to something then the idea is you best not piss me off so much I shut down your access. Also, if you are trying to use something I control to you advantage and my detriment then I will shut down your access to it. I don't care if it is cool or the best moral stance to take. It is a very good strategic stance because, A.) its not illegal. B.) it doesn't stop them from sueing the crap out of the Union for endangering and intimidating their employees. and C.) it makes it more difficult for the Union to organize their strike thus putting them in a weaker barganing position.

Is it their network?

[one_who_uses_unix]

People complain frequently of censorship, however let's remember that corporations "own" assets in ways similar to individuals. I am in the US, however I suspect that Canada can't be too different.

The bottom line here is, if a consumer does not like the actions that a corporation is taking, then they can vote with their money by using a competing service.

When the government is behind censorship that is different - if something is publicly funded then it should publicly available (generally speaking and within reason of course).

Re:Is it their network?

[adamjaskie]

Competing service? IS there one? I know that the only way I can get broadband where I live is through Comcast. I don't have a choice. If I want broadband, I get Comcast.

Re:Is it their network?

[QuantumG]

If you enter into a contract with someone to supply a service and they stop providing that service or inhibit it, you don't just "go somewhere else" you sue the bastards for breach of contract, and/or recommend to others that they don't use that service.

Re:Is it their network?

[$1uck]

If Canada is not that much different than the US. The telco here is going to get itself in serious trouble. If they are going to selectively censor web sites, they are taking on a lot more responsibility than they are probably wanting. Suddenly (at least in the US) they could be held liable for whatever transmitted across their lines(kiddie porn, warez, pirated mp3's etc).

Lastly it is highly likely they are breaking contracts with the people who lease their lines to provide their own interenet service.

Honestly free speech should carry over to communcation channels regardless of who owns them.

How would you like it if the phone company monitored your conversations and censored what they thought was inappropriate (it'd be illegal). But are you honestly advocating that you should just switch phone companies? //is the parent modded insightful, for the mere hint of libertarianism?

Re:Is it their network?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, but, Telus is a regional monopoly so people in some large areas in Canada have no choice but to use Telus.

Re:Is it their network?

[aussie_a]

Has Comcast been granted a monopoly by the government (as in, people except Comcast aren't legally able to offer broadband in your area)? If so, then they should be held to the same standards as the government, if not, then it's not their problem. If there's truly enough demand for something, then a competitor will eventually appear, otherwise they won't.

You don't have a right to broadband, just because you can't get what you want, doesn't mean Comcast should be forced to give it to you.

Re:Is it their network?

[aussie_a]

If you enter into a contract with someone to supply a service and they stop providing that service or inhibit it, you don't just "go somewhere else" you sue the bastards for breach of contract

Aaah yes. The American way. Now most people would just ask for a refund for what they paid for the compromised service. But no, in America you sue the bastard for whatever you can get. It might not be right, but it's legal, so they'll do it. It's the American dream.

Re:Is it their network?

[Percent Man]

The bottom line here is, if a consumer does not like the actions that a corporation is taking, then they can vote with their money by using a competing service.

Your thoughts on private censorship vs. government censorship are dead-on; however, when it comes to "using a competing service," that can be hard to do for some of us. Here in Podunk, GA, USA the utilities have a monopoly by and large in their respective fields. It's a "use-us-or-don't-use-anyone-at-all" kind of deal.

But then again, is this the right context to look at Internet access? Has the Web truly become a utility as important as water or power? In centuries past even running water was considered a "luxury" and not a necessity; have we in the last decade added bitslinging to our society's list of must-haves?

Re:Is it their network?

[Qzukk]

The bottom line here is, if a consumer does not like the actions that a corporation is taking, then they can vote with their money by using a competing service.

Bullshit. Did the contract these people agreed to in order to get service mention "oh by the way, we censor websites that we don't like?

Your "vote with your wallet" crap requires an informed marketplace, which is anathema to today's megacorporations which thrive on lies and greed. This is one of the reasons I pay extra to not get a yearly contract for my ISP: I can't trust them to not pull shit on me with their vaguely worded "bandwidth limits" which they can't just tell me what they are, and other trash like that.

Re:Is it their network?

[canuck57]

When the government is behind censorship that is different - if something is publicly funded then it should publicly available (generally speaking and within reason of course).

FYI - Telus used to be called "Alberta Government Telephones" and in fact are predominantly a government backed monopoly. In such cases it has the fudiciary responsibility to be impartial to the services it provides and cannot be allowed to decide who and what web site are allowed on it's own biases. This is Natzi like behavior.

We Albertains should not let this go, as the next thing we are going to say is that native indians can fish the rivers but white boys can't.... ooops - we already do that. Maybe this is a government issue.

Re:Is it their network?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't it right? They've breached contract. They should've fucking thought of that before they started fucking their customers over.

I can't believe you have any compassion for people who breach contract. Or, should I say, companies. Something tells me you would have a HUGE problem if a person breached contract.

Don't sign it if you don't mean it. Pretty fucking simple concept. Even worse, for Telus, is the fact that they wrote the fucking thing.

Re:Is it their network?

[budgenator]

Comcast owns the nice fancy fiberoptic cables and repeaters that is tacked up on the electric company owned poles, that are planted in the publicly owned property paid for by my tax dollars; all of this is controlled by laws, regulations, and contracts between the companies. Not every company can get access to the pole's and public right-of-ways, so yes it is an effective monopoly. Not everybody can get competing services, I live in a city that has DSL service in it, but can't get DSL because of the distance to the central office, and probably never will.

Re:Is it their network?

[arkanes]

Theres a concept in American law that when someone has made you a promise (contract), and they break that promise, you're due more than just a refund of the service. This is both to compensate you for the annoyance of having someone ditch out on you, and to provide incentive for people to not break contracts. The amount of "extra" you're entitled to will vary depending on why the promise was broken - if they tried but failed to make a deadline, thats one thing, if they intentionally dropped the ball at the last moment to cause you real harm, thats another.

Most people think this is pretty reasonable, even people who think Americans are too litigious.

Re:Is it their network?

[mwvdlee]

I'm not American, but if this'd happen in my home country, they could sure as hell be sued as well.

But I guess it's just a matter of how important your freedom to read is worth to you.

Re:Is it their network?

[mikael]

According to the article, the union were posting pictures of non-union members crossing picket lines, internal telephone numbers to call-centres.

If this is a concern to Telus, then they should file a court order against the website ISP and union, and not act childishly by blocking a particular website.

Stopping their customers from accessing the one website is futile as the website can be accessed from a proxy server, Google's cache and archive.org.

Re:Is it their network?

[rednip]

Has Comcast been granted a monopoly by the government... if not, then it's not their problem

A monopoly doesn't need to be government sponsored. Think Microsoft, or better yet Standard Oil.

You don't have a right to broadband, just because you can't get what you want, doesn't mean Comcast should be forced to give it to you.

No, it's not a right, but broadband is a service which the government considers a strategic move for a healthy economy, thus an 'inconsiderate' monopoly can be considered to be a threat to the nations economy.

In all fairness, while being a little higher cost than I'd like Comcast has been fairly decent to me, even though they are the only reasonable broadband service available to me. Of course, a big part of keeping the irresponsible elements in Comcast in check are the anti-trust laws. (there are no evil companies, just bad people who have too much influence in those companies.)

Re:Is it their network?

[adamjaskie]

Well, I don't have any real problems with Comcast, but it IS my only choice if I want broadband. No DSL where I live (too far from the POP), so it's Comcast or nothing. WOW is nearby, but they don't seem to be all the way to Ann Arbor, yet. If there were other choices, Comcast would have more motivation to provide better/cheaper service than it does now. A little more upstream bandwidth would be nice.

Re:Is it their network?

[Ingolfke]

From TFA, McArthur [Telus' CEO] says the company has the right to block access to certain sites under a service agreement it has with customers.

I doubt he's making this up. This type of clause in a user agreement seems like a reasonable, from the company's perspective, thing to do.

Re:Is it their network?

[GeckoX]

Actually, your last statement is not exactly correct.

The Canadian government has a mandate to make broadband available to all Canadians. The ISP's have been slowly being forced to expand into areas they wouldn't normally. (IE: Low population centres)

At least in Ontario, almost every small town has a couple of broadband choices. I'm in a town of 1400 people, and I have 4 choices. 2 cable, 2 dsl.

They basically say: Hey, you want to expand your business in this are? OK, well you're going to have to cover this area too. Don't like it? No expansion for you.

Re:Is it their network?

[GeckoX]

There's a concept in American law that when someone feels they have been wronged, they can spend as much money as they feel like or can afford at a chance to prove how much they have been wronged and to recoup an inflationary amount for the wrong, their time and expenses.

However, for most people that don't have 5 figures plus of disposable cash, we'd rather the simple option of voting with our wallets.

Re:Is it their network?

[GeckoX]

Then get grassroots man. Go inform the marketplace then.

Look, nothing has changed. This is the way we used to get things done and invoke change. Business cannot exist without customers.

What has changed though is our level of complacency.
Even you would rather run your mouth off in a way that will not help inform anyone that could use informing, than to try to help make a difference.

We're so passionate about all of these things now, and yet we do so very little about it. Unless we count bitching and moaning of course.

Re:Is it their network?

[Miros]

ISPs like so many of our services can function as "natural monopolies," thus, it isnt quite as simple as a competitor setting up shop. It's a little easier with DSL services, but as far as cable goes, it's really quite impossible to displace an existing provider since you'll lose tons of money doing it.

Re:Is it their network?

[Miros]

A: You're right about contracts, some people are not anywhere near as careful as they should be about reading what they're signing. B: If you had actually read the article (which you clearly diddnt) the telco points out that they are allowed to restrict access to certain websites through provisions in their service agreement. So.... technically they did not breach contract. It's still dick of them, and what they did may be illegal for other reasons, but *shrug*. C: Who is going to spend $$$ suing a telco over a breach of a service agreement?

Re:Is it their network?

[sillybilly]

The consumer can't always vote with his money. Unfortunately, the world isn't perfect, and there are such things as 'natural monopolies', where the cost of establishing a competition is just too enormous for society. For instance, back at the advent of telephone companies, you had, say, 50 competitors in a city, each having to pull their own lines through each neighbourhood, resulting in an ugly zoo of wires, and abandoned wires hanging off poles when a company went bankrupt, and you, as the customer, had to buy 50 telephone sets, one connected to each supplier, and whenever you wanted to contact your customers, you had to know who their phone supplier was. (There were no phone numbers back then, but switchboard operator ladies, which was a standard job for a girl until she got married.) When it comes to electricity, water, sewage, phone, or anything that runs on conduits, you have a natural monopoly, because the cost of pulling 2 or 50 conduit systems through the neighbourhood is just too great, when everyone can already use what's there. The solution so far has been that they are regulated by the government. Now if there were some way to get wireless technology anywhere close in speed to what fiber to the home can provide, you could have full competition, because the costs of competitors erecting 50 antenna poles on top of the hills in your neighborhood is not great. But nothing beats fiber to the home. With electromagnetic signals, or any kind of waves, the higher the datadensity gets, the straighter the path of propagation - i.e. while the low bandwidth longwave radio can penetrate a mountain and oceans to submarines, and FM radio can bend around buildings and trees, but satellite signals can't, they need a somewhat clear line-of-sight (it won't work in an underground garage.) Light simply casts a shadow, it won't go around obstacles at all, like the sound of your voice will bend around the corner or your door to the next room, but ultrasound won't. The path of light in a fiber is straight, it just gets bounced correctly. But it's hard to imagine a wireless system, where you communicate with light or infrared, and whichever way you drive your car, there is a rotating antenna/mirror system to convey your light-signal to a central telephone pole, rotating like a compass according to the path you take. It's just not feasible, for instance, trying to collect and lead out the light signal from underground garages or tunnels, reamplify them, then send them off to the antennas.

Re:Is it their network?

[froggero1]

As someone from Calgary, and who saw Telus employees on strike this morning... yes, there are alternatives. Shaw Cable and 3web do cable internet and primus offers ADSL service in direct competition with Telus. In fact, it's law.

When Telus started up and bought out AGT (Alberta Government Telephones) part of the deal was that they couldn't squash out all competition, so they have to let Primus survive. Primus undercuts everything that Telus does and essentially resells the service, but there is an option.

Of course, they will have that website blocked as well. That's why you use Shaw, or 3web (same relationship as Telus with Primus).

Re:Is it their network?

[eeyore-on-thorazine]

Claims of censorship aside, this is really very little different than a DDOS attack. It is an organized and intentional effort to prevent content from being distributed to interested parties by the union web site. They are an infrastructure provider that is actively disrupting the flow of information across their network for the sole and single purpose of denying voice to opponents in a political and legal dispute. Even if that is, somehow, legal in Canada - it is ethically reprehensible, and utterly inappropriate.

Regardless of whether or not they forfeit their 'common carrier' designation by doing so, their 'rights' as a company are, in this case, clearly superceded by their responsibilities as a carrier. The Union is no more an asset or product of Telus than is Slashdot, and as such, Telus' right to limit presence/distribution are EXTREMELY limited. More they are a party actively involved in litigation/arbitration, and Telus did not engage in such filtering before the dispute. That places the action squarely in the punitive arena - which is a very dangerous place for any carrier - common or otherwise - to be.

Re:Is it their network?

[Pulse_Instance]

I have been with both Telus and Shaw 2 out of the 3 broadband providers in my area (there is a 4th coming next month) and I have never had a yearly contract.

Re:Is it their network?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The bottom line here is, if a consumer does not like the actions that a corporation is taking, then they can vote with their money by using a competing service.

Great idea, in fact I think I'll string up some cable lines and start a competing service so others can... wait what do you mean I can't? The government has granted them a monopoly on the use of those poles, underground conduits, and publicly owned right of ways to prevent there from being too many lines up? Well now. That's different isn't it? Since they are a government sponsored monopoly I guess the free market can't effectively decide now can it?

Please in future actually to make sure that when you are rabidly espousing unfettered free market economics that situation you are talking about is a free market, not a government sponsored monopoly. They don't have to compete thanks to the government, thus they have to work in the public interest as much as needed. Censoring their competitors or unions is obviously not in the public interest.

Re:Is it their network?

[Shalda]

Actually, not that it's relevant, they probably have been granted a monopoly in most areas. When cable was being rolled out to most areas it was usually the case that the local government would only allow one provider to lay and own cable as at the time, it was viewed in most areas that having 2 cable providers was economically unfeasible. As such, the market for cable TV and cable broadband is almost universally composed of regional monopolies. Monopolies that can then user their market power to prevent anyone else from laying cable. The only competition then for broadband is usually from the phone companies - and they often run into distance limitations. My point being, there's often a big difference between an ideal free market and reality.

Re:Is it their network?

[Citizen of Earth]

People complain frequently of censorship, however let's remember that corporations "own" assets in ways similar to individuals. I am in the US, however I suspect that Canada can't be too different.

So, you're saying that the big phone company in your area should be allowed to censor certain phone numbers, such as those of their competitors or business that haven't paid any "insurance" lately. Maybe they could censor 911 if you haven't paid your "insurance" fee also.

Re:Is it their network?

[cecille]

The problem is that usually part of the contract is that the terms of service are subject to change without notice. ISP's do this all the time with other stuff - ex. right now I'm paying for "unlimited" cable that actually has a download cap. Called it a "change in the terms of service". If Telus had something like that in the contract (and they usually do), it might be a bit hard to win a case on the basis of breach of contract.

Re:Is it their network?

[Dogtanian]

(\(\
(-.-) Give me back my damn feet!

No :-P

Re:Is it their network?

[twiddlingbits]

Not all utlity poles are public property. Many times the company pays for a thing called an "easement" and they either buy or lease the land from the owner (for a pittance). In the city, I suspect most of the poles/towers are on city right-of-way but not all are. I'm wondering when they will just start taking the land they need for towers under the new "emminent domain" rules upheld by the Supreme Court :(

Re:Is it their network?

[Khuffie]

Telus is far from a "monopoly" ISP in Canada. The biggest two are either Bell for DSL or Rogers for cable.

Re:Is it their network?

[hswerdfe]

then they can vote with their money by using a competing service.

wow, so the Rich get more votes then the poor?
sounds like a place I want to live.

Re:Is it their network?

[GeckoX]

Wow, that's really sad.

So nobody can vote with their wallet because they don't understand anything.

And they can never understand anything because the corporations won't let them in on their little secrets.

Despite the huge number of issues with those 2 statements, do you not see the big problem?

Take control of your actions.
Take control of your life.
Take control of your money.

If you really have this level of woe-is-me attitude, it doesn't much matter what any given company does, you're going to be taken to the cleaners.

I'm _so_ sick of this attitude:
Person A: This sucks.
Person B: So? Change it.
Person A: I can't change it, because this other thing sucks.
Person B: I'm sorry, I can't help you out. I have only one set of balls and they're currently in use.

Re:Is it their network?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you very much, Ms. Rand. Now here's how it works in the real world:

If an ISP such as Comcast owns all the cable runs in an area, and they refuse to resell access to competing ISPs, then they are a de facto monopoly. The cost of deploying new cable runs is far too high for most companies to do so, and it would be impossible for local infrastructure to handle a new set of cables for each ISP that wanted to compete. Therefore, it is not possible to compete in cable broadband in an area that has the physical cables controlled by one company. Now, guess what that's called?

PS: It doesn't have to be government supported to be a monopoly (just ask Microsoft)

PPS: You're an ass.

Re:Is it their network?

[JebusIsLord]

Damn you easterners and your ethnocentrism... Bell is the regional monopoly over THERE. Telus is the same thing in Alberta and BC.

Re:Is it their network?

[arbitraryaardvark]

Bullshit -> Did the contract these people agreed to in order to get service mention "oh by the way, we censor websites that we don't like?

Yes. Phrased differently. If I'm wrong, please post link to the contract. No isp will contract such that every website is reachable 24/7.

Re:Is it their network?

[Fox_1]

Telus is no Bell - and Bell may run central canada, but it's Aliant here in the East. Damn you left coasters and your marginalization of the East Coast, Ontario is not the East Coast, it's Central Canada, or UPPER Canada if you really want to be specific. And I know that Bell owns 50% of Aliant, but let us have our illusion of independance. Besides Verizon owns a good chunk of Telus.

Re:Is it their network?

[SirSlud]

> However, for most people that don't have 5 figures plus of disposable cash, we'd rather the simple option of voting with our wallets.

If you don't have 5 figures plus of disposable cash, how big do you figure that 'wallet vote' is? Probably not very big.

You seem to negate your very argument in the same sentence. Impressive!

Re:Is it their network?

[johneee]

In a word, yes. (At least in Toronto)

Telus provides broadband via DSL, which they get through Bell anyway. When I moved to Toronto, I could chose from a dozen or so DSL providers, of which Telus was one. They have the same status with Bell as any of the others.

I'm glad now that I didn't go with them. Almost did.

Re:Is it their network?

[FEEBLE*BMX]

Please stop modding this post up. There are multiple ISPs here. I have Telus phone lines into the house but I am posting this through a Shaw cable modem and down a separate set of wires.

Except for an ocasional 'too many database connections' error from their Windows server I can see the site fine.

Re:Is it their network?

[FEEBLE*BMX]

Shaw Cable vs. Telus. Same price, different wires. Anyone, rich or 'poor', as long as they are upwardly mobile poor like me who can afford a house and broadband internet, can easily choose either service.

Sounds fair to me.

Re:Is it their network?

[ccbutler]

yes, we have another source of high speed internet in Alberta. Shaw Cable

Telus and Shaw are the big 2 in these parts.

Re:Is it their network?

[wrecked]

Your have neatly and concisely summarized the main issue. I don't know the full facts of this case, but the Telecommunications Workers Union will probably be filing an unfair labour practice motion against Telus for this conduct.

Considering that the parties have been without an agreement for almost 5 years, I think that this will be a long lockout.

Re:Is it their network?

[rob.wolfe]

Besides Verizon owns a good chunk of Telus.

not anymore they dont...

Re:Is it their network?

[budgenator]

Given the poor service some localities receive from their utilities and near utilities like cable-tv/broadband, perhaps a municipality might seize the poles/and underground copper and fiber via emminent domain and bid it out to a company more aggressive about upgrades and customer service. The power of emminent domain can be a double edged sword!

Re:Is it their network?

[GeckoX]

That statement is so small minded that I can not dignify it with a response.

Re:Is it their network?

[SirSlud]

Well, it was itnentionally glib, but my point is that if you go by the old 20/80 rule (20% of your users is 80% of your revenue) that most businesses generally experience, unless you're a really really heavy user of a product or service, your marketplace vote is not nearly as meaningful to a company as a class action lawsuit. Ie, you'd have to already be one of their most important customers to make not purchasing their product a meaningful action.

Incidentally, if you didn't want to dignify it with a response, I wouldn't have responded. You did respond, indicating that you didn't agree with my opinion. Which, amazingly enough, prompted an explaination of my reasoning. I know my original post inferred that only rich people can make a difference in a market place, but I only meant to illustrate that often the most revenue generated for a company is due to a small group of their customers who frequently wouldn't object to politically or legally iffy actions if it doesn't affect the product/service being rendered to them.

Re:Is it their network?

[milobloom-ab]

Qzukk wrote:
Did the contract these people agreed to in order to get service mention "oh by the way, we censor websites that we don't like?

TELUS defends their actions in terms of not allowing access to "harfmful"/legally questionable (in their opinion) content like pictures of employees who cross the picket lines and the site encouraging people to "jam the phone lines" at TELUS. In their Terms of Service for their internet service, TELUS does say:

45. You acknowledge that TELUS has no obligation to censor or monitor use of the TELUS Internet Services by you, any customer or any third party, including, without limitation, any obligation to censor or monitor any content, material or other information sent, received or accessible through the TELUS Internet Services or the Internet. However, you agree that TELUS has the right to, without notice, monitor use of the TELUS Internet Services and monitor, review and retain such content, material or information if TELUS believes in good faith that such activity is reasonably necessary to provide the TELUS Internet Services to customers, ensure adherence to or enforce the terms of this Agreement, comply with any laws or regulations, respond to any allegation of illegal conduct or claimed violation of third party rights, or protect itself or others.

So you might want to take a close look at the TOS for your own ISP; you might end up finding something similar.

Re:Is it their network?

[Qzukk]

Sounds like a good excuse for logging who goes to the union site and posting records or forwarding my IP to the authority, or perhaps even disconnect me for viewing the union site, but nothing in that clause says that I agree to let them censor what I see.

Being told that they aren't required to censor things != being told that they will censor things.

Re:Is it their network?

[Fox_1]

damn...I left the company before that happened, missed it, that didn't say how many shares verizon started with or had left after the sale, but point made.

Re:Is it their network?

[BinaryC]

At least Comcast is willing to provide you service. They won't even run a cable 20 feet to my house, so I have to use dial-up (too far from the CO for DSL).

Re:Is it their network?

[GeckoX]

Ahh, I see, pose the impossible question. Good argument.

Your choice was still available a week ago though, whether you can see the future or not.

Read the fine print in the contract. Don't like some clause? Don't sign. How hard is that?

OK, then, assume it all looked good to you. Or at least that you saw that Telus reserved the right to do this, and either decided that was ok, or decided you didn't think they'd actually do anything with that clause. So cancel your service now. How hard was that?

I can't see this lasting

[Tinfoil]

Telus is pretty heavy handed at times, but I can see them getting slapped pretty quickly by the authorities. *If* there is illegal activity going on on the website, then they should have followed the proper channels to get it removed properly. Given Telus' attitude towards the ongoing contract negotiation process, it is not at all surprising that they would do something like this.

I do hope it doesn't last. Dirty pool indeed.

Huh?

[eyegone]

Is it reasonable for an ISP to censor webpages they don't agree with during contract negotiations?

Is this a trick question?

They're screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that they have demonstrated that they can block a website, they'll be liable for every kiddie-porn and copyright infringement site on the net that they don't block. Brilliant move, Telus.

Re:They're screwed

[khrtt]

No. All they have demonstrated is that they can block access to one, well-known web site. As if we didn't know they could. There is a long way between blocking this and blocking "every porn site" or such like.

Re:They're screwed

[qeveren]

Well, they've effectively proven that they can block any identified site on their service, and are willing to do so (at least for their own purposes). Therefore, they can't deny that they have the ability to block sites containing illegal content, once they're identified to them.

Re:They're screwed

[esobofh]

This is not censorship! this is required protection of employees who are being targetted by a very aggresive and angry union. It's reasonable to assume that as an employee, I could sue TELUS for not taking reasonable means to protect me when my picture is up on this site painted with cross hairs, simply because I continue to work.

Re:They're screwed

[FEEBLE*BMX]

Post a link for us!

OOOOh! So scary: PIC LINK

Re:They're screwed

[PFAK]

Yes, because a bunch of women (which makes up the majority of the TELUS workforce) are aggressive and angry and "dangerous".

Reasonable?

[Savage-Rabbit]

Is it reasonable for an ISP to censor webpages they don't agree with during contract negotiations?

On this side of the Atlantic the answer is a big fat NO. The only exception I could imagine is if the the Union is publishing libelous statements about them. Of course Canadian law may differ.

Re:Reasonable?

[jurt1235]

Even than, should they not use the normal legal means, and go to a judge asking to intervene to stop the practices of the union at such a moment? Taking this kind of action is more vigilante action.

Re:Reasonable?

[crabpeople]

"On this side of the Atlantic..."

Actually no part of British Columbia borders on the Atlantic, much less the other side of it.

response

[bart416]

They shouldn't be allowed to do that.
They should atleast give the abbilety to turn of that 'filter'.

Down with Unions!

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing my part to help slashdot this site. :) I'm sure this story was submitted by an executive in the company who wanted the site taken down for good.

I think an ISP can block whatever they want, and I think customers can vote with their pocketbooks.

Sure

[Ingolfke]

Is it reasonable for an ISP to censor webpages they don't agree with during contract negotiations?

It's their infrastructure, they can do what they want with it, unless they have contracts saying they will not. If they want to point every request to zombo.com they can. That said, if I was one of their customers and found out about this type of censorship I'd consider switching. It seems like a pretty underhanded practice.

Re:Sure

[tomstdenis]

Actually they can't because at the point where they take responsibility for the content they're no longer a common carrier.

It's like if I fly American Airlines to Chicago then go murder 800 people. Did AA "aid a criminal"? No they're a common carrier who flies anyone who is eligible.

Similarly if Telus takes up the job of filtering and re-routing specific traffic then they're responsible for [say] viruses or other malware I may stumble upon. They're no longer a common carrier if they deny access to legitimate eligible traffic.

I'm not taking any sides in the strike/business issue. Personally I think quite a few "big corps" are getting away with too much b.s. these days. That said I also think having no job is worse than having a job that doesn't pay fairly.

Though I guess at some point you have to take a stand and demand your share of the proverbial pie.

Tom

Re:Sure

[BigDogCH]

So, people should start filing lawsuits against them ASAP. They can no longer say that they don't filter content. Obviously they do! Sue the bastards!

Re:Sure

[tomstdenis]

Basically yes.

Essentially now that they're not a common carrier they're liable for every bit of kiddie porn, viruses, phishing email, etc, you name it.

They're acting out without thinking of the consequences of their actions and people have to take them down a notch.

Tom

Re:Sure

[EasyTarget]

if I was one of their customers and found out about this type of censorship

And how will you find out about it? Theyre censoring unfavorable opinions..

Re:Sure

[torqer]

They can't do what they want in Canada.

Sure they could have all traffic route to /dev/null, However, any attempt to block or hinder a union and/or the creation of a union is unlawful. If there was content that held trade secrets, as they claim, then they should have sought other means to remove the content. Two wrongs don't make a right. Expect a lawsuit from the union in a hurry.

Re:Sure

[rhsanborn]

But, AA does have the right to refuse anyone a flight, for no reason. It does not rescind their common carrier status. The CEO of AA could block his uncle Sal from ever flying on that airline, just because.

I'm not sure blocking access to a website neccessarily takes away their common carrier status. Just because they are blocking a website they don't like, does not mean they have taken responsibility for filtering anything other than this group. It would be an interesting lawsuit.

Re:Sure

[Holi]

I don't know about canada but in the US ISP's are NOT common carriers.

I have said this far to often and I am not sure where everyone gets this idea from but they are wrong.

ISP's are considered customers in the telecom industry and are classified ESP's (that's enhanced service providers).

Re:Sure

[tomstdenis]

Generally they can't just randomly block people. They can deny flights to customers they deem a risk (e.g. violent, drunk, suspicious).

But if they wholesale denied boarding of [say] black people they could hardly call themselves a common carrier. I'm sure you could also sue if you were denied a flight for which you paid for no valid legal reason.

Tom

Re:Sure

[rhsanborn]

Certainly, they'd be forced to reimburse for the ticket, but yes, they do not have to have a reason to deny access to their airplane IIRC.

We have laws against them denying access on the basis of race, etc. But denying access to an old jock that used to pick on the owner of the airline, or any other grudge he might hold, I think he is allowed to deny that access.

Re:Sure

[tomstdenis]

I dunno the law obviously. I'd say there are benefits to being a CC though. You are no longer liable for any passengers actions, you probably get more business, etc...

Being "selective" is your right but you lose the protection of being a CC.

Tom

Re:Sure

[rhsanborn]

I'm still not entirely sure that blocking this revokes the companies common carrier status. It would be like UPS not doing business with whomever. They aren't saying anything about the validity or contents of the packages, they are simply not facilitating the flow of goods to and from that entity.

Re:Sure

[stinerman]

It would depend on Canadian laws regarding who owns the physical lines. Our PSTN is owned by the people (government), so if you're going to use them, you're going to have to put up with a lot of regulations regarding what you can and can't do with the lines.

Now our cable system is privately owned. In that case, I'd be inclined to agree. Since Telus is apparenly offering DSL over publicly owned lines, I must disagree.

Re:Sure

[Kjella]

No, they are not common carriers, actually ISPs have been given their own "safe harbor" in section 512 of the DMCA. This is often mistaken for being a common carrier under the Telecommunications Act, as the result is quite similiar. Basicly, either censor nothing or censor all.

Kjella

Re:Sure

[alfredw]

I don't know about canada but in the US ISP's are NOT common carriers.

Telus is definitely a common carrier in Canada. In addition to being an ISP, they are also the second-largest telephone company in the country, and have a virtual monopoly over the four western provinces.

No it's not reasonable

[DataCannibal]

If I have a contract with an ISP that promises me Internet Access then I expect to receive access to the whole Internet, nto for them to hide bits that they didn't want me to see. If I was a customer of this ISP I'd now be thinking "legal action".

Re:No it's not reasonable

[GigsVT]

Yes, in theory.

But ISPs already regularly block parts of the net.

Outgoing port 25 for instance. Or maybe they block known spammer blocks from connecting to their net. Or maybe they block some binary newsgroups on their news server.

I agree with what you are saying, but the same people that are bitching about this probably accept "less than full" internet access anyway.

Re:No it's not reasonable

[gcatullus]

Skimmed the article, and it doesn't say if they blocked the IP or just the domain name. If you can get to the numeric IP then they really aren't "blocking" anything.

Re:No it's not reasonable

[slazzy]

With modern hosting methods, there are probably 1,000 sites on the IP address, so you'll also have to add the domain into your HOSTS file for it to work.

Mirror

[Freexe]

Does anyone have a mirror, I can't see the site for some reason ;)

But really, I thought that was what anonymous proxies are for, although they shouldn't be needed!

They should simply..

[bcore]

..lose their common carrier designation, since they obviously aren't trying to be one, and immediately become responsible for evey bit of kiddie porn and other illegal activity that goes on on their network.

Re:They should simply..

[empaler]

That one, I like. That's a really good one.
You want control? Sure, you've got it. But you get responsibility (liability), too...

Re:They should simply..

[laurensv]

Does anybody if it's that black'n white, recently the organisation of ISPs in Belgiul struck a deal with IFPI (local branch of RIAA) that they will remove access to any newsgroup with illegal music. Are they now liable for all content that passes through?

Re:They should simply..

[Jeff DeMaagd]

One thing I've learned is that different Western countries abide by different concepts. The US concept of common carrier might not be the same in Canada.

Re:They should simply..

[ThePilgrim]

I think news groups could be handeled diffrently.
To access a news group you have to connecet to a server that hosts the group.

NNTP allows servers to request only the parts of the USENET hierarchy that they wish to carry.

Hence the content of a news article is stored on the server you connect to.

The content of a web page is not stored on the ISP's servers, caching asside, and as such the ISP is only acting as a carrier not as a host.

Re:They should simply..

[JudicatorX]

I didn't know union websites were illegal.

Re:They should simply..

[Rude Turnip]

If it's their own news server, then there is no problem, because they can choose what to store on their own system. I've never had an ISP that's maintained a subscription to every single usenet feed. This is somewhat different than blocking individuals from accessing other's servers located elsewhere.

Re:They should simply..

[LarsG]

The US concept of common carrier might not be the same in Canada.

I don't know of any western country that does not have a similar concept. It naturally flows from the realisation that phone and postal system operators can't possibly monitor and control the content being sent through the system.

Re:They should simply..

[jackofallbrandnames]

Are they now liable for all content that passes through?

Unfortunately, yes. Or at least have now put themselves in the position to be liable in the future.

Re:They should simply..

[PowerKe]

First, comparing Belgian law to Canadian law doesn't make much sense.

That said, on a newsserver they aren't only passing on the data, but also actively storing it (from what I've read it can only be considered caching if it's retained for no more than 48 hours). Also, the ISP's are not responsible for finding out which newsgroups contain illegal content. It's IFPI who will look for illegal content and notify the provider of which groups should be closed.

On the other hand it's a stupid idea to close newsgroups because the problem will just spread over to other newsgroups / services (allthough newsgroups are very popular since only 1 user has to upload content once and lots of users can download it (Belgian ISP users have rather low monthly quota's on broadband services)). It also would be better if they just removed illegal posts because right now they're removing the legal posts along with the illegal ones.

But anyone can request an ISP to remove illegal content from their own servers.

Re:They should simply..

[pqdave]

If it's true that 48 hours can be considered caching, that explains my ISP's usenet retention.

Re:They should simply..

[thuh Freak]

How dare you imply a story about a non-american country isn't going to apply american laws/customs! where am i?

Re:They should simply..

[FLEB]

In US law, I'm pretty sure that there's a clause in copyright law saying that the normal copying (to RAM, to HDD) needed to actually run a piece of software does not actually constitute "copying". In any case, if you're the sole holder of all copies, then it's fair under First Sale doctrine.

I'd cite, but I really don't feel like poring over Title 17 to make an argument.

(IANAL, as if that wasn't obvious.)

Re:They should simply..

[Em Adespoton]

AFAIK, the Common Carrier status for communication was introduced by Napoleon Bonaparte for telegraph wires, (as part of the ITU treaty) and is (or was) the same in all signatory countries. Of course, nationally, it can be open to interpretation -- but in Canada's case, Common Carrier is quite similar to the US status. The only difference is that in Canada, effort is made to resolve differences without resorting to lawsuits, leaving the suits as a method of last resort instead of being used as a warning shot.

Re:They should simply..

[LuSiDe]

That said, on a newsserver they aren't only passing on the data, but also actively storing it (from what I've read it can only be considered caching if it's retained for no more than 48 hours).

In the Netherlands there's jurisprudence on this one and what matters is that the data is automagically deleted after X time instead of manually in order to be considered a cache. The amount of X does not matter in that regard. Unfortunately i can't find the relevant link...

Re:They should simply..

[LuSiDe]

I think news groups could be handeled diffrently.

Sure.

To access a news group you have to connecet to a server that hosts the group.

NNTP allows servers to request only the parts of the USENET hierarchy that they wish to carry.

Hence the content of a news article is stored on the server you connect to.

The content of a web page is not stored on the ISP's servers, caching asside, and as such the ISP is only acting as a carrier not as a host.

Every aspect you mention here is already the case. Usenet servers only cache already (that some do this longer than others is irrelevant). Admins already chose groups they wish to (not) carry (even via regexps). A web page on a HTTP server is not automagically deleted after X time and is therefore not considered 'cache'.

Correct me if I'm wrong

[Council]

Wait, I thought this was a website hosted by the company itself. Certainly they can decide what they do or don't want to host. They can absolutely tell the union to move to union.com [example] or Tripod or whatever.

Now, if they were blocking the independently-hosted union.com, they'd be where they had no business to be, and that would obviously be wrong. That's what this story implies is going on. But from TFAs I've been looking at, it's that they're deciding what can be hosted on their own servers. Absolutely their right.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[KDR_11k]

The union site is independently hosted, they're blocking the site for their own users. The article doesn't suggest that Telus is hosting the site and Telus even claims the contract with their users says that Telus can block any site for whatever reason they like. They also say the information on the union's site is somehow damaging to Telus and endangers their employees. Also the always loved claim of "they're distributing our proprietary information!" without elaborating on what that information is SCO-style.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[hyfe]

Wait, I thought this was a website hosted by the company itself.

Which means they are entitled to pull the plug or remove the content. The internet is peer-to-peer:
If you own the peer, you are entitled to do whatever they please with it.
You can't however own the 'to', and even if you're providing it, it is certainly not yours to mess with.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[OhHellWithIt]

It appears the union website is hosted on a server in Miami, FL. Network Solutions' whois doesn't list the IP address as being in a block assigned to Telus. The employee photos I saw on the site were all union employees picketing -- which would be intimidating only if they were on an anti-union website.

If this were happening in the U.S., I would expect the ACLU to be all over them like mockingbirds on a cat.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Black Copter Control]

They're blocking independent website. I'm a Telus customer, and that was the first thing I tried: A CBC article has links to both The Union website and a proxy. The proxy works, but the direct IP address is filtered in their routers:

From My box:
traceroute to www.voices-for-change.com (204.14.106.29), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 192.168.196.43 (192.168.96.43) 1.372 ms 1.211 ms 1.144 ms
2 * * *

From a friend of mine (A telus business customer in another city):

traceroute to www.voices-for-change.com (204.14.106.29), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 10.X.Y.9 (10.X.Y.9) 11.937 ms 9.774 ms 9.080 ms
2 192.168.X.Y (192.168.X.Y) 6.888 ms 10.091 ms 9.272 ms
3 REDACTED.bb.telus.com (209.115.XX.XX) 175.486 ms 108.097 ms 203.427 ms
4 * * *

SSHing to a non-telus IP, I can access the website directly.

ping www.voices-for-change.com
PING www.voices-for-change.com (204.14.106.29): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 204.14.106.29: icmp_seq=0 ttl=115 time=107.100 ms
64 bytes from 204.14.106.29: icmp_seq=1 ttl=115 time=107.068 ms

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Council]

Like . . . "mockingbirds on a cat"?

This sounds like a simile stemming from a fascinating situation I'd never heard of. Please elaborate!

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[phcrack]

The big problem is that the site purportedly hosted pictures of people crossing picket lines. From my experience with union people, this could be endangering people's safety. Personally, I think Telus should have had the courts force the union to take the pics down, but then they've been having problems there too.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[OhHellWithIt]

I was trying to think of an appropriate cliche, "flies on s***", etc., and all I could think of was the situation of the family cat, who has found this summer that he can't go out either the front door or the back door during daylight without having a mockingbird on his case. As you probably know, mockingbirds are pretty aggressive and don't leave off with scolding. They are more than willing to go mano-a-mano (or maybe pico-a-garra) with creatures many times their weight -- including humans on occasion.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[despisethesun]

and Telus even claims the contract with their users says that Telus can block any site for whatever reason they like.

Somehow I don't think that extends to the ISPs that lease from them. They're also affected, by the way, and they didn't sign any contracts with Telus saying Telus could block any sites they wanted.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[KDR_11k]

Not sure about that, have you seen Telus's lease contracts? Could very well be that they've added that.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[despisethesun]

I haven't, but I'm fairly certain no company would enter into such an agreement unless it was run by morons.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[http]

I was a telus customer (until this afternoon). I read over the terms and conditions, and the claim the VPCR makes about the contract allowing them to do that is, well, bullshit.
when i first signed up with them, i saved a copy of the T+C's locally and made a script to diff the current terms and the original terms (I'm lazy, hey? get a computer to do repetitive tasks), and when i checked this morning there were no changes between then and now.
they were supposed to be my ISP, not my nanny. if they thought what the union website had available was illegal, they should have talked to a judge first (makes me wonder, did the lawyers at telus go on stike too?). what telus chose to do was just idiotic. all routing to the machine's IP got dropped. maybe that machine had other websites on it? lawyers, here's your chance at a good feeding frenzy...

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[devnullify]

The summary is incorrect. Companies that lease from Telus only get ATM transport from the DSLAM into their data centres. To the best of my knowledge, Telus doesn't provide end-to-end DSL resale agreements like they do with dialup (VPOPs). They provide transit and the actual DSL circuit, but not the router inbetween or any other infrastructure. It's raw, as you would expect of such an agreement.

The filtering is undoubtedly being done by the transparent HTTP proxying Telus imposed on all of its customers a couple years back, probably for precisely this purpose (well, ok, they sell a 'protect your kids' service that uses it as well).

Anyway, I'm on an ISP that leases the DSL circuit from Telus (which I'm an ex-employee of), and I can access the site just fine through my Uniserve-owned IP and over Navigata transit. My packets don't go near Telus' IP network.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The site is hosted through Telus and Telus has the right to block any content that promotes hatred and/or violence. In fact, it's illegal in Canada to promote violence or hatred on a website. Telus felt justified in blocking the website to protect it's own customers. The information being 'somewhat damaging' is a bit of an understatement. You should read the settlement terms.

They posted pictures of Telus employees crossing the picket line, and put insulting remarks below.

'posting describing an East Indian man as a terrorist, along with his name, address, photo, and other personal information. Also carry threat of serious assault. He has gone on stress leave and left Edmonton with his family.'

That's illegal and it's dangerous, Telus blocked the website because they had the right to, as its host, and at the same time they took the webmaster to court, and forced him to take down the pictures. When he did, they unblocked the site.

Seems fair to me.

Reasonable? No. But that doesn't matter

[Mr. Underbridge]

The question isn't whether it's reasonable, it's whether it's *legal.* The first question is whether there's any restrictions in CA on what ISP's can censor. If not, the question is whether there's any provision in labor law regarding obstruction of communication - as rare as a case like this would be, I'd imagine not.

Otherwise, I imagine this is dirty, a bad idea, but legal.

stupid move

[laurensv]

In any case it's a stupid move to lie to your customers.
From the union site: "Customers who use telus.net as their Internet Service Provider are unable to access this website due to censorship by TELUS. When support is called they claim not to be blocking access. Television station BCTV Global did a story on the 6:00 o'clock news on this issue. Radio station CKNW also had as story on censoring TELUS customers, after receiving calls from numerous TWU members. Both media outlets are in British Columbia. In both cases, the company admitted to censoring TWU members and their customers." emphasis mine
From the site of telus: "Throughout this time, we will work hard to minimize the service impacts of the TWU's activities. We apologize for any inconvenience you may experience and thank you for your patience." emphasis mine

Re:stupid move

[sillybilly]

Can't somebody please mirror it for them, or can't they go through some anonymous access proxy?

Re:stupid move

[LordEd]

From TFA:

TELUS customers can pass this proxy URL to TWU members they know who uses TELUS as their ISP: http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/

Re:stupid move

[Darth_Burrito]

It's also stupid to give the union soooo much free publicity. Besides all the free hits, admitedly from non TELUS subscribers, they are getting free tv/radio time. If they had just let the site remain available, the affects would likely have been negligible.

Re:stupid move

[rohan_leader]

We apologize for any inconvenience you may experience and thank you for your patience.

This is of course referring to the actions of the union over the last weekend... I'm not defending Telus or the union in any way, but I thought that would be what the message is referring to, not specifically, the censorship of the website.

Re:stupid move

[rohan_leader]

Actually, to expand on what I said earlier, further research shows that this has actually been going on for some time... even back to June.

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,13615 830

How NOT to do Customer Service

[Captain Kirk]

Who believes that censoring your customers is an intelligent business strategy? Particularly if you are censoring the possibility that Customer Service is being off-shored.

They hava a contractual obligation

[Anonymous Coward]

to provide access to the internet unless explicitly stated otherwise in their terms of service. Also if they do get into the censoring business they start incurring all kinds of liability if the censoring doesn't work. That's why ISPs usually have issues with goverment mandated censorship if they think they're too exposed on liability.

The customers, not the union

[bcore]

The problem isn't that Telus is hosting the union's website, it's that Telus customers (as in, the public at large who chose to use telus as an ISP) are being blocked from the union's website.

Let's be accurate here

[dogsbreath]

OK --- TELUS has blackholed VFC and I don't agree with it but let us be accurate.

The union web site www.twu-canada.ca is NOT blocked.

The totally unsanctioned site www.voices-for-change.com is blackholed. You can get to it quite easily using a proxy such as guardster. On VFC there are numerous comments promoting physical violence and doing the "nod-nod wink-wink" with respect to vandalism. They are also acting as a kangaroo-court for union members who do not follow the line prescribed by union militants. This is not a black and white issue of intolerance and censorship.

TELUS still should not block it but I would not condemn them for their actions. The union has done nothing to curb extreme comments and has to some degree encouraged them. When it comes to information Caveat Emptor.

Re:Let's be accurate here

[arkanes]

This is not a black and white issue of intolerance and censorship.

Actually, yes it is. Regardless of the merit or lack thereof of the website. Is the content of the website within the bounds of CA law? Then it's black & white censorship and Telus should fuck off. Is the content of the website beyond whats acceptable to CA law? Then Telus should follow the guidelines established by CA law, instead of taking it upon themselves to censor the content.

When it comes to information Caveat Emptor.

Pretty fucking hard to take your information with a grain of salt when your ISP won't let you look at it , is it?

Telus is clearly outside the bounds of reasonable behavior. If the website is dangerous, or libelous, or any of those other things they claim, then there are clear and effective legal channels to follow. Cutting off access because they don't like it is ridiculous. Moreover, it's stupid, because assuming CA law is similiar to US in this regard (which I believe it is), they just lost common carrier status.

Re:Let's be accurate here

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea what website you are viewing, but www.voices-for-change.com is one of the most harmless sites I've seen in a long while.
To view forums, you must be a registered member.

To the average casual visitor, there is nothing at all even close to your allegations.

How you got modded to a 5-Informative is beyond me. Perhaps the modders should actually RTFA before handing out these mod points. What a complete sham!

Re:Let's be accurate here

[Peter Desnoyers]

The totally unsanctioned site www.voices-for-change.com - it's not quite clear what "unsanctioned" means here. Clearly they're paying their bills to the ISP and otherwise complying with the terms of service. As to whether they're officially endorsed by the TWU, that seems to have nothing to do with the dispute here. Certainly the TWU hasn't weighed in to condemn the site, and they're the only people who can reasonably make this accusation.

A quick check of the pictures online doesn't show any comments regarding picket line crossers, and I don't see any at a cursory examination. (I wouldn't doubt I'd find some if I looked real hard, though) The public message forums don't have any comments about vandalism or violence; I didn't register to see what the closed forums said. As for "proprietary information" - if this was real - i.e. trade secrets, rather than e.g. the color of the suit the VP was wearing yesterday - they'd pursue legal action and take the website down for good.

A final point to keep in mind is that Telus is also blocking downstream ISPs from accessing this site - Telus customers may have restrictive user agreements which basically say the company can do whatever they want and the user has no recourse, but I doubt that agreements with other ISPs are written that way.

As other posters have mentioned, they've probably done something really dumb, as although there may not be any law in Canada (or the US?) requiring an ISP to be a common carrier, there are lots of legal reasons for them to be very afraid of losing common carrier status.

Re:Let's be accurate here

[elrous0]

The union web site www.twu-canada.ca is NOT blocked.

Let me guess, that's the puppet union, right? We used to have those in the Southern U.S. Workers would threaten to unionize under a real union, so the company would create a "company union" that was a complete puppet of the company itself. That way, they could claim workers were already represented by a union, skirting the law and blocking the real union at the same time.

It was pretty clever stuff, until workers started torching buildings and wrenching the gin (sabatoging expensive equipment).

-Eric

Re:Let's be accurate here

[ArsenneLupin]

To the average casual visitor, there is nothing at all even close to your allegations.

There is: Stories From The Trenches.

These are "funny" stories about how "scabs" (employees who work despite the strike) are harassed by unionists. Less funny if you are on the receiving end, of course.

Re:Let's be accurate here

[kat11v]

From what I heard this morning on cbc radio, Telus claims they are blocking the site because it contains pictures of some Telus employees crossing the picket line. Their reasoning is that they are trying to protect those people from violent retributions of union employees that are striking.

Re:Let's be accurate here

[Winterblink]

It's not as if Telus has had a history of being angels in the ISP field. They actively block ports like SMTP (I have a web host that provides me with an SMTP service, but I can't use it from home), and even goes so far to block other ports if it's found you're running servers on their network (HTTP, FTP, etc).

When you phone to inquire why things aren't working, they tell you why and pitch their corporate internet services (which are insanely expensive, as compared to the plain residential service). Shit like this whole lockout makes me want to ditch them for Shaw, who is currently the lesser of the two evils.

Re:Let's be accurate here

[elrous0]

its no puppet.

Of course it's not [wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more].

-Eric

Re:Let's be accurate here

[despisethesun]

It's not as if Telus has had a history of being angels in the ISP field. They actively block ports like SMTP (I have a web host that provides me with an SMTP service, but I can't use it from home), and even goes so far to block other ports if it's found you're running servers on their network (HTTP, FTP, etc).

All the ISPs in Edmonton do that to some extent. Telus and Interbaun both block all ports below 1024 on "residential" service to keep you from using your connection for things forbidden by the TOS. I'm not sure if Shaw blocks them, too (I've never set up a web server or an FTP on my connection), but it IS forbidden by your TOS and if they catch you doing it, they can cut off your service. An instructor of mine from Nait got several calls from Shaw warning him that if he didn't shut down his IIS on his computer, they were going to cut off his service. The reason these companies do that is so that you'll buy their "business" packages, which of course allow you to host whatever you want on your connection. Shaw DOES block SMTP ports, though. We have a few customers who use Telus and Shaw as their main ISPs but do their hosting through us, or have email only accounts with us. In both cases, they have to use their main ISP's SMTP server to send mail. It's fucking ridiculous.

Re:Let's be accurate here

[quarkscat]

The action that Telus is taking in blocking the TWU website is censorship, no ifs ands or buts about it. If this were an American company and an American union, Telus could be prosecuted under Federal law for violating the (collective) union members' First Amendment rights to free speech. IANAL, but there must be some equivalence in Canadian law, or an alternative legal action to take, such as "breech of contract".

Unfortunately, the current regime in power in the USA (and their neo-Con(artist) allies in the Congress and Supreme Court) have been busy hacking away at the US Constitution and Bill of Rights with such legislation as US Patriot Act and DMCA. Considering that the GOP is now basically nothing more than a tool of corporate America, is it possible that Telus has taken a page out of the GOP dirty tricks handbook, and placed the TWU in the equivalent of a Dubya "Free Speech Zone"?

I found out, through personal experience with a dial-up ISP based in Ohio (COPPER.NET) that American ISPs do not fall under "common carrier" rules, and are in fact ESPs. They routinely violated their posted TOS regarding (1) duration of connection time (5 hours STATED vs 3.5 hours ACTUAL), (2) number of hours per month connection time (200 hours STATED vs 190 hours ACTUAL), and (3) abbrogated my pre-paid annual contract by cancelling it without providing a refund.

The underlying point is that all of my troubles with this particular "ESP" began with a long, supportive email that I sent to Michael Moore, the director of the "Fahrenheit 9-11" documentary (which "copper.net" blocked). US corporate interests have trumped US citizens' interests for years. It is just becoming far more blatent these days. And the red tide of neo-Con(artist) fascism has now infected our neighbors to the North.

Re:Let's be accurate here

[devnullify]

The SMTP thing is 99.9999% of the time a perfectly valid one. It prevents dumbass trojan spamming bots from sending SMTP data directly to the destination (ie. victim). The ISPs SMTP server probably also has a sane (say, 5 mails per minute) limit on the number of messages you can send. It also prevents exploiting open relays and other such nonsense.

As long as they provide a stable, working SMTP relay with sane usage limits, I don't see the beef with this. It cust down on crap coming from their network and improves the internet in general, whilst causing their customers to understand what they're doing to make it work.

Backfire

[mmarlett]

Well, regardless of whether it should have been able to block the website, in doing so it has drawn far more people to it than would have ever seen it before. Raise your hand if you would've cared about a union website five minutes ago. Stupid, stupid telco.

Re:Backfire

[maxwell demon]

More importantly: Many people who wouldn't have gone to that web page anyway will now read that their provider censors their net access. And even if they continue to not show any interest in the union's web site, the mere fact of censorship in one case immediatly raises the question what else it might have censored. Note that for this it is completely irrelevant if it actually has censored another web site or not, the mere fact that the idea it might do so goes into the user's brains already may have a damaging effect to them.

Re:Backfire

[dogsbreath]

Yup. Absolutely true. Kneejerk reactionary with typical result. It is interesting that TELUS did not react to the CEO being portrayed as Hitler or to veiled threats to executives, but acted swiftly when people who do the day to day work started being targeted. Still not the correct tactics from either an ethical or a labour/public relations point of view.

This may backfire

[yogi]

It's a dangerous move by the telco. Up until now, telecoms companies have tried to argue ( quite rightly IMHO ) that they merely provide the infrastructure, and are not directly responsible for the content of websites that they host.

Here, we have a telecoms company deciding unilateraly to filter a website because they feel like it. If they can filter one, they may find themselves liable to filter all of the others. Imagine the court case

Lawyer: You must block goatse.ca because it is offensive to all mankind

Telco: We can't be expected proactively police and block websites: too much information, freedom of speech, etc, etc,

Lawyer: But what about that time you blocked your union website? You can block "offensive" material when you want to.

Telco: Um...

Of course not.

[Cooper_007]

The Union is paying the ISP to display those pages. If the ISP feels it is inappropriate for them to host those pages, they should terminate the hosting contract with the Union, *NOTIFY THEM*, and allow them to then take their pages elsewhere.

There's one big 'BUT' in this. They're not blocking the site itself. They're preventing their own customers from accessing that site. The rest of the world can still access it. While the Union is obviously pissed at this, the people who should be outraged are the customers who wanted unmeddled access to the internet. If the contract they have with the ISP allows the ISP to block sites, they have a contract under which the ISP has become responsible for the content they have access to, and is liable for allowing access to content the user by this contract shouldn't be able to.
Basically, the ISP has stomped its big foot on a legal hornets nest, and by all likelyhood is about to get stung.

Cooper
--
I don't need a pass to pass this pass!
- Groo The Wanderer -

Onion Routing

[mwilliamson]

If everyone was using Tor (http://tor.eff.org/ this would all be a mute point.

Re:Onion Routing

[Ricardo]

I agree with you.

However, I think you meant moot point.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=moot

I hope you don't think I am being pedantic.

Re:Onion Routing

[mwilliamson]

pun intended ;-)

Censorship

[JWSmythe]

The simple answer is "no".

My opinion is "no".

The truth is, even though they're an ISP, they're still a private company (as opposed to say a government entity), and can do anything they want. It's understandable that while involved in a conflict, they'd want to suppress the opposing side. Is it right? Not in the least.

I don't know Canadian law, and IANAL, but in America I know your Constitutional right to freedom of speech applies to the government supressing your speech. Plenty of people will reference the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" scenerio, but I'll go with this one instead. If you were to go into a Christian church, and draw a circle of protection on the floor (in a non-permanent way, of course), and start a [insert pagan tradition of your chioce here] ceremony, you'd be told to stop, probably not in the nicest terms.

Is it right for the telco to block the union's site from customers using that telco? No. Can they? Sure. Just like they can arbitrarly block "bad" web sites, spammers email or networks, or even potentially exploitable ports on user machines. They can do anything they'd like with their own equipment, they're under no obligation to provide service to "everything". Of course, when the word gets out that they've blocked something like this, which isn't in the best interest of their customers, it looks very bad for them.

As I work for an Internet Provider (hosting provider), I consider it unacceptable to block any particular network, and I won't do it. As a journalist and an advocate of free speech, I consider it very wrong. People do wrong things every day, it's up to the customers to make the decision of if they want to patronize a company who behaves this way.

Re:Censorship

[michaelggreer]

Just because it may be legal, doesn't mean it isn't censorship. It sounds like you agree with me that it is, only you won't call it that. I don't think its just "up to the customers" either, believing as I do in a bit of regulation of companies who control what are basically public communications (and not similar to your private property church example).

Re:Censorship

[Better.Safe.Than.Sor]

If you were to go into a Christian church, and draw a circle of protection on the floor (in a non-permanent way, of course), and start a [insert pagan tradition of your chioce here] ceremony, you'd be told to stop, probably not in the nicest terms.

Ah, so I see you're familiar with a typical United Church of Canada Pastoral Service ;-)

Re:Censorship

[suwain_2]

Can they? Sure. Just like they can arbitrarly block "bad" web sites, spammers email or networks, or even potentially exploitable ports on user machines.

But do they have a contractual obligation to provide service to the Internet? I think that's where the difference lies: the AUP most likely disallows me probing for "potentially exploitable ports," so it's (a little bit) reasonable for them to block them. The AUP most likely does not prohibit me from connecting to website that disagree with Telus.

Granted, I'd rather they don't block anything without my permission, but I don't think your analogy is perfect: blocking websites I want to access is most likely violating their contractual obligation to provide Internet service.

Re:Censorship

[dasdrewid]

I think you need to go back and look at the common carrier arguments.

Yes, as a private company, they should be allowed to do whatever they want within the law (like, they can't murder people), and this certainly fits within that margin (assuming U.S. law were to apply, I'm not sure what if any differences there might be in Canada. Sorry, I'm just not that worldly...)

However, once they're allowed to do things like run on telephone poles placed in people's backyards through laws like emminent domain (which is how it works in the States, at least), they lose some of those rights. They are no long a purely private company. They are in the same situation as, say, a municipal bus service, like Metro (I live in Houston, that's our bus/light rail authority). By using government powers to provide a public service (which is what they claimed they were providing when the put those poles up) they must submit to the rules governing government, as well.

At the very least, though, what they are doing is fraud. They told the government and the public, oftentimes in court, that they could not be held responsible for what is carried through their network because they could not control it. They are now proving that they can, in fact, control and censor it. When people signed up and signed contracts to give them "access to the internet", they were expecting, as the company had said, that they would be getting access to an uncesored network, the internet, because the company was unable to censor it. This changed, and the company began giving them access to a censored network, which is fundamentally different than what they signed up for. They either lied about being able to censor the internet at first or are no longer supplying the same service as required by their contract.

Basically, any way you look at it, this company is doing something very illegal on one level or another, and the government has the obligation to step in and do something. If nothing else, by granting public use and monopoly powers to companies like these, the government has the responsibility to step in and punish the company as they have taken that ability away from the consumer.

Deeeep caca! We're talking revocation of licence

[crovira]

If the Union pushes this Telus could be in deep shit with the government agencies that regulates them to the point of dissolution of their board of governance.

Telus is going to have 'interesting times'...

more complex reasons

[spectrum-]

Assuming they're not breaching any terms of conditions and use of the ISP, its hard to make any case for that action.

However as with all these sorts of stories, its probably a bit more complex than it first seems. For example there may be issues that there are probably issues regarding whether the employer would continue using the services of that ISP should they not comply with their wishes. In otherwords, financial blackmail of sorts.

no...but good

[imdylbert]

While I agree that the ISP should not be censoring content. I am of the opinion that anything that pisses off a union is a good thing.

Use someone else

[canuck57]

ISP "Telus" has admitted that they are blocking all attempts to access a website set

Now I am not one to be pro-union, actually I am not. But I firmly believe in the freedom of speach and users on Telus aught to just go to Shaw in protest. An ISP that filters legitimate and legally permissable political content from it's users aught to be taken to court to get a huge punitive kick.

Telus sucks anyway and this is a Telus free household and will remain that way. Maybe once this land line monopoly goes out of business we can get a more service orientated company to replace it.

No... but...

[mjh]

No. It's not reasonable for them to restrict access to web pages during contract negotiations. But (as has been previously mentioned) this is not censorship. The issue here may very well be breach of contract. If I were a customer of this ISP and I was arbitrarily blocked from any website by ISP policy, I would be looking at my Terms of Service to determine when and where it said they could do that. If it wasn't there, I'd be demanding my money back for every day that they were in breach of the agreement which I paid for. And then there's always small claims court.

But, this is not censorship. This is a service that you pay for and you expect to be delivered to you. Additionally, the union has absolutely no expectation of delivery to customers of that telco. If they did, then services like safeaccess couldn't exist. Every pornographer in the world could run around and demand that parents allow thier children to view porn.

Is this unreasonable? Yes. And it will likely cost them (lost customers, time fighting with annoyed customers, small claims court).

Re:No... but...

[argent]

But, this is not censorship.

Yes it is. You can argue that this is censorship that the Telco has the right to impose (and in fact you seem to be making that argument) but it is in fact censorship.

Every pornographer in the world could run around and demand that parents allow thier children to view porn.

Parents have broad rights to censor the information their children have access to. There's nothing inherently wrong with censorship in appropriate circumstances, such as in the parent-child relationship, or when a publisher produces a work in different versions to satisfy different ratings in different countries.

Re:No... but...

[argent]

Censorship is the use of governmental power to control speech and other forms of human expression.

Wikipedia is not authoritative. Hell, the Oxford English Dictionary isn't even authoritative, so an encyclopedia edited by whoever feels like stepping up to the plate and throwing a ball (or a stuffed bear, or whetever else they feel like the game needs right then) sure as heck isn't. If they'll let some random joe like myself edit Wikipedia, anonymously, with nothing more to identify myself than the IP address of a firewall that's got 150 people behind it (and they have) well, that's about as non-authorititive as you can get.

I could come up with a bunch of quotes to disprove your assertion, but I've gotta go to lunch, so rather than digging up the OED, I'll just ask you to consider the term "government censorship". Google gives us 72,000 hits for that specific term, so I hope you'll agree that it's in reasonably common use. Now, why is that so? What's the reason that the term "government censorship" exists? It can only be because there's censorship that isn't government censorship, so the term "government censorship" can be used to distinguish government censorship from non-government censorship.

How about that?

Re:No... but...

[AtariAmarok]

You are correct. This has nothing to do with censorship. This is an expression of free speech. The phone company in question has every right to choose with to "publish" or not. In this case, they chose not to publish a web site run by a hate group that contained false information and was calling for violence against its employees.

The union has a right to publish this lowlife web site, but it is not censorship if others refuse to distribute it.

Re:No... but...

[mjh]

Like I said, you're welcome to use the word however you want. But don't be surprised if most of the rest of us who use it differently say that it has a different meaning.

Ultimately this is an argument about the meaning of a word. I say it means one thing and you disagree. But not only do you disagree, you think I should agree with your definition which I don't. In fact, I suspect (without proof) that most people when they say "censorship" really only mean government censorship. But if that's not what you mean, that's OK with me. I, on the other hand, will continue to use the word in the way that I understand it.

Re:No... but...

[argent]

Ultimately this is an argument about the meaning of a word. I say it means one thing and you disagree.

You say it means only one thing.

In French, you could go to the Academie Francais and get a firm ruling, and continue on to force a couple to change the name of their child because "Cerise" is not an approved name, and get boycott a store named "Le Pique Nique", and insist that "Computers" should be called "Ordinateurs".

This isn't French. It doesn't work that way.

You can use the word any way you want, but when you're arguing that an action isn't "censorship" because it's not being performed by a "government", you're not just using your personal definition of the word. You're trying to argue that because this isn't censhorship-as-defined-by-you it's not a bad thing. When you go on to talk about free speech in the context or a regulated public utility, it's clear that you're trying to justify censorship-in-the-broad-sense by defining the action as not-censorship.

The issue isn't "what's the definition of censorship". It's "should a public utility have the right to suppress opposing points of view". Government censorship is wrong not primarily because the government is doing it, but because the government is doing it and the government has the power to make its actions effective. And it's that power that makes government censorship a particularly odious restriction on speech.

If a government wants to restrict access to speech on the Internet, they either have to operate the internet service provider (as in China), or they have to be able to impose sanctions on a non-complying internet service provider (as in Germany). If the ISP (in this case, the telco) is allowed to restrict access to websites on any criteria it wants, that actually gives it MORE power than the government - which is at least nominally answerable to the public.

So, ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you call the action "censorship" or "restriction of speech" or "abomination" or "wakalixing". The bottom line is that what the telco was doing in this case was every bit as effective as "government censorship". Calling it "censorship", however you define it, is not making too strong a case by any means.

Re:No... but...

[mjh]

The issue isn't "what's the definition of censorship". It's "should a public utility have the right to suppress opposing points of view".

First, when I say I'm opposed to censorship, it means that I'm opposed to the exercise of government power to restrict expression. Any other (non-government) restriction of expression is not something that merits the negative connotation of the word "censorship". Usually non-government restriction of expression is simply a contract dispute. Which is much easier to resolve than the exercise of government power.

Second, I absolutely believe that the telco should have whatever rights they wish on the infrastructure that they own. It's theirs. They own it. They can do whatever it is they want on it, including blocking certain traffic. However, when they sell that service to a customer, they have obliged themselves to provide a service. Failure to do so is breach of contract. If the telco starts randomly blocking out different internet sites, and there's nothing in the contract (terms of service) that says they can do that, then the customers have a legitimate grievance. Generally the easiest way for a customer to settle the grievance is to simply switch to a competitor. If a competitor is not available, then they can sue.

The end result of this is that it very much *does* matter what the definition of censorship is before I'm going to say whether or not I think it's ok.

Re:No... but...

[mjh]

I totally missed this part of your post. I should have commented on it in my first reply.

If the ISP (in this case, the telco) is allowed to restrict access to websites on any criteria it wants, that actually gives it MORE power than the government - which is at least nominally answerable to the public.

ISP's are a in a competitive landscape. There are *TONS* of them. They *must* answer to the demands of their customers or they're going to lose customers. Compared to the private sector, the government is not even close when it comes to being answerable to the public. It's trivially easy to switch ISPs. It's next to impossible to change a law or regulation.

I agree that telco's are not as competitive as ISP's, but that's mostly as a result of governmental regulation of that industry. City governments have granted telcos local monopoly power. Lack of competition in that industry results in that industry being less responsive. In other words, the fact that telcos tend to be less customer responsive comes from... the government.

The bottom line is that what the telco was doing in this case was every bit as effective as "government censorship".

I'm sorry but I'm forced to disagree. If I'm a customer of that telco, I simply switch and get my internet from the local cableco. Problem solved. Compare this with what I'd have to do if the government decided to restrict access to that site to all citizens. I'd either have to break the law and risk going to jail or move to a different country.

IMHO, the word "censorship" has a negative connotation specifically because of how bad it is when a government chooses to exercise it. When a private corporation in a competitive market does this kind of thing, the solution is simple: switch to a competitor. I don't see how those two impacts are even remotely close to each other.

Re:No... but...

[argent]

OK, you're one of those hardcore impractical Libertarians-with-a-capital-L who can't recognise a negative externality unless it's imposed by the government. I do appreciate that it's useful to have some of you lot around, but we're clearly not going to get any kind of productive discussion here.

Re:No... but...

[mjh]

So, you're retort to my argument is that it's wrong because I'm a Libertarian?

Do you know what ad hominem arguments are? Personally, I don't think it's a particularly useful form of argument, but then there's the 1st amendment. You're allowed to express yourself however you see fit. I won't try to stop you.

Re:No... but...

[argent]

[Your] retort to my argument is that it's wrong because I'm a Libertarian?

No, my response is that my experience with big-L-libertarians is that we're operating from such different axioms that it's futile to continue this debate. That doesn't mean that I'm right, or that you're wrong, it just means that I believe things you don't, and you believe things I don't.

For example, I believe that the difference between direct coercion by a representative government and indirect coercion by a non-accountable organization using the power of the state to enforce contracts is not significant. I believe that there are so many communication channels available to individuals today that government censorship is no more effective than any other kind of censorship, and the biggest current threat to our freedom of speech comes from the private sector.

You don't believe these things, and I don't believe that I can convince you of these things, and I'm not even sure I should try to convince you because even if I'm right I believe it's important that there's people unwilling to grant the government one inch of power even if I think they do need that power... so I'm not going to try.

Re:No... but...

[mjh]

No, my response is that...

Grammar check appreciated. Point understood.

the biggest current threat to our freedom of speech comes from the private sector.

This is something that I'd really like to understand. I currently don't. One of the advantages that I see to the private sector is that you only voluntarily participate in it. No one forces me to use Microsoft Windows. Even though Microsoft has achieved (by every measure that seems sensible to me) monopoly status, I'm not forced to use it. In fact, I don't use it despite the monopoly status. But when a rule is implemented by a government, I have very little personal ability to redress that issue. When Microsoft does something that screws me, I can easily redress that by not paying them for future services. When {President,Represenative,Senator,Judge} So-and-so does something that screws me, I'm just screwed.

Can you give me some examples of the private sector's removal of my rights?

Re:No... but...

[argent]

The reason the threat from the private sector is so high is the government provides the private sector with artificial monopolies... essentially renting the private sector the ability to use government force by proxy... without anything like the kind of oversight that the government's agents themselves are subject to.

In most countries in the Western world, if I try to expose an abuse or a mistake by the government, there are departments and agencies throught the government to provide a mechanism for me to safely release this information or to protect me if agents of the government attempt to prevent me from speaking. If I try to expose an abuse or a mistake by the private sector those protections are much weaker or nonexistent, and in some areas (ironically, areas most relevant to free speech), I can be arrested, sued into perpetual bankruptcy, or if applicable deported.

And that's without considering the effectiveness with which the two groups can cover things up. Thanks to the FOIA even major deliberate abuses by people acting within the government are public knowledge, whereas cases where people in the private sector may have merely ignored information that might have prevented harm are permanently locked under court order as part of settlements.

Now, let's consider Microsoft:

Even though Microsoft has achieved (by every measure that seems sensible to me) monopoly status, I'm not forced to use it.

If you need to view material that is published in Protected Windows Media format, you are forced to use Microsoft Windows to view it, because it's actually illegal for anyone else to write and distribute a program that can read and display these files. There is an increasing tendency for both private and government agencies to release information in proprietary formats like Real, Quicktime, or WMV/WMA. Protected Windows Media format is being included in many new distribution and media standards.

How do you keep from paying Microsoft when by law every television set in the US contains Microsoft software?

When {President,Represenative,Senator,Judge} So-and-so does something that screws me, I'm just screwed.

Most of the examples I've seen lately of people being screwed by Pres/Rep/Sen/Hizonner so-and-so in order to restrict their freedom of speech have been initiated by the private sector using the courts as "hired coercive force"... most often under the cover of alleged contract or copyright violations. It's MUCH safer to release pictures of prison abuses than an analysis of flawed source code.

Re:No... but...

[mjh]

The reason the threat from the private sector is so high is the government provides the private sector with artificial monopolies

That is, IMHO, reason to be angry with the government. They have divested their power to someone else in exchange for soft money. The corruption here comes from the government when they did that.

If I try to expose an abuse or a mistake by the private sector those protections are much weaker or nonexistent, and in some areas (ironically, areas most relevant to free speech), I can be arrested, sued into perpetual bankruptcy, or if applicable deported.

And here's where we get to negative externalities, isn't it? Most of the time, a mistake that a private corporation makes only impacts you because you're in a customer or employee relationship with them. You can easily change both of those situations. But of course, not all of those mistakes can be handled by such direct interactions. To which I say, Coase.

Most of the examples I've seen lately of people being screwed by Pres/Rep/Sen/Hizonner so-and-so in order to restrict their freedom of speech have been initiated by the private sector using the courts as "hired coercive force"

And these examples are just more examples of the corruption that comes with government, not the private sector. The government is the one pimping away their responsibilities. If we could get less government involvement, then companies would be forced to serve their customers instead of trying bribe away some of the government's power. Remove the government and the private sector is left with only one way to retain any power: by serving their customers. Add more of the government, and you see companies less concerned with serving their customer and more concerned with wresting that power.

IMHO, your complaints shouldn't be with the private sector. They should be with the fact that the government has taken away your ability to regulate the private sector. The government has placed itself in the position of regulating the private sector and then abandoned the job. Now, when you'd like to be able to do it again, you can't. Because it's easy to raise taxes. Taxes that are used to generate laws that are used to prop up federally subsidized monopolies. It no longer matters what the consumer wants. What matters is what laws you can buy from the politicians.

IMHO, the problem here is that those who promised to regulate the private sector when they took that job away from you have stepped down. And that problem falls squarly on the shoulders of the government.

But that's just my $.02. You're welcome to disagree.

Re:No... but...

[mjh]

To which I say, Coase.

Here is a much better description of Coase.

Re:No... but...

[argent]

That is, IMHO, reason to be angry with the government. They have divested their power to someone else in exchange for soft money.

What, back in 1852 when the Patent Office was created?

That's certainly possible, though they didn't use mealy-mouthed terms like "soft money" back then. Spoilsmanship was good enough for the likes of Andrew Jackson, after all.

I seem to recall that they started granting real rights to fictitious persons called corporations back aound then.

Or was it when the US Constitution granted government the right to create these monopolies?

Most of the time, a mistake that a private corporation makes only impacts you because you're in a customer or employee relationship with them.

Or you live near their facilities, or your parents did, or you live downstream or downwind, ...

These are the classic "negative externalities", and they have nothing to do with government interference... except for being the motivation for it.

IMHO, your complaints shouldn't be with the private sector. They should be with the fact that the government has taken away your ability to regulate the private sector.

You're talking about the path to the present day. I'm simply describing the present day. And in the present day the private sector is the problem.

Whether this is fixed by having the government actually enforce the laws that exist to regulate the private sector, or roll back the laws that create the right to control speech and grant this and other rights to "cutouts" and hold the humans who actually make bad decisions accountable for them, is more or less irrelevant.

The fact is, right now, the individuals who are right now making the decisions that are right now leading to the suppression of free speech are people who are working in the private rather than the public sector. And things like surreptitiously suppressing access to a critical website are among the results of these decisions.

Corruption doesn't come "with government" or "with the private sector", it comes with power and control. And right now, the people with that power and control are not, except at the very top, the people in government.

Re:No... but...

[mjh]

Or you live near their facilities, or your parents did, or you live downstream or downwind, ...

These are the classic "negative externalities", and they have nothing to do with government interference... except for being the motivation for it.

Already been addressed by Coase. What you're suggesting is called "Pigouvian taxes". (No really, that's what they're called. If I had to contrive a word like that, I'd never be able to come up with something so odd... anyway) Pigouvian taxes are very frequently ineffective - which is to say that they don't do a good job of taking into account all of the costs, and end up picking the one that the least number of people want.

You're talking about the path to the present day. I'm simply describing the present day. And in the present day the private sector is the problem.

No. I'm talking about what caused the problem in the first place. And saying that we shouldn't repeat that problem again. If we do, then we should very likely expect similar results. If I grant you that an improperly regulated private sector is the problem, then sending more regulatory power to the government, which caused the problem in the first place, is going to make it worse.

The fact is, right now, the individuals who are right now making the decisions that are right now leading to the suppression of free speech are people who are working in the private rather than the public sector.

No they're not. The DMCA doesn't exist because the private sector can create law. The DMCA exists because the government created it. The never-ending copyright does not exist because the private sector wanted it. It exists because a set of elected officials gave it to them.

Corruption doesn't come "with government" or "with the private sector", it comes with power and control. And right now, the people with that power and control are not, except at the very top, the people in government.

I agree with the first sentence. I disagree with the 2nd. The government is the one exercising the power and control. They've done this by pimping it to the private sector. They're able to pimp it to the private sector because everytime you turn around, someone else is describing some power that we should take away from an individual and give to the government. The solution is to stop handing over so much power to the government.

And things like surreptitiously suppressing access to a critical website are among the results of these decisions.

I still don't understand how, when a telco does this, it's as bad as when a government does this. When a government does this, your only solution is to leave the country. When a telco does this, you simply leave that telco. The latter seems dramatically simpler to accomplish. How are these two things anything alike?

Re:No... but...

[argent]

The idea that you can simply "move away from pollution" is nuts. I'm sorry, but any analysis of externalities that's as shallow as that is worthless.

I wrote: You're talking about the path to the present day.
You write: No. I'm talking about what caused the problem in the first place.

I fail to see the difference between these two statements.

You write: If I grant you that an improperly regulated private sector is the problem, then sending more regulatory power to the government, which caused the problem in the first place, is going to make it worse.

Where did I suggest doing so?

The DMCA doesn't exist because the private sector can create law.

I rather think it does.

They've done this by pimping it to the private sector.

And one reason is that every time you turn around there's some guy talking about "smaller government" and "less government" when what they mean is "we don't need to regulate the stuff we've already outsourced to the private sector".

And there you are, saying that the government is the problem. They point to you and say "look, see, he agrees with me".

I still don't understand how, when a telco does this, it's as bad as when a government does this.

Because this is 2005, and it's too hard for a Western government to do it. But a telco still can manage it.

Right now, for example, for the US government to shut down access to a website they need to get a court order requesting it, and then they take that to the ISP and the ISP shuts it down... and the guy with the website goes "hey, my website's down" and sets it up again for $10 a year. If the government wants to keep it quiet, the best they can do (unless they have a particularly cooperative ISP) is to get the ISP to say "I'm not allowed to tell you".

If a telco decides to do it, they're the ISP already. They just program the routers. They can make excuses, they can stretch the whole process out as long as they want, they can make it show up properly some places, some time. They can even make it look like it's up to you and down to everyone else. And when you're finally tired of it, you get a website at another ISP for $10.00 a year.

Hell, it's actually easier to move your website to another country than for you to move to another telco.

Heck, I'm kind of worried about some of the stuff ISPs are doing right now where I kind of agree that there's nothing better they CAN do about some negative externalities... because the government refuses to enforce the laws already on the books... because it's easier for the telcos to do it.

Re:No... but...

[mjh]

The DMCA doesn't exist because the private sector can create law.

I rather think it does.

Well, unfortunately, that is an unconvincing argument. You have to provide some points in order to support that argument, or refute my points. What you've provided is an assertion. It's not an argument. I think that I've demonstrated a point, and that point is that the private sector doesn't create laws. To which you've responded with the equivalent "nuh-uh".

Here's the point that I think I've made and that I think you should focus on: the private sector does not create laws, the government does. All of the problems that you complain about originating from the private sector only occured because the government failed in their responsibility.

Explain to me *HOW* you think it is that the private sector created the DMCA or extended copyright to the abomination that it is or created the patriot act or ... fill in whatever law you like. Explain to me which company's president cast a vote in the house or the senate. Explain to me which CEO signed the bill into law. As I recall every one of those things was done by an elected official of the government.

<hyptohetical>If there were no government, exactly how would the private sector have created the DMCA? If there were no government, exactly how could a private firm have extended copyright? </hypothetical>

The reality is that the ills that you complain about the private sector are really the ills of the government. If you disbelieve that then help me understand: put forth an argument that refutes it.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

No, its working fine - (you may be on a line leased by Telus to a 3rd party, but Videotron (another Canadian ISP) customers can see it no problemo ...

Of course, Telus just opened up a big can of worms: The Canadian Constitution (1982) guarantees freedom of expression (including on the internet) as a fundamental right:

Fundamental Freedoms

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
a) freedom of conscience and religion
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication
c) freedom of peaceful assembly
d) freedom of asociaton

Seems pretty open and shut - Telus is going to get its ass wupped.

Re:well

[aussie_a]

Actually, they're not hosting the content, so they're not censoring the content. They're censoring access to the content for their customers (because I'm not one of their customers I can access it, if I were one of their customers, I wouldn't be able to access it). Which is oh-so-much-better. Because now they can be sued for any porn a minor access using their service (if they don't then block that website for that customer). I wonder if they spoke with their legal department before they made this move. And if so, they should get a new one.

wow: two questions I have no clue about

[museumpeace]

1. Canadian legal concepts around freedom of speech....how different from US 1st amendment
2. the exetent to which web access is like radio or newpaper where the owner of the media is the one who's freedom of speech is tested when they wish to control what information/opinion is conveyed by their media as opposed to soapboxes and posters on a public wall where the freedom of speech of the party with the [not necessarily popular] opinion/information is tested.

I'd find in favor of the employer blocking a site they hosted but IMHO its an unwarranted censorship for them to keep their own customers from finding information just because they, the ISP, do not and would not choose to host that page or site.

Re:wow: two questions I have no clue about

[tomstdenis]

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/charter/

Re:wow: two questions I have no clue about

[snarkasaurus]

1. There is no freedom of speech guarantee in Canadian law. Recent hate speech legislation makes it possible for you to get jail time for quoting certain parts of the Bible. Given the bendy nature of law in these parts, they can pretty much do whatever they want in terms of speech if somebody irritates the high and mighty sufficiently. One party state, don't annoy the One Party.

2. ISPs are allowed to block stuff like kiddie porn, but not -required- to do so, mostly because they can't. The ISP can't be held liable for failing to block hate speech on a bulletin board, for example. The government goes after the hosting company instead, or in the case of kiddie porn the sender and the receiver both.

Therefore I expect that Telus can legaly block pretty much anything they want. Stupid of them, because now there's a row about it and the union is making big points, but legal. Probably.

This is the central problem I have with Big Government. The same schmuck who made this decision at Telus has ten thousand clones in government offices. If your ISP starts doing this kind of thing you can just switch companies. If the government does it, as it inevitably will, they just change the laws to suit what they want and you're screwed.

Limited government is good government. The best possible limit is an armed citizenry, because you can't change that with the stroke of a pen.

How very super capitalist of you...

[cnelzie]

...the problem is that they are considered a "Common Carrier", as such they are simply providing access to what is essentially a public network and as such should not be blocking out anything, unless they want to take on the responsibility of also blocking truly illegal content, like Kiddie Porn.

Would you expect the phone company to block your home phone from being able to call up a competing phone company to discuss changing service? Essentially, this is the kind of thing that is going on via blocking the web-site of something that doesn't directly benefit this telecommunications provider.

Safety issue..

[pci]

based on what the article says, I agree with Telus's decision to ban access to the site. I think it's wrong to publicly post someones picture just because they crossed a picket line to support their family. I also think Telus is correct is trying to limit negative messages about itself onto its own network.

Re:Safety issue..

[P-Nuts]

A burglar only attacks you and your property once. A scab helps make each and every working day of your life worse than it was before.

Or, as Jack London put it:

After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water-logged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.

When a scab comes down the street, men turn their back and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out. No man has a right to scab as long as there is a pool of water deep enough to drown his body in, or a rope long enough to hang his carcass with. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his Master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab hasn't!
Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas Iscariot sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British Army. The modern strike-breaker sells his birthright, his country, his wife, his children, and his fellow men for an unfulfilled promise from his employer, trust or corporation.

Re:Safety issue..

[Buran]

If you'd actually look at the site and look at what people are posting here, you'd see that several people have reported that no such picket line crossing photos are on the site.

Cite your URLs. Also, pay attention to what everyone has said about common carriers and why it's NOT "correct" for one site to be blocked unless they want to take responsibility for blocking, or not, stuff that others don't like.

strike vs. lock-out

[carmaggedon]

from the introduction: "(who is currently "on-strike" or "locked-out", depending on your point of view)"
grammar aside, a strike vs. a lock-out is not simply a matter of opinion, although in some cases both can happen at the same time. (a strike is when the workers walk out, and a lock-out is when workers aren't allowed to work.) it's hard to tell which is which in this case, although the article made reference to both. clearly it started with workers going on strike. since the union is saying that management was trying to push through a non-negotiated contract, and since one of the accusations from management is that the website they're blocking was putting up pictures of scabs for the purpose of harrassment, it seems more likely that this is a strike only, and not a lock-out.

Re:strike vs. lock-out

[ArsenneLupin]

A "lock-out", also known as a "management/owner's strike". Workforce strikes by not working. Managers owners strike by denying the workforce access to their assets, i.e. by locking them out.

In many jurisdiction, it is recognized that workers are naturally the weak party; so in order to make up for this workers do have the right to strike, but managers/owners don't have the right to lock-out.

Interestingly enough, the new European Constitution is changing this... (not that it has any relevance on Canada. I'm just pointing this out for the benefit of those Europeans which have yet to vote on the Constitution...)

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

Look at the differences between a book store and Telus:

1. Your book store isn't a regional monopoly. Telus is.
2. Your book store isn't a common carrier - Telus is (but may have just jeopardized that status)
3. Telus isn't hosting the site - its blocking its paying customers from seeing a site critical of it - this would be like the book store physically preventing its customers from shopping elsewhere for books "because it can"

Telus - their motto is "The future is friendly" - my guess it should be changed to "Telus - The future is Telus-friendly, citizen!" T

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they're not a common carrier, and are responsible for everything they DO publish/transmit.

Including all the spam, kiddy porn, hate speech etc.

Who implemented the blokcing rule

[jurt1235]

If the employees are on strike, who then implemented the blocking rule in the firewall???

If I was working there and they ask me to do that while my colleages are on strike, I do not think that they will ever talk to me again when they are back.

Re:Who implemented the blokcing rule

[The Warlock]

A pointy-haired management type who decided to RTFM? That's the only thing I can come up with.

There is a difference

[Peyna]

between being on strike and being locked-out. A lock-out is the situation where the workers are ready to negotiate a deal, but management refuses to talk to them at all, and refuses to allow them work in the meantime under the old contract.

A strike is where management is ready to negotiate a deal, but the workers refuse to talk, and refuse to work in the meantime under the old contract.

It is wrong to suggest that the choice of phrase is made to influence public opinion about the situation. A "lock-out" and a "strike" represent two very different situations.

Re:There is a difference

[SubtleNuance]

Please mod +1 Insightful.
thank-you.

Re:There is a difference

[ezthrust]

Yes, we know there is a difference. The problem is that the union is saying there is a lockout and Telus is saying they are on strike. It isn't about public opinion per-se it is about who you believe.

Re:There is a difference

[green1]

insider speaking here...

this one is a mess... officially TELUS locked out the union back at the start of april, however it was a "soft" lockout, meaning that employees were still allowed to come to work, however managment can change or disregard any provisions of the old contrat that they wish... slowly over the past few months the company has changed the provisions of the old (now 5 years expired) contract one clause at a time (this time we'll stop deducting union dues, this time we'll stop paying for meals for people working out of town, this time we'll disband this union/managment committee, etc) up until when the company decided that on July 22nd it would implement it's vision of a new collective agreement. This new agreement was not negotiated in any way with the union. The union got really pissed off and told all the employees to walk off the job...

so in this case it is both a lockout and a strike... the company is allowing the employees to go to work, but under their terms... and officially "locked out" while the union decided not to accept those arbitrary terms... however due to the fact that the company already has officially declared a lockout, the union didn't need to go through the motions of a strike vote or provide the company with any notice before the strike...

either way it's a mess... and it's going to be a long one...

From my point of view

[beyonddeath]

If i had to choose, and i wish i could, i would still use their internet access over the "rogers extreme edition" i have now. however i do not have a landline so can not get dsl from telus or any of the other providers. What results is voip that is lower quality than a cell phone from the 80's. If i could have dsl, even with some filtering, it would be better than the dialup that rogers is providing me for 50 bucks a month.

What are the labor laws in Canada?

[karlandtanya]

Over here, I suspect the NLRB would have a field day with that little stunt.

Any Canadian lawyers care to comment?

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[XTbushwakko]

Well, if you are a bookstore you shouldn't be able to sell a book, except a few pages of it that you don't agree with!

Halfwit troll

[kmmatthews]

Uh, no, they can not do whatever they want with it AND keep thier common carrier license. One or the other.

Re:Halfwit troll

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

People always say that as if we live in some nation where justice rules all and the good guy gets what he deserves in the end. In reality, they could do whatever the hell they want and be whatever they want because they're worth more to those in power than some measley civillians. How much money did these people contribute to campaign funds, or even just taxes? how about any public service to show them as good in the eyes of the public?

Re:Reasonable? No. But that doesn't matter

[Andy_R]

I suspect it's probably legal. But on the other hand, I suspect it would also be legal for the ISP's customers to ask for their money back, since they are paying for access to the internet and not getting it.

Go to CRTC - lodge complaint

[gus goose]

I believe the regulatory body that would be concerned about this is the CRTC (Canada Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission).

I have lodged a complaint with them at:
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/

Feel free to do the same.

gus

Re:Go to CRTC - lodge complaint

[Lukey Boy]

According to this page, they don't deal with ISPs.

now that I've RTFA

[museumpeace]

Telus has made the strongest possible case they can for their action: protecting the privacy of individuals who are named/blamed by the offending website. It's still bullshit for them to block access if they don't host the site. Again, just my opion: its not an ISP's job to say what constitutes harming exposure or invasion of privacy...that is why Canadians have courts, laws and police.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[mr.mighty]

It's even worse than that for Telus. Telus is a regional monopoly and public carrier that is regulated by a fairly activist body - the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission. The CRTC is likely to take this pretty seriously if a complaint is made, and has the power to enforce any decision they make.

I call BS

[SIGBUS]

Got any examples of your claims?

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[Peyna]

then find another gawd damn job!

I think I hate trolls almost as much as you hate unions, but I'll still feed you.

The problem is the the other "gawd damn job" is probably no better than the original one. Do you honestly expect someone who is qualified to work at Wal-Mart to have the skills necessary to be able to obtain good enough employment to secure a living wage and proper healthcare benefits without the help of a union to use the strength of numbers to force management to provide such things? Of course not. It just won't happen.

Sure, you'll read about how "gracious" some employers are and give all these great things to their employees, but it remains that Wal-Mart's execs have some of the deepest pockets in the country. They go on and on about how much they give to the communities they destroy, and yet, they can't afford to give their own employees enough money to stay off of government healthcare. The simple fact is that most employers do not care about employees. They care about the bottom line.

It's not as easy as "going somewhere else." Without unions, your taxes would have to be double to pay for all the poor and sick people we'd have in this country.

The problem with unions today isn't that they've ran out of their usefulness. The problem is that they're still suffering from corruption of the past and mismanagement.

The arguments you make in your post are the same arguments that have been made for hundreds of years, and they were proven wrong then as well.

Also, I recall quite clearly a report that out of grocers in my area (Southwest Ohio), those with unions actually had lower average prices on the same products compared to those without unions. So much for that theory.

Not common carrier in US

[coyote-san]

I don't know the law in Canada, but the last I heard broadband isn't common carrier in the US. They fought it because it would require opening up their lines to competitors.

DSL may be different since it's over the same physical wires as common-carrier POTS.

That said it's still shitty behavior that would make a reasonable person wonder just what they're hiding.

Re:Not common carrier in US

[isdnip]

You're describing what Verizon, SBC and BellSouth want, not what exists.

In the US, DSL consists of two distinct entities. At the bottom is common carriage, provided to an ISP by a telephone company under FCC tariff. When you buy Verizon Online DSL, you're buying from the FCC, but under current FCC rules, Verizon Online, a separate accounting entity, pays your state's Verizon Telephone Company a price for raw DSL common carriage. This create an opportunity for other ISPs to provide the same ISP service, buying the raw DSL from the same tariff. The price may vary, however, based on volume discounts.

Cable companies, WiFi ISPs, and ISPs who string cable around office parks are not common carriers. The latest Supreme Court ruling simply upheld that with regard to cable. So ISPs can't turn to them for serice; they turn to common carriers instead. Phone companies.

The Bells have asked the FCC to change the law, so that they will no longer be common carriers. Then they can cut off service to all independent ISPs, and impose their own censorship across their wire. Of course they insist that this is okay, since there's usually also cable, and two competitors is all they can stand.

This has not happened yet. So Verizon (Telus' parent company) still has to let other ISPs use its wire. But Verizon Online can censor to its little heart's content (not that it has one).

Re:Not common carrier in US

[IAmTheDave]

Will neither of these work?

http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/3865bd82103388b35 9b16aec7df8c347/index.html

http://www.voices-for-change.com.nyud.net:8090/ind ex.asp

Re:Not common carrier in US

[Breakfast Pants]

Is there any way for these other companies offer DSL if you don't have phone service?

Re:Not common carrier in US

[billstewart]

Voices For Change, if you can access it, recommends using http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/. The owner does not-for-profit hosting for a number of organizations. It's a Free-BSD box at an Undisclosed Location.

Re:Not common carrier in US

[jburroug]

Yup. I have DSL through SpeakEasy that doesn't require that I have dial tone from SBC (my LEC) but it's more expensive since my DSL charge has to cover the full cost of leasing SBC's copper. I think they call that plan "OneLink" or something like that.

Re:Not common carrier in US

[generica1]

Note: Verizon owns a bunch of shares in the TELUS Mobility company (their cellular branch) but I don't think they are anywhere close to "Telus's Parent Company".

Re:Not common carrier in US

[QGambit]

Telus is not owned by Verizon. They have partnership deals with Telus, but have no ownership stake.

Just FYI

fill us in...

[CdBee]

.. you refer to Telus' atttitude to the Union negotiations - could you supply a link so those of us not surrounded by moose, beaver and Molson Canadian beer can be informed?

Re:fill us in...

[Tinfoil]

Oops, sorry. Links:

Telus cuts subscriber access to pro-union website

Telus to implement most recent offer to union (NB: this was a unilateral move)

Telus wins injunction against striking workers

That second link is the kicker. This little spat has been going on for quite a long time and is, quite frankly, getting tiresome. Between Telus and the ongoing Bell Canada strike, it's amazing that we here in Canada still have a working telephone network. And by working, I mean one that hasn't fallen into a complete state of misrepair, though I am having a hell of a time in getting a repair guy to come out and fix the extensions upstairs in my house. (I pay a couple bucks a month in insurance, so they can bloody well fix it.)

NB: I am a less than please Telus cellular customer.

Re:fill us in...

[Pulse_Instance]

I have been seriously thinking about switching to Shaws digital phone, the problem is I have a deal on long distance right now and it would cost me an extra $10 a month for phone service if I switched. I am now seriously thinking of switching just for this reason.

Re:fill us in...

[Dexx]

www.twu-canada.ca works too, for the union's point of view.

Re:fill us in...

[MightyMartian]

I assume you are under the illusion that Shaw is somehow better. I have several customers who are paying for a fixed IP address and who find Shaw changing it with some frequency.

Re:fill us in...

[despisethesun]

I mean one that hasn't fallen into a complete state of misrepair, though I am having a hell of a time in getting a repair guy to come out and fix the extensions upstairs in my house.

You could be waiting a long time. I work for an ISP that leases from Telus to provide DSL, and we're not allowed into the COs to do any work when our customers are having connection trouble. I can understand the reasoning behind it, but the due dates on some of the trouble tickets we've sent to Telus are in November. You might be just as well off to switch to another provider and get them to do the work.

A common carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

The concept of common carrier goes back at least to the early days of railroads. The idea is that a common carrier must take the traffic of anyone who has the money to pay the fare. A common carrier cannot discriminate between customers.

An early example of a common carrier case would be where a railroad refused to carry wheat for farmers. It would only carry wheat for grain companies. The court declared that the railway, being a common carrier, must carry wheat for the farmers. Before that, the grain companies could dictate the price of grain to the farmers. The concept of 'common carrier' can be very powerful.

'Common carrier' has been extended to the telephone companies. That means that the telco cannot refuse you phone service if it is available in your area.

The designation was not sought by the common carriers. It was thrust on them by legislation and common law. The fact that ISPs find it useful is an just lucky for them. In any event, they may not have the choice of whether they are or are not common carriers.

Re:Reasonable? No. But that doesn't matter

[Mr. Underbridge]

I suspect it's probably legal. But on the other hand, I suspect it would also be legal for the ISP's customers to ask for their money back, since they are paying for access to the internet and not getting it.

I would further suspect - nay, guarantee - that the fine print they signed waived any right to a guarantee of specific content, and also any right to terminate the contract for such reason.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[khendron]

Your analogy doesn't work. What Telus is doing is like a book store owner selling you a book, and then refusing to give it to you because they don't like it.

I think Telus is clearly in the wrong here. If they think the site is that bad, they should get a take-down order from the courts. Then I would have no problem with them blocking the site, and perhaps forcing the hosting ISP to take down the site.

The proxy is

[JustOK]

According to the CBC, "People who use service providers other than Telus can still access the sites, and Telus subscribers can get in through a proxy site, http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/, Voices for Change said."

Re:The proxy is

[PFAK]

Mod parent up! =P

Yes, I am proxying the site.. but it appears that the main site is actually down and having issues.

http://vancouver.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?file name=bc_telus20050725

This is totally wrong

[tres3]

How long until the entire Internet is provided to the masses by a handfull of corporations? If those corporations don't like a political candidate are they allowed to block his/her site? Slow it down? The community wireless options are starting to grow in popularity and the big providers (both telco and cable) are against them. Isn't it vote tampering if they were to block access to the opposing point of view's web site? What happens when the telco's block access to the cable co's websties and vice versa? Maybe that would prevent some customer churn but it would destroy the Internet that we have now and it shouldn't be allowed. If the practice is allowed to continue it won't be long until you can only get a small part of the Internet depending upon your provider? A-la China! What happens when the moral do gooders insist that certain websites don't live up to community standards? Are they then allowed to block them? Once censorship starts where is it to end? Sure there are many things that we find offensive, different things for different people, but we need to tolerate others views or we will all loose the ability to read other's views and to speak our own lest we be cencored too.

Or on the oppostie side of the equation I wouldn't mind if the FireFox developers removed the ability to go to www.MSN.com or www.Micro$oft.com but that would probably irritate alot of people. How many would be irritated if Explorer suddenly lost the ability to go to Slashdot? Censorship might seem ok at first look but once started it will not end where you think it is ok but where the ones with the deep pockets think it should end. And trust me here people: your opinion and the opinion of mega-corp are NOT the same.

Re:This is totally wrong

[skeib]

How many would be irritated if Explorer suddenly lost the ability to go to Slashdot?

Probably nobody would notice!

Re:This is totally wrong

[tres3]

Well, I spoke too soon. It seems that M$ is already deleting Apple. See this El Reg article for the details.

Re:This is totally wrong

[Buran]

It's just old data. You can tell from the low resolution and lack of color among other things, like the fact that the map shows a street that doesn't exist yet superimposed over an old aerial photo. And whoever wrote the article is an idiot. There is nothing "disturbing" about old data that shows buildings to not exist yet, or shows demolished buildings that are being replaced by new. I mean, I don't find it "disturbing" that Google Maps doesn't show my new garage or the extension that the neighbors added on to their house, for godssakes.

Censorship ... No

[WoodieR]

I think this applies to ISP accounts provided free of charge to employees ... this is not a paid for service, and it applies only to employees / strikers /locked outers ... merely a negotiating tactic, and I would be willing to bet, that it ends the moment the work stoppage / strike ends ...

It only applies to the government.

[CyricZ]

Even as a Brit I know that the Canadian Charter applies only to interactions between the government and the citizens of Canada. Telus is not part of the government, and is hence not held to the standards contained within the Charter.

It is much like how sites like GameFAQs.com can get away with what would be considered by most intellectuals to be a complete absence of free speech. They are not held to the terms of the American Constitution, nor the Canadian Charter.

Re:It only applies to the government.

[tomhudson]

Even as a Brit I know that the Canadian Charter applies only to interactions between the government and the citizens of Canada.

Boy, are you *SO* wrong!

The Canadian Constitution is the supreme law in Canada. Everyone is subject to it. Everyone benefits from it. Doesn't matter whether its' a civil or criminal matter - all law in Canada must defer to the Constitution.

And, yes, I DO live in Canada.

Re:It only applies to the government.

[arbitraryaardvark]

Parent post is currently modded +4, interesting, for values of interesting that include "wrong" and "completely missed the point."

Re:It only applies to the government.

[tomhudson]

Gotta agree with you on the faces on the money - I don't think there's a coin or bill wide enough for Dumbos' ears.

But why bother putting politicians on the currency? We've already got interesting pix on the back (there's a couple dozen different 25-cent backs, with snowy owls, inuit carvings, fishing settlements, the bluenose, roche perce, etc). The $1 coin has either a loon, or a cenotaph, or some other design, and the $2 coin has a polar bear, or a polar bear and cub, etc. We've got kids playing hockey on our paper currency, etc.

Here's a thought - put a fucking MAP on the front of the paper money so people can learn a bit of geography.

Re:It only applies to the government.

[coaxial]

The guy I suggested was the founder of the RCMP, arguably the symbol of Canada. Everyone loves the mounties. Didn't Germany have Bach on some of their mark? Some countries don't even have known people on the money, but rather just symbols of the nation. The mounty on the nickel, and the caribou on the quarter are interesting choices.

Here's a thought - put a fucking MAP on the front of the paper money so people can learn a bit of geography.

And make you're coins different sizes from the American counterparts. It's bad enough you use "dollars", but do you have to defraud our vending machines by purchasing 50 cent cans of soda for 40 cents? It's all a plot to undermine our economy, I just know it.

Re:It only applies to the government.

[tomhudson]

do you have to defraud our vending machines by purchasing 50 cent cans of soda for 40 cents?

From the latest reports, Canadians are starting to get the "American disease" - supersizing and obesity - so maybe you can make it up in volume? :-)

It's all a plot to undermine our economy, I just know it.

Shit, I can see it now

1. Terrorists spread out across America filling vending machines with Canadian quarters, crippling the junk-food industry;
2. The junk-food industry lobbies for massive subsidies, a countervailing ban on Canadian comedians, and the extradition of Celine Dion to stand trial for plain bad taste;
3. Canada quickly agrees to the Celine Dion thing (we know a good deal when we see it); everything else gets bogged down in "negociations";
4. Americans retaliate against the junk food industry by junking their microwaves; hot-air popcorn popper sales surge, as does sales of cook-books;
5. The average American eats better; Financial crisis hits the Fat Farm industry and the diet industry; sales of Viagra drop as men no longer need little blue pills to get it on - their fat whale of a spouse is now thin, trim, and s-e-x-y. Crisis in the stock market as pharmaceutical stocks drop across the board in anticipation of a less-medicated America;
6. George Bush pledges to step up the war on terrorism by - get this - eating junk food. Quickly hits 300 pounds, chokes to death on Pringle during State of the Union address;
7. Dick Cheney tries to accede to the presidency, but is unable to when its discovered that he's actually a Susquach; Cheney resigns, goes on talk-show circuit, makes even more millions;

... think it would work?

Re:They hava a contractual obligation (???)

[managerialslime]

But do they?

While in my perfect universe the implied contract between an ISP and customer should be that the ISP never censors my access, I'm not sure if that is the case in the real world.

Many of the posted comments seem to assume that either there is such a legal portion of the client-customer ISP relationship or that some kind of "common carrier" legal regulations make this so.

I'm not a lawyer in either the US or Canada, but have not heard the press state or imply this is so.

Other posts that have said "the ISP can do what they want and you are free to go elsewhere if you want" may, in fact, be correct.

Who here knows applicable Canadian law?

----- Still too poor for a sig.

Hell no

[dtfinch]

It's unreasonable to censor anything unless asked by the customer.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[m0i]

No, its working fine - (you may be on a line leased by Telus to a 3rd party)
Even then, it's wiped out from their network globally:
route-views.on.bb.telus.com>ping 204.14.106.29

Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 204.14.106.29, timeout is 2 seconds: .....
Success rate is 0 percent (0/5)
route-views.on>ping 204.14.106.28

Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 204.14.106.28, timeout is 2 seconds:
!!!!!
Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 60/60/60 ms
route-views.on>ping 204.14.106.30

Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 204.14.106.30, timeout is 2 seconds:
!!!!!
Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 60/60/60 ms

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[Chibi Merrow]

Unless Telus is a monopoly or part of the government they can block access to whatever they want. A freedom of expression doesn't give you a right to be heard. If people disagree with it, they can change ISPs. You really don't understand constitutional law...

Polishing the Gem of Disgrunt.

[Fantastic Lad]

Your over-simplified world view appears to be nothing more than a precious ball of hate you take bitter pleasure in polishing for no other reason than to indulge in obsessive outrage.

The issue has many more sides than you allow for and your argument can only function when you blank out a large portion of reality.

There is no simple Yes/No answer to the union question. Or as Obi-Wan put it, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."

And BTW, "you're" and "your" are two different words. Why is it that people who can't spell tend to so often hold such silly world-views?

-FL

Re:Reasonable? No. But that doesn't matter

[GeckoX]

Such a contract is illegal in Canada. Our telcos are very highly regulated, and that would step well outside of the bounds. The only way a telco can get a cust to sign an extended service contract is when it is tied to the deferred payment of a physical device.

That's why they focus sales on packages. Cell service + phone purchase, Satellite service/Cable + PVR, Internet + modem...etc etc.

Before you defend them

[fulldecent]

Before you make the argument:

They are a private company, and can handle internet protocol requests however they want.

Defend the actions of the company that re-routes request from pepsi.com to coke.com and msn.com to google.com

Re:Before you defend them

[ikegami]

That's a poor example because those are trademarked brands, and rerouting the requests as you described is likely forbidden by trademark law.

What other sites?

[Heisenbug]

What other sites does Telus block that promote physical violence or make snap judgments about people, that aren't directly linked to Telus's profits?

Oh, none?

Please -- legal or not, this is a shocking abuse of power.

(Oh, and thanks for your post. Aside from the "I would not condemn them" point, it's very good background to have. Hope I wasn't too harsh. :-)

Re:What other sites?

[dogsbreath]

Like I said -- I don't agree with the TELUS action. Personally, I think they would have been better off to spider the site, archive the content and then take the site owners to court to get their logs if/when vandalism or violence related to the strike occurs.

There has been a huge amount of demonization in the discussion forums (intolerance of dissention coupled with dehumanizing comments) which is classically a precursor to allowing violence against others. ie: they aren't really human therefore the usual social constraints don't apply.

BTW TELUS has an abuse process which could end up in blocking access to sites. Usually it is only invoked for DoS, phishing, and other clear threats. They have blocked or turned down sites hosted on their own services which have had complaints against them (ie for clear legal violations) or which have been generating traffic beyond what is paid for. I doubt that they would block access to a site in a similar but unrelated situation without a court-order.

BTW: comments here about VFC discussions being mild and innocent are disingenuous or made by those have not followed the discussions. The site used to encourage reasoned discussion but all of that is out the window.

correction: link to union web page, and others

[scotty777]

Telecommunications Workers Union (this is the official union site)

site blocked to telus isp customers by telus (this is seen directly, not through proxy)

blocked site seen through the proxy that they recommend

Telus corporate home page (this is the isp home page)

Telus fair use policy (part of agreement with telus isp customers)

Interesting

[JediTrainer]

I thought you /.ers might be interested in that it seems that while ADSL service might be affected by this, not all Telus customers are.

My company has (what I think is) a T1 connection through Telus, and I've found that I can still access the web site in question.

I do find their behaviour disgusting, however, and I do plan on writing them a letter to that effect (and possibly threatening to cancel my cell service that I get through them).

My service was so much better in the Clearnet days anyway.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[crymeph0]

If Telus isn't lying about the union posting pictures of employees crossing picket lines and posting confidential information on the site, they just threw away a powerful bargaining chip. If the union site threatened anyone or broke secret info, they should have brought legal action against the union, and even thrown somebody in jail if they could. That would have gotten some concessions out of the union. Now, however, they're the ones getting into legal hot water.

Sounds like Canada's Godfrey vs. Demon

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Hmm... This is looking like the UK's infamous Godfrey vs. Demon case all over again, but now with the ISP giving up the should-have-been-common-sense defence Demon tried.

For those who don't know, this was a landmark UK legal ruling from the mid-90s. Godfrey was defamed in newsgroup postings, and sued Demon, a major UK ISP, for hosting those postings. Demon's defence was basically that the postings were made by an unknown individual who wasn't a Demon customer, and they were simply providing access to content accessible to anyone on the Internet, and so shouldn't be held responsible. Essentially, though I don't know whether UK law uses the same term, they were arguing that it was unreasonable for a common carrier to be held responsible for the information they carry.

Demon famously lost, but they lost on the basis that having been told about the defamatory content they should have removed it from their systems, not on the basis that they shouldn't have been hosting it in the first place. This opened up a huge legal can of worms, because it put all ISPs within the jurisdiction in a position of having to remove any offensive content in the face of any complaint or risk being sued, yet then acting as courts and censoring material without giving the source so much as a right to reply. AFAIK, the resulting legal minefield remains unsafe to this day, and ISPs get shaky at the very mention of the case. On the flip side, the case also seems to confirm that ISPs are not to be treated as publishers, with publishers' liabilities for content, just for providing access to material: the "common carrier" principle appears to be respected here.

In today's Canadian version, however, it seems the ISP has already given up any pretense of being a mere provider of access to globally available information. If an active decision was made to kill access to a particular web site, it's hard to see how they didn't just make themselves liable by default for every site they allow access to that contains defamation, kiddie porn, or any other $OFFENSIVE_CONTENT.

How this move was approved by their lawyers, I can't imagine...

Remember Google

[GuyverDH]

Just google the site name, then read the cached copy...

Granted, I feel it's verging on the criminal to block the site, however, are they going to block google too?

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[xappax]

Unions have a lot in common with corporations, which is why they each have good and bad sides to them.

Corporations tend to have a huge, centralized pile of resources like money and property, which allows them to absorb minor losses without even blinking.

For example, if a worker quits in protest of working conditions, or even sabatoges work equipment, it has almost zero effect on the bottom line of the corporation, but a huge effect on the worker's livelihood.

Clearly, most advocates of free enterprise acknowledge the right of businesses to merge and centralize their money and property for the purpose of getting a competitive advantage.

Why, then, are so many opposed to the centralization of labor in a similar "corporation" called a union? Is forming a union not equally as capitalist as forming a corporation?

I really don't get it, but I come from a totally different perspective. If someone can explain, please do.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

... and of course, any Telus union member who uses Telus as their ISP can ask for an investigation because Telus is interfering with communications between the union and its' members. Gotta wonder who was the mensa member who ordered the bits twiddled to block the site in the first place ...

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[BurritoJ]

Also, I recall quite clearly a report that out of grocers in my area (Southwest Ohio), those with unions actually had lower average prices on the same products compared to those without unions. So much for that theory.

Ok, so unionized stores which are typically part of a large chain (Kroger, Giant Eagle, etc) have better prices than non-unionized stores which are typically mom & pop shops. I'm sure that the price difference is more directly attributable to the economies of scale associated with buying thousands of bottles of olive oil per year vs tens of bottles, not to the presence of union employees.

correlation...causation... these are not the same. You could also argue that unions are responsible for a large selection of products and better product presentation, using your logic.

Yes

[Julian Morrison]

It's THEIR PROPERTY. The whole "public utility" schtick amounts to theiving nationalization by the back door. Yes, it's their network, and yes they can throw a childish fingers-in-ears tantrum if they want to. If I were a customer, though, I'd switch.

Re:Yes

[Super Nicko]

If you want to go down this line of thought, you can then say that:

• Microsoft should disallow access to the Firefox/insert other browsers sites from IE in a default Windows Install
• ISP can block your email because you tell a friend not to use them
• ISP can stop you from reading /. because they contain a report about them blocking a site

Sure, you can switch to a different ISP if you aren't on a contract or the like. But what if you just think the site is down, and go "Oh well, the union must have pulled it?" Seems like deception to me...

Re:Yes

[snorklewacker]

Ah, the ghost of Ayn Rand raises her screechy little methadrine-fueled head. It has nothing to do with property rights or common carrier babe, and everything to do with abuse of position during a bargaining agreement. If this were happening any other time, they might have a leg, maybe just a little toe to stand on, but this telco has blown off both legs in its zeal to shoot itself in the foot.

Last I heard, people paid for use of their property, and weren't party to an agreement of "we'll fuck around with the content you access to our heart's content if it might have an impact on our stock prices". You might even say the expectation was somewhat the opposite.

But right, all that "capitalism is about the enlightened freedom of choice" nonsense only applies to the people who actually own the most property, no?

Re:Yes

[RealTimeFreeAgent]

Fine, telcos aren't public utilities. When can the public expect all the back rent to be paid for allowing the telcos to lay lines all over the public's property?

Re:Yes

[canajin56]

Last I heard, people paid for use of their property, and weren't party to an agreement of "we'll fuck around with the content you access to our heart's content if it might have an impact on our stock prices".

I've never seen a contract that didn't have a "The terms you just agreed to are subject to change without notice" clause. Not that such a clause is legal, of course. My ISP contract said I have unlimited access, and did not place restrictions. I got a phone call saying I was using over my bandwidth limit and had to stop or I'd face additional charges. I told them the contract I signed said nothing about this. They said "Well we changed the contract." So I told them "That's interesting, but you can't do that without my signed consent. Now I see you threw a clause in here that says you can, but I don't think you can do that, but I'm not a lawyer. Perhaps we should find out together?" They left me alone ;)

Such clauses are, in fact, 100% not valid. (At least under Canadian contract law, the only one I know anything about) You cannot have a clause that makes a person agree to terms that they cannot read at that very second. This means that if they say you also agree to our Code of Conduct, the Code of Conduct has to be provided at the same time as the contract. Providing directions on how to get it is not enough. It also means that you cannot agree to future changes without reviewing them.

Re:Yes

[iamatlas]

Internet access is not a public utility. It is, however, party to "Common Carrier" regulations, which basically dictate that you cannot censor or discriminate about the who/what uses your equipment it he/she is paying for it. You seem to allude to things like Capitalist Freedom here, but what is happening is that freedom to choose is being taken away-- the service contract is being modified wihtout the consent of those paying money for the service.

Re:Yes

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Ah, the ghost of Ayn Rand raises her screechy little methadrine-fueled head.

Don't blame Ayn. She may be crazy, but she's not this crazy.

Did you read Atlas Shrugged? It was about some people going on strike. And the book was supportive of the strikers.

nice work, slashdot

[Chris Snook]

It would seem that posting a link on slashdot is a far more effective method of censorship than anything this ISP is capable of.

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[Anonymous Coward]

' Why, then, are so many opposed to the centralization of labor in a similar "corporation" called a union? '

So many of us are opposed to it since it is forced on the workers against their will. At least in the US it is: most union members are part of "closed shops" where it is "join this organization or you will be fired". Much of my opposition to unions as such would vanish if they became legitimate organizations, and only took money from individuals who wanted to contribute it. I detest organizations that operate largely on stolen/extorted money.

This is very different from the capitalists forming a corporation: an operation that requires complete consent of those pooling the resources and signing the documents.

'Clearly, most advocates of free enterprise...'

That is the important thing. Free enterprise. It certainly is not very free if, as a condition of working, you are forced to join an organization that has absolutely nothing to do with your ability or qualifications to do the job.

Both sides are out of hand

[msobkow]

Telus has some notorious issues with how they run the business, service customers, and pay their subcontractors.

The union is, however, living in a fantasy world. Rates for telecom services have dropped over the past several years. There is competition from broadband phone services (including vonage.ca), alternative cellular providers, and alternative ISPs. The days of the near monopoly by the big provincial telcos are over, as are the obscene profits they used to generate.

Unions will simply have to accept that the telco and computer industries of 2005 are being hit by the same kind of competition that destroyed local manufacturing firms 15-20 years ago. Demanding huge salary increases, guaranteed jobs, etc. is completely unrealistic.

Telus, OTOH, needs to realize that pimp-slapping their customers, their staff, and their suppliers is no way to run a business. They're also living in an old fantasy world where the telcos got away with such nonsense because they were a near monopoly.

Re:Both sides are out of hand

[Fox_1]

I've worked for and with Telus, and Aliant, and Bell, and yeah the Unions in all companies are spending a lot of time in Fantasy Land. Telcos are very monolithic still in Canada, though they are trying. I personally wasn't impressed with Telus when I worked with them, too much of that new age management enthusiasm for me. These people were smiling as they told you to screw telus customers, and I just didn't dig that. Phone Company strikes are ugly. There are few strikes now adays where people take it as far as Telco workers. On the East coast last year during Aliant's strike cables kept getting dug up and cut during the night. Killing phone and internet service all over the maritimes. Scabs/strikebreakers were physically accosted by strikers - hell there were a number of contracters who stopped working for Aliant, because even though they weren't Management or UNION, and technically didn't even work for Aliant but other companies that Aliant contracted, they were being taunted, harrassed and a target for the Union members. I don't know that Telus is in the right for blocking the website, but the strike is only 3 days old, I'm not surprised it happened, and I fully expect it will get worse before it gets better.

Re:Both sides are out of hand

[rob.wolfe]

Scabs/strikebreakers were physically accosted by strikers - hell there were a number of contracters who stopped working for Aliant, because even though they weren't Management or UNION, and technically didn't even work for Aliant but other companies that Aliant contracted, they were being taunted, harrassed and a target for the Union members.

And the company did such lovely things as calling summer students management so that they didn't count as "scabs" and using IT consultants from their consulting practice and paying them overtime. It is pretty hard to convince me that it was cost effective to do that.

There were ads in the newspapers before the strike began for replacement workers. Now, you can say that the company was just being "proactive" but it looked more like the company was girding for a long strike right from the beginning. The company wanted to break the union and given the current anti-union sentiment in north america they had every indication that they could. It doesnt seem to have worked here.

A final note about the ALiant strike was that it was not about higher wages and better benefits. It was about using contract workers to replace employees (you don't have to pay benefits for contractors) and the company's desire to cut health benefits.

Another reason to like binding arbitration...

Re:Both sides are out of hand

[Fox_1]

A final note about the ALiant strike was that it was not about higher wages and better benefits. It was about using contract workers to replace employees (you don't have to pay benefits for contractors) and the company's desire to cut health benefits. Another reason to like binding arbitration...

Agreed, I didn't point out the ugliness from the management either (and they had their share), nobody wins in a strike situation. I knew people on both sides and most of them just wanted to do their jobs rather then be involved in the stike, but situation didn't allow that. Politics is one reason I don't work with telcos anymore, not worth the stress. Side note, my favorite strike was when BCTransit shutdown for most of a summer. As a mass transit cummuter that ended up costing me a bundle, but it saved BCTransit so much that they were able to give the strikers what they wanted in wage increase.

Re:Both sides are out of hand

[Feztaa]

Well, speaking as somebody who is actually on the picket line, I have not seen any violence... we just walk up and down the street peacefully, people honk in support as they drive by, and we cheer. I haven't seen anybody being accosted for crossing the picket line, or anything like that.

One good reason to RTFA

[Silvrmane]

Mmmm.... Sunshine Girl.

Re:Reasonable? No. But that doesn't matter

[Mr. Underbridge]

Such a contract is illegal in Canada. Our telcos are very highly regulated, and that would step well outside of the bounds. The only way a telco can get a cust to sign an extended service contract is when it is tied to the deferred payment of a physical device.

Wow! That's quite nice. But when you sign up...there's no forms? No fine print? I mean, that's a great law and all, but I can't believe the ISP's don't make you sign *something*. Basically, I can't believe you exported ALL your lawyers to us.

Then maybe

Re:Reasonable? No. But that doesn't matter

[Miros]

If the contract is illegal it wont matter unless it goes to court over something else in which case the contract would be evaluated. Bottom line, someone needs to file a lawsuit before that can happen. Also, If it's illegal for telcos to block access to certain websites in canada, is it illegal for them to block ports up there too? I ask you! What's the difference between blocking access to a spam server at the router, [server accessing the network in this case] and blocking access to this union website? Both hurt the company.

not "may not"...

[arootbeer]

should not

I believe your choice of words is quite accurate.

thats why you should always reat the TOS

[Lawrence_Bird]

most people ignore it. When pops recently got FIOS from verizon (crappy east coast monopoly) I read the TOS and found
strict prohibitions against running any kind of server. This
is pretty sad given how much bandwidth is available so its
probably not something I (someone who might want to run some
services) would want to pick up. But unless you delve into
it you'll never know that until after the fact.

This may be offtopic...

[sillybilly]

...but market research folks gotta love digging through slashdot, where people honestly speak their minds, for free, without having to pay some telemarketer bother them on the phone, and collect the lies.

Blockage Confirmed

[ChodaBoy]

I'm a Telus DSL customer and sure enough, I'm unable to access the union site mentioned above but I'm still able to access the union's master site http://www.twu-canada.ca/.
I'm not a big fan of unions myself and in this particular dispute I have to admit I'm leaning towards Telus' side of the argument. However, this behaviour makes me consider switching to another ISP. I'm curious just what it is Telus doesn't want us to see on this site, can anyone mirror it?

Re:Blockage Confirmed

[PFAK]

http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[Peyna]

correlation...causation... these are not the same. You could also argue that unions are responsible for a large selection of products and better product presentation, using your logic.

I didn't say that the unions were the reason the prices were lower; however, you made some assumptions about the report which are untrue. IIRC, the article did not include any mom & pop stores, it was mainly comparing Marsh, Kroger, Meijer and other similarly situated stores.

I tried to find it, but it has been awhile since this was reported. I recall it happening around the last round of negotiations for Kroger in the area.

Short answer

[TractorBarry]

>Is it reasonable for an ISP to censor webpages...

No. Not for any reason at all.

But if they do wish to censor content then they should also be held legally responsible for ALL content viewable over the connection they offer. A few lawsuits relating to people who inadvertently view images of child pornography/goatse etc. would soon change their minds.

Re:It's a private company...

[DMNT]

They should do what they want. Thus you can do what you want... leave... It's called a free market for a reason.

Even free markets (which actually don't exist anywhere) have laws that guide a company what it can do and what it can't do. Laws regulating free speech and the definition of free speech vary throughout the world. To make it clear, I know nothing about Canadian laws, but in some other countries even companies trying to limit freedom of speech is illegal. This could be the case.

Free market needs limiting, for example think about the case where two presidential candidates are running for presidency. The other one owns 90% of automotive industries and the other one 90% of hospitals and medical supplies. The first one is injured in an automobile accident and is rushed to a hospital owned by the second one. Now the hospital states "We have our right to choose our customers. Please don't bleed to death on our floors, thank you."

(Relatively) free market is a good thing, but it needs regularization by government -- and the amount needed is an opinion that varies by person. In the end, free market is a very good worker but it makes a terribly bad boss.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[Trigun]

Just point the DNS to a child porn site, then rat out the complainers to the feds. Problem solved!

It's easier than calling them terrorists, and you need even less proof.

My Answer

[cazbar]

Short Answer: No

Long Answer: No

Next Question

This may set precedence in Canadian law

[Secrity]

I believe that this will end up in court. I have no idea how Canadian law works other than in many ways it works sort of like US law. As this is totally uncharted territory, the biggest unknown is how the judges will interpret existing laws. Currently vogue politics will also have an impact on the judges' decisions. There are Canadian laws specificly regarding conduct during labor negotiations and labor unions have lawyers that are very good at using and/or avoiding these laws.

Union site hax0red?

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe...

Re:Union site hax0red?

[tomhudson]

Ahh - another wonderful product placement for Microsofts' next, even more (in)secure offal^Woffering :-)

Re:Union site hax0red?

[tomhudson]

They have someone fixing it, but I've still got the hacked site on screen - for those who missed it:

--------8<--------8<--------8<--------

Stories From The Trenches

A collection of fascinating, and often amusing, anecdotes from a retired TWU member about labour disputes from the late 1970's / early 1980's.

You used ASP and Sequel Sewer on a publically accessible web shite! Shame on You!

Introduction to the TWU Executive Council

You used ASP and Sequel Sewer on a publically accessible web shi.e! Shame on You!

Constitutional Changes required to strengthen Union

Telus, why do you blackhole this shite, rather than simply hax0ring it?

--------8<--------8<--------8<--------

Too bad that slashcode doesn't allow me to show that the hacked stuff is much bigger, red, etc.

Re:Union site hax0red?

[MynockGuano]

Currently, it's sporting a redirect to http://www.tabwin.com/puss.html, which contains a .jpg image scaled to 10000000x10000000 pixels.

Yes

[synesis]

But only if the union is able to block the telco's billing web site in return.

Telus is not an ISP any more

[radtea]

Is it reasonable for an ISP to censor webpages they don't agree with during contract negotiations?

An ISP is an Internet Service Provider. Telus no longer provides service to the Internet. They provide limited subnet access via Internet protocols.

If I were a Telus customer I'd call 'em up and demand that they give me access to the Internet or give me my money back.

Did it wrong, redirect it!

[ebvwfbw]

What they should have done is instead of blocking it, redirect it to a penis enlargement site! That is so funny for so many reasons.

I'm a Telus customer...

[Dzimas]

I was sucked into their ADSL packages by a low introductory price. We soon discovered that the service was anything but reliable, going down several times a week for hours at a time. Eventually, things must have become so bad for the company that their call centers started proactively calling people to apologize for "recent problems with service." I can only imagine what an unbearable job that must have been.

My first question to the poor drone who called was, "So Telus admits there is a service problem?" When I got a "Yes," the next question was "When will you be processing my refund?" That one just got a stunned "Uhhhhh." I'm cheerfully waiting to see how long my connection lasts during the strike. I give it about anoth (*@&.. !)~ [ZZZT]

Re:Reasonable? No. But that doesn't matter

[GeckoX]

You have the wrong view about Canada and our system of law.

Again, our telcos are very highly regulated. Sure, they can put crap in a contract, but if it is illegal, the cust will never have to take it to court.

We don't subscribe to the 'Fuck You unless you're going to sue' process. The telcos don't like it, but they are on a _very_ short leash. They are on that short leash because that is where we, the citizens of Canada, want them to be.

A summary of the dispute...

[dghcasp]

A summary of the dispute:

Telus offered a contract to the union that raises salaries

The union decided that the contract was not good enough and refused to allow its membership to vote on it

Telus then unilaterally imposed the contract

Now the union is saying it is "locked out" because it didn't get a chance to vote on the contract.

The only "true" lock outs that happened have been when individual workers have taken "Study days" and not worked for a day. Those individual workers were then locked out for one day (tit for tat) and then welcomed back the next day.

Disclaimer: Management bias may be noted, as this was told to me by a manager at Telus.

Re:A summary of the dispute...

[green1]

this is factually correct... however misleading... to be perfectly honest... both sides in this dispute are completely unreasonable...

the company refuses to negotiate in any way with the union, and has been doing so for 5 years. they sit at the table. present their proposed contract and wait for it to be accepted. no negotiation at all, they say take it or leave it nothing is changing. they now have decided to implement it of their own accord without union or employee ratifictaion.

the union on the other hand is refusing to even look at the new contract to decide if it is a good deal because it wasn't "negotiated" with them. they refuse to put it to a vote of their membership for the same reason. and because the membership is officially "locked out" by telus (the only way they can legally impose the new contract) a strike vote was not taken before employees walked off the job...

so effectively both the company and the union are proving they don't care about the employees who are stuck in the middle...

Now in all honesty, if the contract were put to a vote I don't know if it would pass or not... most of Alberta would vote for it... but I suspect most of BC would vote against... and BC has about 58% of the membership (I think)

btw... your study session bit, while close, isn't quite accurate... the first study session was 1 hour long, followed by a 3 hour lockout, the next one was 1 hour long followed by a lockout for the rest of the day, the next one was 1 hour long followed by a 4 day lockout. (not saying what should have happened, only that it wasn't a 1 for 1 sort of thing)

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[Insightfill]

I tried to find it, but it has been awhile since this was reported. I recall it happening around the last round of negotiations for Kroger in the area.

I believe it was in Consumer Reports last year. They identified two chains as having great prices AND service in spite of not being union-shops. One of them was Trader Joe's, and apparently they pay their employees VERY well - starting pay for a cashier was generally higher than that of a veteran cashier at the local (union) Safeway/Dominicks. (I don't remember the name of the other chain.)

Trader Joe's is also an example of a place that does some other things right. For example, all of the local "big box" grocery stores have decided to block the front of the conveyor with pop and magazines; you can't pull up your cart and unload like you used to. Trader Joe's has their checkout aisles designed so that the checker even unloads the cart and moves it to THEIR side for you.

Another story: one time my wife only had $55 for a $60 purchase while in line, and had forgotten all "plastic" at home. They told her "that's OK, come back and pay us when you remember." They didn't take her name or any personal info. Two hours later I went back with the $5.

Re:Reasonable? No. But that doesn't matter

[GeckoX]

Sure, there are forms and contracts. But they are so tightly regulated that they cannot do much with them. And trying to 'slip' some clause in there that is illegal doesn't work up here. The CRTC would be all over them like flies on shit and cause one HELL of a lot more damage to the telco than one single pissed off user suing them would.

Up here, we set up organizations as watchdogs to keep certain industries on a leash rather than leaving it all to the courts. We then trust those organizations we set up to do the work we put them there to do.

Good for our people. Telcos don't like it, but funnily enough they're still rolling in the dough, and we've got tonnes of competition now. So, the people are happy, the courts are quiet, and the companies are making money. What else could you ask for?

From their customer contract

[Hamster Of Death]

Looking at http://www.mytelus.com/internet/policies/TISAA.do I see

Content Warning

37. You acknowledge that the TELUS Internet Services provide access to content, information and materials that are uncensored. You acknowledge that some of the content, information and material that is available through the TELUS Internet Services and the Internet may be inaccurate, offensive, harmful or in violation of applicable laws. TELUS recommends that minors using the TELUS Internet Services be supervised by an adult.

Would this not be a simple breach of contract matter then?

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[Evro]

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/233811_cost co25.html

Costco's CEO charts his own course with high wages and low prices

Bid to gain worker and customer loyalty is paying off

Monday, July 25, 2005

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Jim Sinegal, the chief executive of Costco Wholesale, the nation's fifth-largest retailer, had all the enthusiasm of an 8-year- old in a candy store as he tore open the container of one of his favorite new products: granola snack mix. "You got to try this; it's delicious," he said. "And just $9.99 for 38 ounces."

About 60 feet away, inside Costco's cavernous warehouse store here in the company's hometown store in Issaquah, Sinegal became positively exuberant about the 87-inch-long Natuzzi brown leather sofas. "This is just $799.99," he said. "It's terrific quality. Most other places you'd have to pay $1,500, even $2,000."

But the piece de resistance, the item he most wanted to crow about, was Costco's private-label pinpoint cotton dress shirts. "Look, these are just $12.99," he said, while lifting a crisp blue button-down. "At Nordstrom or Macy's, this is a $45, $50 shirt."

Combining high quality with stunningly low prices, the shirts appeal to upscale customers -- and epitomize why some retail analysts say Sinegal just might be the United States' shrewdest merchant since Sam Walton.

But not everyone is happy with Costco's business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco's customers, but also to its workers.

Costco's average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam's Club. And Costco's health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco, "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."

Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street's assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street's profit demands.

Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco's customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like the fact that low prices do not come at the workers' expense. "This is not altruistic," he said. "This is good business."

He also dismisses calls to increase Costco's product markups. Sinegal, who has been in the retailing business for more than a half-century, said heeding Wall Street's advice to raise some prices would bring Costco's downfall.

"When I started, Sears, Roebuck was the Costco of the country, but they allowed someone else to come in under them," he said. "We don't want to be one of the casualties. We don't want to turn around and say, 'We got so fancy we've raised our prices,' and all of a sudden a new competitor comes in and beats our prices."

At Costco, one of Sinegal's cardinal rules is that no branded item can be marked up by more than 14 percent, and no private-label item by more than 15 percent. In contrast, supermarkets generally mark up merchandise by 25 percent, and department stores by 50 percent or more.

"They could probably get more money for a lot of items they sell," said Ed Weller, a retailing analyst at ThinkEquity.

But Sinegal warned that if Costco increased markups to 16 percent or 18 percent, the company might slip down a dangerous slope and lose discipline in minimizing costs and prices.

Sinegal, whose father was a coal miner and steelworker, gave a simple explanation. "On Wall Street, they're in the business of making money between now and next Thursday," he said. "I don't say that with any bitterness, but we can't take that view. We want to build

Unlimited access != usage

[Loether]

> vaguely worded "bandwidth limits"

I went through something similar in Houston with a small DSL provider (Symet.net). They wanted me and individual to upgrade to 300 dollar a month corporate account. There argument was that unlimited *access* was not equivalent to unlimited usage. When I asked them how much *usage* I was allowed in a given period of time. They wouldn't give me a number. They just wanted me to leave.

I would've preferred to give my money to a small ISP where I can talk to a human if there is a problem. Since I switched to SBC I haven't had a problem. There support is awful but they never complain about my usage. It's a tradeoff. This is one instance where a mega ISP is better.

Demonstrated Abuse

[webzombie]

This is exactly why there should be clear and simple regulations governing the conduct and responsibilities ISPs in Canada.

This is especially true with the resent changes to the Canadian Copyright Act that will force ISPs to track, record and store the movements of the customers.

These ISPs large and small are pretty much unregulated and in a time when personal privacy seems to have become a secondary consideration over profit consumers need regulatory protection.

Locked out, but not Quickly!

[Petersko]

A lock-out is the situation where the workers are ready to negotiate a deal, but management refuses to talk to them at all, and refuses to allow them work in the meantime under the old contract.

Management has allowed them to continue working without a contract for a number of years now.

What the union wants is guaranteed job security. Problem is, they're clinging to contracts written back when they were working under a government-owned business with 20 year old technology. Now they work for a for-profit company in a truly global technical world. They want to barricade the door and keep out the future.

Alas, I can't see it.

Nor do I care. Telus staff have screwed up everything I've ever asked of them.

The new contract is long on everything else, including a promise to try to relocate within the company if outsourcing occurs. I have no sympathy for these people.

Unions were necessary at one point. I don't believe they are necessary now. Especially at Telus. Non-union workers at Telus are not underpaid and are looked after pretty well. It's the union that is responsible for the stagnant wages.

Re:It's a private company...

[kalislashdot]

Good point but I belive governemnt has no business in private companies. Maybe a little in utiliy monopolies like electricity and gas, and telco/ISP are close to becoming "utilities". But to put what I said in relation to your hospital example. Most hospitals are "for profit" corporations and yes they can pick and choose their patients. They wat to get paid just like anyone else. People have the power, if they don;t like it then they rally up and either change the policies of the local hospital or start their own. Then the other hospital goes out of business becasue they chose not to help certain people.

When I had DSL I had to get a phone line from the local Telco, but never used it. Been cell phone only for several years now. ut I was not going to get the DSL thru them. They charge $50 per month for PPPoE and I could get Static IP for same price from another ISP.

Of course the fact that i could get a different ISP is due to government regulation. but that is becasue they are basically a utility monopoly so the government makes them give me a choice, which is about the only place this kind of regulation is good. But I did not use the phone company's Internet cause it sucked. They lost my business.

Ah I could really give a fuck, everyone wants less government then wants everything regulated. Guess I am just a whinny bitch like most others on /. Please mod this down since I am suck a fucking lamo! I can't spell eihter, nor type but then again I could give a fuck! I still make over $30 an hour reading /. all day.

Your point is good even if your rant is silly

[Julian Morrison]

True enough, existing customers may have a right to sue. Seeing as I'm not the litigious type, that hadn't occurred to me. So yeah, in that context, you're probably correct. Depends what was actually in the agreement, what the judge reads in as "implied" by context, and so forth. Take 'em to court and find out.

access to the union site

[TheOnlyJuztyn]

Currently no customers of the Telco's ADSL service (or any other ADSL service provider who leases lines) can access the union's webpage.

And now thanks to Slashdot, nobody at all can access the union's webpage. gg Microsoft JET Database Engine.

Re:uhh.

[Tuqui]

Did anyone else read the subject as "Canadian Taco?"

NO, you're confunding Canadian Telco with Taco Bell with is the Mexican Telco.

Re:Is it their country?

[FhnuZoag]

The bottom line here is, if a consumer does not like the actions that a corporation is taking, then they can vote with their money by using a competing service.

I am suddenly reminded of those who say that people who don't like the policies of their government should just leave. The common ground being of course that competition is frequently imperfect, the set of offered products don't usually match demand, and that the choice of individuals are usually constrained by practical concerns.

Bizarre post

[dogsbreath]

Great Ceaser's ghost! This is a totally bizarre comment. Yikes. Go to www.twu-canada.ca. Wow, I am sure the TWU would get a chuckle out of this. TWU-Canada may be many things but it is NOT a puppet union.

Except

[MatD]

In a lot of cases, you don't have the option to switch. I don't know how things work in the uk, but here in the US, a lot of companies have monoplies on service in their area.
Also, phone companies aren't repsonsible for their content in the US. Once they start blocking specific content, they can't really say that they are neutral about the rest of the content.
That's kinda like having your cake and eating it too, no?

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[Peyna]

I don't know what Trader Joe's you're shopping at, but the only thing they might sell at a lower price than other grocery stores is wine. Everything else there is incredibly marked up. Even their produce is ridiculously expensive.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[iamhassi]

"Telus should be able to provide or not provide access to websites as they wish, unless they've agreed otherwise with their customers (or have been given a monopoly by the government). So no, I wouldn't say it's open shut.

exactly!!! Comcast should block all access to Yahoo (since they're partners with SBC/Yahoo DSL), Charter, and all the other broadband providers out there. In fact a search of google should just return on links back to Comcast!!

satelite TV providers should block commericals for competitors and cable, instead replaying them with other commercials.

Just like when I pick up my cellphone and call another cellphone service they should interrupt and disconnect the line... or better yet not let the call go thru at all.

This is great!! I hate having the freedom to go to whatever website I want, i'd much rather pay someone tell me what websites I get to go to.

:rollseyes:

Actually it was a claim by the company

[Gallowglass]

The article didn't make the claim that the union was "posting pictures of non-union members crossing picket lines", it was quoting the company's claim/excuse to justify their (rather clumsy) censorship efforts.

And for what it is worth, I went and looked at the pictures on the union site, and there are no pictures of anyone crossing a picket line. The closest to that is simply a couple of photos of two managers at one location lounging outside the door to the workplace, "keeping an eye on the picketers at the front door on 6th Ave.building in Prince George."

And I did not find any examples of Telus phone numbers being listed in my rather perfunctory scan around the site. Frankly, I rather doubt that the Union would be so foolish. Companies often claim that unions are fomenting illegal activities such as sabotage and intimidation. To put such instrcutions up on the website where the world can see it and thus be able to present evidence of these illegal activities postis and intelligence level well below that of most bosses. (And as Dickie used to say to Tommy, "That is not a compliment!")

And you are right. The company is acting childishly. "We're the boss! You gotta do what we say, and shut up." All too common, alas.

Re:Point 1.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is not such things as 'freedom of speech' in Canuckastan Strictly speaking, if a minister/rabbi/cleric were to speak from his holy book condeming gay relations he could technically be arrested for 'hate speech'.

Well, sort of correct. It is not called "freedom of speech", it is called "freedom of expression", see point b) C&P from the Charter.

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.

Now the part that the idiot poster mentions about "hate speech" is in place to protect those on the receiving end of hate. Although the poster makes it sound as if a Pastor who disagrees with same sex marriage can be sent to jail, he/she is blatently full of shit. The Pastor could be arrested for suggesting the entire parish should go out "Fag hunting", as that is what god would want. Big difference. You can not promote hatred or violence. So, no Rabbi's demanding the extermination of Palestinians, no Imans demanding the murder of Jews.

As far as civil liberties this is a truly backwards quasi-socialst country. There is no right to bare arms

WOW, you are an interesting sort. Why not Google up how many countries have a provision that equates to "the right to bear arms". I'll give you a hint, if you take the majority position as the correct one, the US is on the wrong side of that "right". Besides, how does it affect you? I have many firearms, so do many people that I know. Despite not having a "right" to do so, does not limit my ability to do so. I also do not have the "right" to own a car, or to drive, yet everyone I know has a car, and drives.

Also another minor point of how different we are and how canadians 'respect' freedom like unlike the US if you were a canadian army reservist and were called to fight, your employer can basically just fire you

Great point! Now go google up the last time a Canadian Reservist was "called up". Find it yet? How about now? Still looking? Dolt. Our reservists, are what reservists should be. A part time, ready force. We do not send them overseas, unless we have to, and I don't think we have done that, well, ever. Like what the US used to do, when they were a democracy.

Well that was fun, nothing easier than poking a bunch of holes in an argument based entirely on ignorance. I can't tell if your American (the ignorance points in that direction), or just a good ole Canadian redneck. If your American, no biggie. Most of you do not understand our culture, and you have no reason to understand it, and that is understandable.

If you are Canadian then I see a great picture based on what irks you about our country. You have almost no education. You have a past that makes geting an FAC (license to buy/own guns) impossible (criminal record, history of mental illness, or a spouse/family member fears you owning a gun). You are a racist, concerned that your views on minority X may get you arrested.

If I had to peg it, I would say southern Alberta, small town, maybe Brooks? Nothing against Alberta, lived there, loved it. But no one grows rednecks like Alberta.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[iamhassi]

"Unless Telus is a monopoly or part of the government they can block access to whatever they want. A freedom of expression doesn't give you a right to be heard. "

I'm pretty sure ur wrong. If the phone company employees were on strike could the phone company block access to union phone lines? I'm thinking no. This is similar.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[spikexyz]

The canadian charter only applies to dealings between people and government. For dealings with businesses, you need to look at the provincal human rights codes.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[Calyth]

Somehow your comparison is also valid between a book store and Chapters/Indigo, well maybe except for number 2.
They had stopped selling magazines like Soldier of Fortune or any of the knife or gun related magazines.
But no one seems to be complaining...

But anyways, when I'm back into Vancouver (they also provide ADSL in Vancouver), I'm either going to see a huge backlash from the left in the population, or I'm going to see that Telus lift their stupid ban. In either case they're making an even bigger stink than they already have. Their customer service is so bad that someone drove by and shot at their building about a year ago.

5th year without a collective agreement

[Spiderfood]

I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet---this is a ongoing dispute in its 5th year now. One would expect there is a hefty bit of smearing going on from both sides at this point. You would have to be completely naive if you think that the union had nothing to do with this bad publicity that Telus is getting right now. Both parties are actively portraying themselves as the good guy. For example, that the union is claiming a strike, and Telus a lockout.

Re:5th year without a collective agreement

[screeble]

For example, that the union is claiming a strike, and Telus a lockout.

You're mistaken, it's the other way around. My sandwich board reads:

Telecommunications Workers Union
LOCKED OUT

Re:It's a private company...

[wk633]

Even a free market has rules. This isn't the Wild West where he who has the fastest gun does whatever he wants. 'Free market' only works if there is true competition. In the case of Telus, it isn't.

The better answer, I would say, is to complain, and complain loudly.

Having chosen to censor,

[base3]

that telco should be stripped of common carrier status, and be held responsible for every questionable or illegal thing that travels on its wires.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

The people crossing picket lines may have run afoul of BC's anti-scab law, in which case, posting their pictures is no more wrong than posting the pictures of anyone else committing a crime.

Also, crossing a picket line in public isn't a private matter - so there's no expectation of privacy, and the union can post pics.

Third (yeah, pedantic, but its Monday and I'm working on my second cup of coffee, etc ...) the proper way to handle it is to go to court, not block your subscribers from visiting a site that you don't even host.

"Telus - the future is friendly - the present still sucks"

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[TFGeditor]

Yet U.S. courts have ruled that ISPs are not common carriers (offshoot of VOIP litigation).

Re:For crying out loud

[belg4mit]

Get a clue, we're not all raving liberitarians.

While the law may treat corporations like people
(and we won't get into that stupidity) there are
certain ideas that apply.

Even for individuals: your rights end when they
infringe upon mine.

This company enjoys government protections and is
at berst an oligpoloy, it owes certain levels of
service. What if your water district decided to
restrict or cut-off water to all their blonde-haired
customers? Because some of them got green hair
from the chlorine and decided to file a class action?

A modest proposal.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The designation was not sought by the common carriers. It was thrust on them by legislation and common law. The fact that ISPs find it useful is an just lucky for them. In any event, they may not have the choice of whether they are or are not common carriers.

However, the requirement to carry all comers also confers a privilege - a lack of responsibility for refusing to carry some loads. (The responsibility is borne by the government because it forced them to accept the traffic.) An ISP may find that carrying the union's propaganda is less of a burden than being responsible for kiddie porn.

The union should file a suit against the ISP - not for refusing to carry its traffic, but for recovery for all the SPAM it and its members recieved through their connections, using the fact that the ISP refused to carry the union website traffic as proof that they are NOT a common carrier, and thus bear responsibility for content.

IMHO that will turn the ISP around in very short order.

If they don't turn it back on within a few hours of receiving notice of the suit, file another for damage to their kids' mental health due to viewing kiddie porn carried over the ISP's lines. B-)

Breach of Contract to Internet customers

[billstewart]

None of the articles I've seen say whether Telus is blocking IP packets to the union's website or whether they're blocking the DNS entries on their DNS servers. If it's DNS, there are lots of ways to work around it (e.g. get multiple names, or publish the IP address http://10.11.12.13/union-stuff.html, or get customers to use alternative DNS servers.) But if it's blocking the IP address, the ISP is failing to deliver "Internet Service" to its customers - it's only delivering partial service. That's a breach of contract. (Now, if they block spammer/zombie IP addresses, I suppose they're also doing the same thing, but that's usually something customers _want_.) ISPs may or may not be covered by various countries' common carrier laws, but a contract is a contract.

Re:Breach of Contract to Internet customers

[arbitraryaardvark]

A contract is a contract, but only between Ferengi. - Rule of acquisition #17.

1:TELUS reserves the right to amend this Agreement at its sole discretion, at any time.
http://www.mytelus.com/internet/policies/TISAA.do

11: You agree to pay all costs incurred by TELUS in the collection of any delinquent charges due under this Agreement or in the enforcement of this Agreement including, without limitation, lawyers' fees.
18: You acknowledge that such general practices and limits may differ for different portions of the TELUS Internet Services and may be set at different levels for different users based upon factors that may be determined in TELUS' sole discretion.
40: You acknowledge and agree that TELUS shall not be responsible or liable to you or any third party for any suspension, restriction or termination of your account.

C'mon, bill, you've worked for a phone company, you've seen the size of their legal budgets.
Did you really think they would leave themselves open to claims?

Re:Breach of Contract to Internet customers

[billstewart]

Oh, hi, I wondered what your slashdot ID was, and couldn't find it when I looked for it; must have done something wrong.

Most business contracts with telcos have service level agreements, though the penalties are usually limited to "X% of your monthly bill back if the circuit is down for Y% of the time". The big issue for them isn't the actually amount of money the users would get back, which is probably either zero or very near zero - it's having 1000 people either calling their legal staff to complain about undocumented changes to the service, or calling their maintenance people to complain about not being able to reach the union web site.

In the US there'd be labor laws heavily regulating this sort of behaviour; I've got no idea whether Canada has much of that. On the other hand, Canada has all kinds of weird laws vaguely related to free speech and human rights, and it's possible that somebody could find one of them to spank Telus with (though it's also possible that Telus could spank the union with one of them.)

No, dont block the site

[gorehog]

I would expect them to block the union web site from machines that people work on. Blocking customers from the website sounds like censorship, and at the mercy of corporate controllers. Which to me sounds like facism.

There is a line for corporations, when it comes to freedom of speech. In the states we accept that we are not allowed to view or speak as we please on company time. If I were a Telus customer I would cancel my service, as I can no longer count on the provider to suply an objective look at the internet.

Proxy URL for Telus Customers

[bg_27]

My work leases a telus line so i can't see the page right now, but here is a proxy url that accesses the page:
http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/index.asp

Phone service vs. Phone Wire Service

[billstewart]

Obviously the phone companies can't offer you DSL if they don't have a set of phone wires connected to your house. But there's no reason they have to connect those wires to a phone switch or connect the voiceband parts of the analog spectrum to a phone switch or give you a phone number on that line. For SDSL service, normally they don't - the wires go directly to a DSLAM, and there's no voice service involved. (Typically you'll get that from carriers like Covad and from business-priced services from bigger ISPs.) The ADSL systems are designed so they *can* line-share between DSL and phone service, and it's simpler for the phone companies to connect everybody from the back of the DSLAM to the phone switch and do their record-keeping by giving each line a phone number, and they get to charge you money for the phone service as well as getting to rent the shared line to the ISP (or the layer 2 PVC, if they're running the DSLAM), so of course that's what they want to do. But it's strictly a regulatory and economics thing.

Re:Phone service vs. Phone Wire Service

[thatnerdguy]

With sympatico DSL service here in Canada, you do not need a phone line to connect. It's not advertised obviously, but it's possible (i did it). They just give you a dummy phone number, flip a switch at you CO and thats it. Obviously this implies that you have wires to your place: if you don't then you have to pay more for a tech to visit.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

Another poerson who doesn't understand Canadian law.

The provincial human rights codes were homologated (maded to conform) with the Canadian Constitution.

The administration is done by the provincial Human Rights commissions (each province also has their own provincial charter of rights, which adds to the rights enumerated in the Canadian Constitution). However, any and all cases may be brought all the way to the SCoC (Supreme Court of Canada) by any individual - and not just cases between individuals and government bodies.

The divisions of law are as follows:

Criminal: Only the feds can pass legislation to criminalize or decriminalize an act. The provinces are mandated to enforce the Canadian Criminal Code, even though they have no say in its' contents.

Civil: The provinces have jurisdiction for both the legislation and the enforcement of civil laws, with the proviso that no civil law can be passed that violates a right granted under Federal law/ the constitution.

This is why Quebec had to use the Constitutions' notwithstanding clause when they passed legislation against English signs, for example.

Its also why gay marriage was ruled by courts in 7 provinces to be legal, as, under the Canadian Constitution, to do otherwise would be discriminatory.

A good example of invoking Constitutional rights is the case of the gay couple in Quebec who were being harrassed by one of their neighbours. The complaint invoked both the Federal (Constitutional) and Provincial laws. the complaint was handled by the Commission des droits de la personne et de la jeunessse (the local human rights org), as they are the ones initially mandated to hear such cases. All parties may go all the way to the Supreme Court if they're not happy with the result and have a valid grounds for appeal.

Now, if the provincial Human Rights code grants similar rights, why use the Federal Constitution? Because you want to preserve the right if invoking it before the SCoC, as the supreme law of the land. Hope this helps.

As a side note, I've invoked the Constitution twice in beating municipal tickets - there were no similar relevant positions in provincial legislation that would have cut the mustard.

I have to disagree

[YesIAmAScript]

Either a lockout or a strike occurs when the management and workers cannot work out a new deal. It doesn't mean one side isn't talking, merely that both sides aren't talking each other's languages.

A strike occurs when the employees refuse to continue working under the current contract until the new one is worked out. A lockout occurs when the management refuses to employ the workers under the current contract until the new one is worked out.

The reason the employees would refuse to work under the current deal is because they think the current contract isn't good enough for them and that perhaps the management might benefit from stalling on making a new deal so that they could continue to pay the employees under the old deal.

The reason the management would refuse to continue the current contract is because they think the current contract isn't good enough for them and that perhaps the employees might benefit from stalling on making a new deal so that they could continue to be paided under the old deal.

So, here's the payoff: the significant difference between a strike is which side the current contract is perceived to favor. If it's the employees, you get a strike. If it's the management, you get a lockout. And that's the entire difference.

For example, in the NHL, it was widely felt that the next contract would be far less favorable to the workers (players). The players thus didn't really negotiate significantly. Instead, they knew that if they simply continued to fail to reach an agreement, the current contract would be extended and they would be paid under the older, more favorable contract.

So, there's not a big difference between the two. And it doesn't have as much to do with who is ready to negotiate as it does the terms in the current contract and who they favor.

And going beyond that, a lockout is much more likely to occur when the workers are not trying to negotiate a deal than when the "management refuses to talk to them at all" as the parent poster says. Mangement has plenty of reason to talk in a potential lockout situation, because they are the ones who feel they stand to benefit most once a new contract is in place and so they'd like to get it done as soon as possible (not without sacrificing their terms, of course).

in other news,

[cryptoz]

"AT&T" is operating as normal. And so are "Sprint" and "AOL".

Like seriously, what's with putting Telus in quotes?

Police / CRTC

[sugarmotor]

Using Telus (although indirectly through aebc.com who I can otherwise recommend), I indeed couldn't access that website. So I called the RCMP to report a crime. They said there is no crime here. I should switch to another provider.

I find the difference to a mailman opening my letters is marginal.

I visited the CRTC website at

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/info_sht/t1003.htm

who also offer no help.

There's something wrong here.

Stephan

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

I hear you about Chapters/Indigo. Mind you, the local mall has both a Chapters and a smaller independent book/mag retailer, so its' not like there isn't competition.

heir customer service is so bad that someone drove by and shot at their building about a year ago.

Hope they used a paintball gun instead of a firearm. The penalty for illegal discharge of a firearm is a LOT higher in Canada (plus, you can use paintballs to spell out a message).

The Telus EULA

[johnnytv]

Here's a snippet from Telus's License agreement for hosting, which I am a customer:

Use of information

You agree not to use any information on this site or linked to this site in any claims, proceedings, suits or actions against TELUS, its partners or suppliers.

They essentially reserve the right to shut you down arbitrarily if you publish any "unaccaptable" content.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[dadragon]

This may come as a shock, but Canadian companies are not subject to the rulings of US courts.

Survey Says....

[Svartalf]

BZZZT!

Nice try, thank you for playing.

It may be their property, but so long as they possess common carrier status, they can't do that- they're limited in what they can/can't do. In exchange, they get protection from prosecution for tons of things that their customers do. If they don't have this protection, they end up being held actionable for anything that might be illegal or criminal done on their service- because if they filter or prevent ONE thing, they must handle ALL of them.

If they wish to keep that protection of Common Carrier status (which works in most civilized countries...), they can't do that no matter what you might hold to be true about it being their service and wires...

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[ShieldW0lf]

They're not a part of the free market. They're a regional telecommunications monopoly. And we've never had a free market in telecommunications. Ever. Government run monopoly to privatised monopoly to multiple regional monopolies. Nothing in telecommunicaions has risen out of the free market. Finally, they're providing internet access to paying customers on contract. They don't have fuck all right to censor the experience without having an existing agreement with their customers that permits them to do so.

But then, you know all this already... you're just flamebaiting. Why don't you fuckoffdot.

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The simple fact is that most employers do not care about employees. They care about the bottom line.

Actually, the simple fact is that they MUST give priority to the bottom line, even if they DO care about the employees. In a competitive environment they lose ground if giving a benefit to the employees doesn't confer a compensating financial advantage to the company.

Thus some company management that would like to do better for the employees is stuck in a tragedy of the commons situation. The historic solution to the tragedy of the commons was social pressure in the original case. But in regions with high and diverse population social pressure doesn't work, and you need institutional mechanisms to "fix" this sort of situation - and to negotiate the fix.

Laws are one such mechanism. Another is industry-wide unionization / professional societies / guilds, which offer more individualized negotiaion.

The problem with unions today isn't that they've ran out of their usefulness. The problem is that they're still suffering from corruption of the past and mismanagement.

Two forms of corruption actually.

The first was criminal activity - both individual and organized-crime. Looting of union funds and operation of protection rackets directed against both workers and employers were the two main motivations.

The second (made possible once the union operation was divorced from membership control by the crooks) was involvement with political parties and causes at odds with the interest of the workers.

I don't know how it works in Canada - but in the US the unions are squarely in the Democratic Party's column regardless of the candidates' position on issues relevant to the union - to the point that unions are supporting the very illegal immigration that takes away their members' jobs (by undercutting costs).

The result has been the downfall of unions in every sector but government employees' unions, along with (Republican-supported) grass-roots attempts to pass laws requiring individualized member permission to use dues money for political campaigning.

There's a fine line...

[Svartalf]

They can claim they can refuse service to anyone, but the Common Carrier status can be revoked with any one refusal that isn't backed by some law. In other words, they can refuse you service if you're trying to ship fireworks through them, but I don't think they can actually refuse you service because they find you annoying and don't want to provide you service- which is why they typically don't do that sort of thing.

What is happening here is that they're doing the "we don't like you, so we're not shipping your stuff" thing in the form of a blocked IP address. That would be sufficient if someone pressed the issue to sue them over anything that might have slipped by them that would normally get them in trouble if it weren't for the Common Carrier status they possess.

Re:There's a fine line...

[rhsanborn]

Common carrier status deals with the contents of what is being carried. If someone sends a mail bomb, UPS isn't responsible, because they don't deal with the contents of their packages.

Not sending packages based on their contents, may very well deny them common carrier status.

Now, if they didn't want to deliver to a specific address because they have a nasty dog, or for whatever other reason, they haven't breached their status as common carrier.

Re:Reasonable? No. But that doesn't matter

[Miros]

My point isnt to do with the telcos, but contract law. In canada, how can you get a contract voided without going to court? If the contract is illegal, all that means is that it's a void contract, but it cant be a void contract unless it is ruled to be void, or voided by both parties.

Proxy URL

[olrs]

For anyone intrested in seeing the site who is currently connected through a telus account, you can use the following url:

http://vfc.proxy.pfak.org/

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[TFGeditor]

True, but courts often do lok to precedents in other countries for guidance. Witness SCOTUS and its recent decision regarding capital punishment of minors.

Beg to differ.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

A lock-out is the situation where the workers are ready to negotiate a deal, but management refuses to talk to them at all, and refuses to allow them work in the meantime under the old contract.

A strike is where management is ready to negotiate a deal, but the workers refuse to talk, and refuse to work in the meantime under the old contract.

Close. But I beg to differ.

A strike does not mean the workers are unwilling to negotiate. It just means they've stopped working during the negotiations.

A lockout means that the company won't let some or all of the union workers continue working under the old contract's terms. It might mean workers who struck (or took sick time) can't come back. It might mean anybody wanting to work gets paid on terms chosen by the company and not according to the old contract. It might mean that union employees are excluded from the site period.

Negotiations normally go on during strikes - with intermittent breakdowns. Negotiations more often break down during lockouts. (If the company is doing OK without the union workers it has little incentive to negotiate unless the union drastically drops its demands. Then it may find recovering the experienced employees is worth keeping the union around and paying more than they would pay newbies.)

Their contract w/ their customers "own"ing

[team99parody]

however let's remember that corporations "own" assets in ways similar to individuals

"Own"ing assets does not give you absolute power over what you do with them.

• Just because an airline owns the plane, it doesn't mean they can throw passengers out the windows. (that's illegal)
• Just because a landlord owns an apartment, it doesn't mean he can control his residents setting up wireless networks. (that's the FCC's job)
• Just because a telephone company owns some wires doesn't mean they can re-route calls to their prefered customers (as Sprint was accused of doing in Las Vegas when people called prostitutes)

Ownership is one thing - but when you have a customer you have to abide by the contract with your customer. For an ISP ("internet service provider") that means "providing" "internet" "service" -- something that they're breaching if they block the union site..

Wrong, As Usual - Freedom of Listening

[Nom du Keyboard]

"They're restricting our members' free speech," said Mimi Williams, who said she was offended both as a customer and as an elected representative of TWU Local 207.

This overblown rhetoric is garbage, as usual. No one's Freedom of Speech is being infringed. The web-site is up there. Freedom of Listening is what's at question here, and that's a very different question indeed.

The CRTC should step in

[i_ate_god]

I would think that this is blatantly illegal. Telus is clearly blocking the website as part of its fight, not because the site contains "confidential" or "proprietary" information. If it did, then Telus should've sought a court injunction to stop the union from posting such information, and most likely the court would've agreed. Now I couldn't find much of anything on the website to substantiate the claims telus made in the article, but if it is there than the union is definately in the wrong as well.

This is just another battle between corporations and unions that has the customers/clients caught in the crossfire. And corporations of course don't make it any easier, by giving their chiefs 50 to 200% salary raises, while employees get none. And of course, unions don't make it any easier because they have no choice these days but to resort to pressure tactics which disgruntles customers.

The cycle of life continues...

Re:The CRTC should step in

[psyconaut]

The CRTC has no jurisdication in this area. The best bet would be an injunction against Telus.

-psy

Re:The CRTC should step in

[i_ate_god]

erm, isn't this what the CRTC is for? They regulate media companies. Telus, providing cellphone, tv, and internet services, is a media company.

I could be wrong, and if I am, please enlighten me.

Re:The CRTC should step in

[Mashiki]

You are wrong. The CRTC exists to cram Canadian content down our throats and protect us from 'evil Americans', and their media. In violation of the Charter. The CRTC is useless, it isn't even close to approaching what the FCC is in frequency regulation which is handled separately.

No I don't like the way the 'gov' handles things up here. I'll be happier when the CRTC is dead and burried and our media can learn to sink or swim on it's own.

Safety Issue

[esobofh]

The website contained unauthorized photos of managers and workers that weren't participating in their strike, with the intent of targetting these people. As someone who had their picture posted on the site, i'm glad TELUS restricted access as much as they could within their control. I don't personally like being painted with cross hairs just for doing my normal job.

Re:Safety Issue

[rob.wolfe]

I am presuming that your use of the word "contained" is because it was there at one point and now is not. I was at the mirrored version not 10 mins ago and saw nothing "on the line" that had any identifiable human being that wasnt clearly labeled as a union member(by wearing a sign generally).

Perhaps they have realized that there are limits to what they should post in order to keep the public from thinking they are thugs.

Re:Safety Issue

[focitrixilous P]

If they are picketing on the sidewalk along a public road, they need no authorization. They can take pictures of your car, your face, etc. Should you restrict access to strong labor political canidates, so that your job is safe from union advocates? You made a choice to cross the picket line, now anyone that wants to can identify you as a scab.

Telus also blocks ports

[phorm]

Telus also, at some point, decided to block various incoming ports for non-business customers. Port 80, port 21, and various others are blocked, basically because if you're "hosting" they want you to pay for the more expensive "business" packages.

When I initially was a Telus customer these ports were all unblocked. My IP didn't change very often and I was able to host on port 80 without problems. Somewhere along the line they (without notice) changed that.

This didn't bother me, as I had a business account, until I moved. My new roomate had a standard account, and I wanted to get my servers up ASAP so I was hoping to point the DNS servers at the dynamic IP and just rebind when my account took over. However, with Telus' IP blocking this was not possible.

As far as speed Telus is fairly reliable, but customer service ain't great and they definately do some sneaky things with their lines/blocking.

Re:Telus also blocks ports

[DaCool42]

Are they still doing this? I'm surprised I haven't run into it before. When did they start blocking port 80 and such?

Re:Telus also blocks ports

[benow]

They've been blocking 80 for non business customers for years. Since the Cadvision takeover (2000?) anyway. Residential: $36.95, Business: $89.95. The future is monopoly.

Re:Telus also blocks ports

[johnnytv]

You might be surprised to know that the port blocking doesn't work if you use a standard modem. All high speed customers are forced into an agreement where they have to purchase a custom dlink router (with WIFI), which has special firmware and a whole suite of useless software for "anti-virus" protection. I tossed the router away and used my original d-link 300-i instead and discovered that if you are inside their network, your ports are all wide open, even with a dynamic account. I opted for the hosting package anyhow though for the sites I host here, but it's useful to make use of a dynamic account for development servers, and it all works, ssh, mail, the works.

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[theglassishalf]

Oh really? So...if you don't like the union, then vote with your feet! Take another job. It's absolutely free enterprise: the "closed shop" only exists because the employer signed an agreement that they would fire anyone who doesn't pay the organization that negotiated their contract.

Union security clauses in contracts just prevent free riders: in states where these clauses are illegal (talk about elimination of freedom of contract!) what usually happens is that a bunch of employees decide they want the benefits of the union (much higher wages) without paying the people who work at the union to provide these benefits.

Don't want to pay for union representation? That's fine! Go work for a company that is non-union. Don't want to do that because the wages suck? Hmm.

-Daniel

P.S. All unions in the USA are democratic, by law. So if the majority of people under the contract want to get rid of it, it's gone.
Also, in the USA, there is actually no such thing as a closed shop. Google "Union Agency Fee" for more information.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

Your argument is interesting, but it fails on the first premise:

No, it doesn't! It includes it as a fundamental freedom: meaning that it can be set aside whenever he government deems that it should be. The distinction is very, very important!

Telus isn't the government - they have no authority to "set aside" any such freedom.

Also, the notwithstanding clause can only be used for certain types of legislation, and for a maximum of 5 years. Its' been shown that its not possible for Alberta, for example, to invoke the notwithstanding clause to try to ban gay weddings (which is what "Uncle Ralphie" - Ralph Klein, Albertas' premiere, had been threatening to do).

Also:

You can even be jailed for wearing clothing that is unfashionably ugly: or as the state puts it "so clad as to offend against public decency or order".

and your defense would be to refer to the Constitution. This is why women are now allowed to go topless in public in Quebec and Ontario. That part of the law was ruled to be invalid as both a denial of freedom of expression and discrimination based on sex :-) Vivre la difference!

On this:

Hate speech law limits my freedom of expression to communicate anything that may promote hatred towards an identifyable group.

... the Constitution allows for this as an exception because it allows the limiting of freedom, but ONLY such limitations as can be demonstrated to be reasonable in a free society. We don't want people promoting hatred (we ARE Canadian after all).

On this:

There is a section in the criminal code labeled simply "corrupting morals". You can be jailed for producing or possessing "obscene" objects.

Not any more. You can even legally possess certain types of kiddie pr0n (works produced solely by yourself, such as artwork or literary works), provided you don't make it accessable to anyone else. This case was decided in BC, where a guy was given back his stash of self-composed crap. The courts ruled that, as long as no minors were involved, and nobody else had access, there was no reason for seizing it.

On this:

The criminal code section on solitication forbids public communication for the purposes of prostitution. Prostitution itself is not illegal; (although making a living from it is), but talking about it publicly is. It's a forbidden form of expression.

The courts have ruled that for solicitation to be criminal, it has to be persistent. So, as long as the hooker isn't being persistent, in-your-face, bordering hn harrassment, she CAN offer her services legally.

On this:

For example, copyright law removes my freedom of expression in certain ways; for example, to create works of art which are too similar to other existing works of art.

No, it doesn't. If you *create* the work, rather than plagerizing, you have no problem. That's the difference between creating and copying.

Even copyright doesn't stop you from creating your own version of, say, Monopoly or Risk, without license from Hasbro/Parker Brothers (You can't copyright game rules).

On this:

The criminal code section regarding blasphemous libel (yes, that's still in the criminal law to this day!), limits my ability to make religious statements which the state deems malicious and untrue. It's a forbidden form of speech.

... well, you can't stand up in a church and start haranguing the preacher, but that's more along the lines of mischief or disturbing the peace. You can make the same statements in public without fear of official reprisal. I know, I've done it. Picketed a local church I had issues with for several weeks, with some VERY nasty signage. Then a 10-day hunger strike, with a truck again covered in signs. All the cops did was make sure that

Be glad you can still detect this

[quentin_quayle]

Today you can find out about this by seeing the site on another connection or proxying around the block.

In a few years most computers will have "trusted computing" hardware enabling a "protected mode" where only signed programs will run. If this takes hold and ISPs start requiring "protected mode" as a condition of getting online, you will never know whether a site is really there or not, or whether what you're seeing is the genuine version of a web page (intended by the authors), or an altered version.

With the TC scheme fully in place, if the holders of the keys of the "trusted" browsers so chose, they could make any content disappear from everyone's point of view, or falsify it undetectably. In this example, you'd have to resort to offline sources for the information the union was trying to get out.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html

No, I'm quite right, my good Canadian friend.

[CyricZ]

You do realize that the portion of the Constitution covering such matters as freedom of speech is called the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

The "Fundamental Freedoms" portion you quoted in your earlier post comes from Section 2 of the Charter (which, recall, is a portion of the Constitution). Remember, the purpose of the Charter is to protect Canadian citizens from the various governments.

Indeed, see Section 32 of the Charter:

32. (1)This Charter applies

a) to the Parliament and government of Canada in respect of all matters within the authority of Parliament including all matters relating to the Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories; and
b) to the legislature and government of each province in respect of all matters within the authority of the legislature of each province.

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/charter/

The Charter applies to the governments: federally, provincially and territorially. The government cannot come along and restrict or eliminiate your fundamental freedoms. But remember, Telus is not part of the government. Therefore they are not bound by the Charter, as you mistakenly think.

Re:No, I'm quite right, my good Canadian friend.

[H0p313ss]

Mod parent up, a lawyer relative of mine has pointed this out to enraged family members more than once.

Re:No, I'm quite right, my good Canadian friend.

[tomhudson]

When the Constitution was enacted, there was also a timetable in which to apply the various parts, etc.

As for the section you quoted, Section 32.(1), that means that the governments have to amend their laws in relation to the Constitution. Its known as "enabling legislation." Hence the timetable (you can't just wave a wand and have it doen automagically).

Without that section, the Constitution would be toothless, as there would be no legal requirement to actually rewrite the laws.

Since then, all the provinces have had to revise their legislation to reflect the Constitution and Charter. they were given a certain period of time (Quebec, for example, completed its revision, iirc, in 2000-2001).

the different provinces have slightly different obligations, depending on the terms in which they entered Canada, and subsequent rulings.For example, some provinces have to amend their laws in both french and english, others, english only or french only. Again, another reason for the timetable.

Also, seeing as pretty much every civil right is backed by the government, try to find something that ISN'T touched by the Constitution and Charter.

You're gay and want to get married? You have that right, not because the gov't syas so, but because the courts have ruled that the Charter says so.
You're a woman, and you want to go around topless in the street? Same thing. Bring a kirpan (a sikh religious knife) to grade school? Same thing?
Wear a turban in class? Same thing.
Wear a turban to work? Same thing.
Wear a burka while a cashier at WalMart? Same thing.

Think about it. How a cashier chooses to dress is a constitutionally protected charter right. The ONLY role the government has is protecting that right. Certainly, the government is NOT WalMart.

Re:No, I'm quite right, my good Canadian friend.

[tomhudson]

Your lawyer relative is out of date. See this post for further commentary, explaining the enabling legislation and the timetable requirements, as well as examples of non-government charter rights guaranteed everyone by the constitution.

Simply put, there is a Charter of Rights, and a Constitution to give them teeth. There was also a timetable in which to enact those rights (agreed to by 9 of the 10 provinces in the "night of the long knives").

Re:I agree with Telus' actions

[Wolvie MkM]

Kudos with your post I'm with you on this. Granted I've skimmed the posts and am not about to read all 400 or so but what seems to be lost is that Telus took this action after some jackasses cut the cable for phone service to a city that Telus serves.

And Telus is the bad guy for blocking a website which won't impact anyone? Please...

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[Anonymous Coward]

and the lazy (those who want to maximize their income for minimal labour).

I call bullshit here. Every employee should be out to maximize their income for minimal labour. It is certainly a major goal for every business owner. I believe its called increasing productivity. Why there is a double standard here is pretty obvious though.

Just love your anti-worker attitude.

Get the facts

[EraseEraseMe]

Because there's a lot of ignorance being posted here, I figured I'd chime in.

Telus went to the BC Supreme Court before blocking the website and asked for an injunction against it. It was approved and thus the site was blocked. (to telus customers only, of course).

Most of the Alberta side of the bargaining unit is crossing picket lines, it's only BC that seems to have a problem with a very nice new contract.

The union refuses to have a vote on the new contract because they'd lose, badly.

Unions vs workers? I side with workers.

[Anonymous Coward]

' Oh really? So...if you don't like the union, then vote with your feet! '

So it follows that the company can force you to join the NRA or the Catholic Church as a condition of employment? Like with a union, none of it has anything to do with your ability to do the job. If you are consistent, you are OK with this, right? Or the company can say if a woman won't sleep with the boss she will be fired? It is the same thing.

' Union security clauses in contracts just prevent free riders: in states where these clauses are illegal (talk about elimination of freedom of contract!) what usually happens is that a bunch of employees decide they want the benefits of the union (much higher wages) without paying the people who work at the union to provide these benefits '

That is an entirely bogus argument. There are no free riders: workers earn what they earn by working. Also, no one is forcing the union to get benefits for non-members. The term "benefits" is also dubious. In many cases, the "benefit" the union gets for the workers is massive layoffs or a relocation of the factory to Mexico.

' Don't want to pay for union representation? That's fine! Go work for a company that is non-union. Don't want to do that because the wages suck? Hmm. '

The wages are better if you go no-union (especially where the unions have wiped out major job sectors), and you get to keep more of your own money. You apparently have no problem with it being a condition of employment to have to pay money to political candidates who go against your interest.

' P.S. All unions in the USA are democratic, by law. So if the majority of people under the contract want to get rid of it, it's gone '

This would not be a problem if the rights of the workers were protected and each individual worker could decide to be a member or not.

' Also, in the USA, there is actually no such thing as a closed shop '

In the USA, most states are closed shop, and most union members are from closed shop. Until American workers have the choice, America works best when it says Union No.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

I expect there'll be some movement on this pretty quickly.

Maybe from the university, but certainly not from Premier Ralph "I never met a drink I didn't like, but let me test that one to make sure ..." Klein.

Ralph's a real fighter - he foght many a battle with the bottle, and the bottle always lost.

Constitutional?

[SleepyHappyDoc]

We have a pretty strong set of laws here regarding freedoms, like speech. I phoned my Member of Parliament's office already this morning regarding this issue, which I see as one of unlawful repression of free speech. I will be speaking with my provincial representative later today (lucky for me, I'm a party member) to see what she thinks about this action. If Telus gets shit on for violating the rights of this individual to free speech (they didn't block the website due to technical limitation or due to content that violated a law, they did so because they didn't like what it said), then I am all for it. Our government isn't at all afraid of companies like Telus....after all, we used to own them. And they have to follow the law like everyone else.

I urge all Canadians who read this to contact your respective members of provincial and federal government to express your displeasure at this action. If enough of us bitch in this time of minority governments and looming early elections, we might see this kind of action made explicitly illegal awful fast.

Re:Constitutional?

[deadtroll]

Actually in Canada we don't really have protected Freedom Of Speech. We should, but we don't. That's why the government is allowed to create "hate laws". I knew Telus sucked, but my GOD. What's next? Are they going to block the Union Office's phone number? Or did they already do that? wes Sysadmin Appreciation Day (July 29)

Re:Constitutional?

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

The union is putting the safety of the management replacement workers at risk. The union has been vandalizing telephone lines. Do you think none of them will consider attacking those workers? Why not? There were gunshots through windows of the Telus head office a year or so ago.

Telus is doing the right thing by protecting them. If they failed to do so, They'd face harsher penalties for not providing a safe workplace im sure.

This isn't a freedom of speech issue.
When the speech of one group endangers another innocent group or person's safety in society, freedom of speech is justly limited.

You could apply the hate-crime laws here im sure. The union is showing predjudice towards the Telus management who are crossing the picket line, and endangering their safety in the process.

Re:Constitutional?

[SleepyHappyDoc]

This isn't a freedom of speech issue.
When the speech of one group endangers another innocent group or person's safety in society, freedom of speech is justly limited

Google for bomb recipes. Find anything?

Should we ban Google? Should Google filter searches for bombs?

However, according to your logic, Telus should filter such information from their subscribers (wikipedia would be the first to go).

PLEASE CONTACT TELUS EXECUTIVE OFFICES

[FFFish]

I have just had a most frustrating conversation with someone in the Executive offices at Telus.

PLEASE SPEND A BUCK TO CALL THEM.

They seem to have no idea that their action is plain stupid. Most of you can access the site: it is only a small subset, those of us with Telus ADSL, that can not access it.

Please help get them on the cluetrain.

The executive claims that Telus is working with other ISPs to block access to the website, instead of using proper legal channels to force the TWU to remove the disputed photographs.

555 Robson Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V6B 3K9
phone (604) 697-8044
fax (604) 432-9681

It's worth the couple bucks it'll cost to clue these mofo's in that WE WILL NOT CONDONE SUCH ACTIONS.

Open Tor Proxy

[Sedennial]

I have a Tor onion router/proxy available at 64.95.182.163:8118 which will let you get to the site. Feel free to use it. The Tor network is still somewhat slow, but it works.

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're dumb.

WalMart

• uses Illegal child labor.
• forces people to work off the clock.
• discriminates against women.

Information just wants to be

[WillAffleckUW]

long to Big Brother.

Re:There's no monopoly

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I think *you* need to understand the difference between a government sponsored monopoly and a government regulated industry. Telcoms is the latter in Canada.

monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service

I don't know about where you live, but everywhere in both the U.S. and Canada that I have lived there is only one set of cable lines, phone lines, and power lines on the roadside poles and they are owned by the respective local monopoly. If there is only one legal provider of that service it is a monopoly. If the government is the one that controls who can offer said service, and they only allow one company to do so, it is a government sponsored monopoly. Where do you live that this is not the case?

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[BVis]

Wal-Mart prides itself on keeping many people firmly in the category of "employed at all", as well as in the category of "Providing less expensive goods for the poor." We just had a walmart super center open up here. The groceries at Wal-Mart are cheaper than the groceries at the other grocery stores in town - and not 5% cheaper, often 20% cheaper. That means the working poor just had their food bills go down 20%.

When that's hand-in-hand with 20% lower wages, there's no benefit. That supercenter is cheaper now because it's in the "destroy the competition" phase of its lifetime. When all the other supermarkets in the area go out of business (putting people out of work) you'll see those prices go up. And the people who are out of work will probably have to work at the supercenter at lower wages.

If someone is making minimum wage working at Wal-Mart, it's because they never developed any job skills worth more than the minimum wage

If someone is making minimum wage working at Wal-Mart, chances are that it's because all the other jobs they could do with their skill set have disappeared because Wal-Mart has crushed them. Believe it or not, customer service, inventory management, employee management, etc. are all job skills.

That's not Wal-Mart's problem. Wal-Mart shouldn't have to pay more money for employees than the employees are worth (as dictated by supply of labor with the requisite skill set)

This is true on a level playing field. However, a large part of Wal-Mart's business model is elimination of the competition. When there are fewer jobs available to workers in a given talent pool, wages go down. What the worker is worth isn't a consideration, it's how little they can get away with paying them.

and more importantly, I shouldn't have to pay more for groceries because people feel like they're entitled to more of my money 'just because', as it's ultimately me, the consumer, who pays for higher labor costs.

True, living wages would have an effect on consumer pricing, because big business would simply pass the costs on to the consumer instead of taking as much as a 1% hit to their profits. However, by paying as little as they do, Wal-Mart costs the American taxpayer (read: everyone, including you) billions of dollars each year. This might not make sense until you realize that the majority of people working at Wal-Mart, despite working full-time hours, 1) qualify for food stamps/welfare/WIC/$socialProgram, which costs the taxpayer money, and 2) do not have health insurance, which does not eliminate the need for medical care, as much as people would like to think it does. The taxpayer ends up picking up the tab for their health care in the form of Medicaid/uncompensated care programs.

I earned good grades in high school, went to collee, and now have a real job. Some of my classmates screwed around in high school, didn't go to college, and now work at Wal-Mart. We live in a society where you have the freedom of choice. Consequences are the price you pay for choice.

Lots of people earn good grades in high school, went to college (where they learned how to spell college), and wound up at Wal-Mart because it's the only place that would hire them without experience.
Living wages benefit everyone. Wal-Mart could easily afford to pay living wages and provide at least rudimentary health insurance for their full-time workers. They choose not to. The consequences of their actions are higher profits for the company, rich people getting richer, and millions of workers making it possible without receiving any of the benefits.

All so you can save 50 cents on a jar of pickles.

Look at the reasons before lashing out.

[matrix mechanic]

I heard on the CBC this morning that the reasons they are blocking access to the site was because:

• Workers that have crossed the picket line are being targeted, having their pictures posted on the site.
• The workers have been cutting phone lines, and the site contains instructions on how to disrupt phone service.

Right now hundreds of people are without 911 service because of the workers' actions. Who is the bad guy? Discuss.

Re:Look at the reasons before lashing out.

[AnimeFreak]

http://animefreak.ath.cx:9000/index.php/2005/07/24 /telus-tell-us-we-suck/

With your logic, here are valid reasons for blocking everything else.

Touche'

[mabu]

Fair enough. We block most of their IP space on port 25 anyway, because they're one of the largest sources of spam in North America.

People shouldn't complain to this company. They should not patronize them period. This latest issue is one of many that confirm Telus is a sleazy company that doesn't deserve patronage.

MOD PARENT UP PLEASE!

[WoTG]

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (not the Constitution) applies to governments only. Many, many people don't understand this! Other acts of government, such as Human Rights legislation apply similar guidelines of behavious to individuals and corporations.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[Kjella]

Well, I imagine they'll get their ass whupped, but not by the constitution. The right of expression is different from forcing someone to listen - or even to broker the communication. I have no right to be on CNN because my message should be heard by the viewers of CNN. That's not a violation of my freedom of expression. They could run into a lot of other problems this way, but not that one...

Kjella

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[shadowspar]

One problem with your analysis:

Application of Charter

32. (1)This Charter applies

a) to the Parliament and government of Canada in respect
of all matters within the authority of Parliament
including all matters relating to the Yukon Territory and
Northwest Territories; and

b) to the legislature and government of each province in
respect of all matters within the authority of the
legislature of each province.

Private entities aren't subject to Charter review. Of course, that doesn't mean that Telus won't get their ass beat down by a Human Rights Tribunal or some such.

(IANAL, but when your wife's a law student, you pick up a lot by osmosis.)

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

They're not preventing the web site from being hosted - they're preventing their users from accessing the web site. 2 different kettles of fish.

Some of those same users are Telus employees. That they are being blocked from accessing their union's web site is a serious issue.

The Constitutional/Charter guarantees of freedom of association help guarantee people's right to be in a union and communicate with other union members.

Now some of those same union members can't get to their union's web page even from home, on their own time.

Since they can't get ther, they also can't post - so their freedom of expression has also been curtailed, in respect to communicating with other union members.

Possibly violates contract as well

[jmbonnar]

From the account agreement

You acknowledge that the TELUS Internet Services provide access to content, information and materials that are uncensored. You acknowledge that some of the content, information and material that is available through the TELUS Internet Services and the Internet may be inaccurate, offensive, harmful or in violation of applicable laws. TELUS recommends that minors using the TELUS Internet Services be supervised by an adult.

(emphasis mine.)

Re:It only applies to the government?

[arbitraryaardvark]

Tom has followed up his previous post with more argument and examples (no actual cites to cases or suchlike) so at this point I don't know; it's not inconceevable that he could be right.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[Mashiki]

Point of point, the Government of Canada doesn't follow with section 2b, why should Telus really give two cares about what they are doing? The CRTC crams things down our throat in violation of the charter without choice(Cancon). Limits what media we can have in the country, and makes illegal other forms of media and satellite signals unless approved by the government itself.

Hypocrisy is paramount in Canada when dealing with this.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[Chibi Merrow]

Actually they'd probably be violating their contract as the Union would be a paying customer who was being denied service. Constitutional law wouldn't enter here. In the case of the website, I doubt the Union website is hosted by Telus and therefore no contract exists guaranteeing them any sort of service. Again, you don't understand Constitutional law or even rights for that matter.

Fishing

[MrYotsuya]

Yeah, it's totally like the Indians mismanaged the fisheries into oblivion, right?

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[Blakey Rat]

Let's say I want to be a school teacher. Show me a teaching position that's non-union. Seriously, I'm waiting... where is it?

You may be right about some unions, but many unions have a monopoly on the field they control. Try to star in a major motion picture without being a member of SAG. Try to be a teacher in Washington State without being in the WEA. It's impossible. In fact, that's the very reason I didn't go into education in college... I want to be a teacher, but I sure as hell don't want to support that union.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[MightyMartian]

Well, of course, Telus is free to do as they choose, but if I were a customer of them (it's bad enough that I can't choose a basic phone provider, I won't give them my Internet business), I'd be making a helluva fuss.

Telus has been a crappy company since it gobbled up Alberta and BC's telco companies. Last year their customer relations got so bad that the CRTC actually threatened to order a rollback of their rates. They had doctors and shutins who were waiting weeks to get repairs done, and while things have improved somewhat, Telus is, by and large, a company whose sole concern is the investors, and even their revenue sources (aka the customer) take a distant second place.

In short, Telus sucks, but because it has a monopoly on basic phone service, the consumer is left with no choice.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[antarctican]

Basic constitutional rights should solve this problem Telus has created, but beyond that there are "common carrier" agreements to think of. I reall either Yahoo or MSN dropping all monitoring of chat rooms about three years ago because they were challenged for not monitoring and censoring *all* rooms. Will this open a similar can of worms with Telus?

They do not consider this site acceptable and have blocked it, what's to stop another group from using this as precedent to demand another site they deem "unacceptable" blocked.

It's funny, just last week I was having a debate with my girlfriend who is a Chinese national, and she was defending the Great Firewall of China as a needed evil to maintain the stability of the country. I was saying how there is no situation that can justify restricting freedom of expression and knowledge. Last night she quickly pointed out that it seems Canada is no better. Telus is putting themselves on par with a murderous regeim, nice when it comes to basic freedoms, nice.

This matter can be allowed to slide. As a Telus customer I can't access that site from home, I can't get all sides of the story in this despute. That is not right.

I tried to complain to the CRTC, however the CRTC does not regulate ISPs (unfortunately). They claim internet service is competative enough it doesn't need regulating.... in this case we see that's not true. I have only two options for high speed internet, ADSL or cable. Sure there are other ADSL providers, but they all use Telus' copper. So even if I were to switch to one of these other providers, I still can't get around the block. It's these other providers that should be screaming bloody murder, the mandated openning of phone company infrastructure obviously has limits on how open it is.

Re:It only applies to the government? yes

[arbitraryaardvark]

http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid= 2222&dekey=McKinney+v.+University+of+Guelph&gwp=8& curtab=2222_1&linktext=McKinney%20v.%20University% 20of%20Guelph
this wikipedia entry discusses cases saying the canadian free speech clause limits government, not private parties.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[spikexyz]

You might want to read the charter, particularly section 32. The CHARTER only applies to governments. Provincial Bills of Right apply elsewhere.

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[theglassishalf]

You don't have to be a member of the union, but you do need to pay agency fee dues. It's a simple system, you pay only for money that goes directly for contract negotiation or dealing with grievances. That's true everywhere in the country.

All Unions in the US are democratic. It's the law. If you think the leadership is bad (and in some cases, it really is), then vote the bums out.

Oh, and there are PLENTY of jobs in education that are non-represented. Work for a private school. Work in special education. You won't make as much money, or be treated as well. Deal with it; that's the life you choose when you don't have a union.

-Daniel

Telus - nasty company

[Peteski_BC]

I once worked for Telus. This comes as little surprise to me. Telus is a greedy, evil, employee - hostile compmany that has nothing but contempt for it's workers and it's customers. As an employee I was treated like poo. As a customer they are worse. Telus has more officially registered complaints against them than any other telco in Canada. This is a perfect example of how monopoly companies grow into huge organizations that spit on thier customers. I feel sorry for the employees. Telus needs to have government intervention take place for this to be resolved. Even more reason to consider VOIP and drop your phone line for good. I feel better now. I'll go away and get back to work now . .

Re:Telus - nasty company

[sugarmotor]

I'm told all lines in British Columbia are owned by Telus, and only rented by other providers.

Re:There's no monopoly

[James Cape]

Yes, it's called "the government".

TELUS TOS

[jack37]

Acceptable Use of the TELUS Internet Services

38. The TELUS Internet Services may be used only for lawful purposes. You agree that you will not:
9. post, upload, reproduce, distribute or otherwise transmit information or materials where such activity gives rise to civil liability, or otherwise violate the rights or assist others to violate the rights of TELUS or any third party; such violations include but are not limited to engaging in copyright infringement, trade-mark infringement, patent infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets and defamation;

Re:Is it their network? unnatural monopolies

[arbitraryaardvark]

The thing about natural monopolies is that the market interprets a monopoly as damage, and routes around it. This can take awhile, up to ten years, and be messy and complicated.
The solution so far has been that they are regulated by the government.
My beef isn't so much with parent poster, who is just being descriptive, but with people who buy into that idea, and the regulators who know better but perpetuate the system.
Regulation of phone/electric/streetcar/etc monopolies dates largely from 1908 and Roosevelt.
Anything that had monopolistic concentration at that time tended to get regulated, so in 2005 we are stuck with these kludges of systems.
It was the cost-plus regulated electric monopoly
that resulted in US style nukes, that the non-nuke liberals protested so vigorously. The market tends not to build nukes - there are smaller decentralized more efficient ways to get things done.
In 1908 economists genuinely thought they were doing the right thing. In 2005 they know better, although many voters remain rationally ignorant of how regulatory monopolies are harmful and evil.

Whose property?

[BlueStraggler]

Which part is their property? The network that was paid for with massive public subsidies? The lines that are strung up on public lands? The telecom empires that were built upon government-granted monopolies?

Easy answer - Yes

[Stoutlimb]

Safety trumps freedom of speech. As in... The union's freedom of speech ends when they start threatening people who cross the picket line. Self defence makes it ok.

If I was a manager, and I saw my picture and personal information on a union blog, along with the pictures of some people who had crossed the picket line, along with threats and intimidation on that website, I would do whatever it takes to take that site down, even if it breaks some regulations.

The union decided to start threatening people, and singling them out with their home addresses and telephone numbers, and threats. This is BAD, much worse than anything Telus has done!

So even if Telus did break the law, there ain't a jury in Canada that would convict them.

And there shouldn't be.

Bork!

Like the US

[klept]

Of course they should not censer or filter any web pages to their site. Sounds like this company is trying to act like US firms, which can get away with that under the current regime. Essentially what this ISP did is commit theft. The people who paid for that web service have a right to all content on the web. If they dont want to read something, or see certain sites, they can filter it themselves , and that is their right. It is also my right if I want to read it.

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[rhavyn]

North Carolina teachers are employees of the state and there is no union. That's all public school teachers in every public school in the state of North Carolina.

Telus & The University of Calgary

[benow]

As an aside, the bandwidth for the University of Calgary is provided by Telus. The negotiated contract was for campus wide %99.999 uptime and 10ms redundant failover. As a result, bandwidth is super expensive for the campus, with bit-mongering galore. Students who have paid large sums of money for their education are sitting in a communications vacuume while on or thru U of C facilities. There seems to be very little knowledge of the situation outside campus networking and no will or momentum (or ability?) to change the system and allow for more thruput and more research/community based higher-bandwidth usage.

When AGT (a public entity) was privatized it became Telus. Since the privatization the service level has not increased much (not even keeping up with tech advances). There's more advertising and more PR and more expansionism, but little more in the way of services. Unfortunatly for western Canada, there's very little other choice.

Re:Telus & The University of Calgary

[ov3rt1r3d]

You're either misinformed or you're lying.

Two sides to every story

[olivercromwell]

I was listening to the local talk radio here on the way to work, and they had a union rep, and a Telus rep on the line to discuss this. Evidently, Telus elected to block the page due to the union showing union members and contract workers who crossed the picket line on the web page. Since then, that content has apparently been taken down. Telus claims they took the action to protect the privacy of what it says are the 50% of the union members who showed up to work today. If in fact the union had been showing the faces of members who showed up for work, then I would say Telus did the right thing. Anyhow, you can still see the page on Telus's network as it has been proxied by someone. This is just part of a 4 year pissing match between management and the union. And believe me, both sides are equally F***** up, and intransigent.

Re:3 cents on this

[sugarmotor]

From

http://www.union-network.org/unitelecom.nsf/0/E7F3 360ECF861CB0C12570460028058B?OpenDocument

"...the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) have ruled once again that Telus has interfered with the TWU's representation rights and failed to bargain in good faith. Both actions are contraventions of the terms of the Canada Labour Code."

... or nyud.net url

[benow]

voices-for-change.com via nyud.net.

Re:For crying out loud

[aduzik]

Your analogy doesn't hold, because the Telus employees are using their employer's equipment to attack them. I'm having a hard time imagining how you're going to use your green hair and chlorinated water to attack the water department.

Here's a (perhaps) better analogy: if I own a hardware store, and I rent a sledge hammer to you (yeah, it's a weird hardware store... I know) and you use it to smash up the place and threaten my employees, don't you think, just maybe, it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable for me to ask for it back. I'll give your deposit back, even.

I guess what I want to know is this: why should a company invest its resources and money into hosting a site that calls for its demise? As an executive in that company, it would be wrong of them to leave it up there, for the safety and wellbeing of their other employees, as well as themselves.

I'll bet there are other people in that union who are embarrassed by this little happening, as it gives all of them a bad name, not just the ones who support such an action. In my experience, threatening the people who have what you want makes them all the more determined not to give it to you.

Hell, in the long run, it may be better for the union employees who posted it in the first place. If there are any inaccurate accusations intended to damage Telus's reputation, they could easily be sued for libel (if Canada's laws are anything like Britain's). I really don't understand why this is some big "censorship" argument. I see this as a reasonable action by a company protecting its own interests against those who would harm it.

But is it open and shut?

[briancnorton]

Let's pretend you're a TV station. If somebody makes a documentary about how bad your TV station is, do you HAVE to air it? Of course not. Nobody is telling the website operator that they can't have the page up, but one company is choosing not to carry it. That makes them jackasses, not criminals. I don't know the ins and outs of Canadian law, but I am guessing that there is no legal recourse against them, and it will take market pressure to change fix it.

Re:But is it open and shut?

[tomhudson]

They're preventing their customers from accessing ther site.

Some of those customers are also Telus employees.

So Telus is preventing employees from accessing their union site on their own (not company) time.

We have pretty decent labour legislation in Canada (including anti-scab laws, etc) - no company has the right to interfere with employees communicating with their union on their own time.

Re:But is it open and shut?

[briancnorton]

but are those employees force to use that ISP? I am guessing not. Nothing stopping them from getting "COL" or MSN or whatever. Now if they are a regulated monoploy like the rest of the people's republic of canada, that's different. :-)

Re:But is it open and shut?

[tomhudson]

They are part of the regulated triopoly - Bell Canada, Telus, and Rogers.

GRrrrr

[teknokracy]

The union had their chance to accept a fair pay increase from Telus, they really are making such a huge fuss of all this, like any union does. I for one really don't like unions and didnt even really support anything when i was a member of the UFCW working for Safeway... they just seem to indoctrinate and bite the hand that feeds them, so to speak.

This is what the police is for

[Imazalil]

While I agree with you that the website should not be up as it most likely will lead to violence of some form, Telus does not have the right to block this site on a whim.

If they have a case, they should get the police involved, explained their case, and have a cease & desist order with them, then they can block the site and demand it gets taken down. Telus blocking the site does not achieve anything, customers of other services can access the site, Telus customers can just use a proxy.

Does it make you feel better that your sister's risk of rape is reduced by 30-odd percent because telus is blocking the site. Hey 70 is better than 100% but it's still much highter than it should be , no?

If telus feels that I should not see this site, why are they allowing me to see unwanted advertisements, child pornography, animal abuse and cruelty, recruiting sites for neo-nazi's and islamic, christian, protestant, jewish, budhist, hindu extremists (sorry to leave other religions out, you're included in spirit) some old guy's asshole, etc. If they feel the need to take down this one thing, are they not now responsible for all the other crap that is online?

What if the CEO of Telus, or the union for that matter, was caught in a child & animal prostitution ring, should that info be sensored because it could lead to the CEO's harm. This is the precedent Telus is setting.

Re:Reasonable? No. But that doesn't matter

[GeckoX]

Again, we don't work that way up here.

The contracts are monitored and approved by the CRTC, essentially. If an illegal contract is brough to their attention, they'll fine the offending company. It never goes to court.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[karlandtanya]

To what does the "fundamental freedoms" part of the Canadian Constitution apply?
Government?
Or people in general?

Re:Unions are old and broken..

[mark-t]

Finding another job requires first of all that one find an employer that is willing to hire them.

What's that? There's lots of jobs paying minimum wage available? True enough.

But second of all it requires finding an employer that won't fire them before their probation is up for some lame-ass reason like "you're not fitting in", or "things aren't working out", which I have observed is all too common for employers to do when they pay their employees so little that they are essentially disposable. Having too many brief job stints like this radically reduces one's overall employability, even _in_ their field of specialization, so it's really not as simple as just "finding another job".

Securing a job is as much a matter of luck as it is anything else these days.

Union isn't exactly being innocent itself..

[Rascally]

http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/ story.html?id=8c884bfe-1dd6-40f5-92eb-e99f4d891aa3

why shouldn't a grocery bagger make $25/hour

[Imazalil]

If a person has to a job - no matter if it's bagging groceries or running an IT department - should that person not be expected to make a viable career of it? Jobs that are more complex mentaly and physicaly should be more rewarding of course, but face it someone will have to man the local McDonalds for a few more decades, why shouldn't that be a viable career? I have my problems with unions, but they seem to balance out pretty well with my problems with 'management'. I would be curious, what field of work and position are you in?

Re:why shouldn't a grocery bagger make $25/hour

[toiletmonster]

why shouldn't a grocery bagger make $25/hour

because other people are willing to take the job at $8 an hour.

Re:why shouldn't a grocery bagger make $25/hour

[toiletmonster]

why shouldn't a grocery bagger make $25/hour

because other people are willing to take the job at $8/hour but unions prevent the $8/hour people from getting the job.

Nothing new here...

[abner23]

From http://www.allianceibm.org/

Attention IBM employees:

IBM is blocking e-mail to and from the Alliance@IBM e-mail address endicottalliance@stny.rr.com from inside the company. Please send your job cut information and other correspondence from your home e-mail.

What they neglect to mention...

[Misao-Chan]

Although I disagree with the company's attempt at censorship (duct tape over mouth = bad), is that on the voices for change site, the TWU has been taking pictures of employees going to work, and posting them on the website with derragortory comments, with the intention to intimidate and harass them.

Still not reason enough to do a blanket gag over it, but it does make you think about what is really going on.

Re:For crying out loud

[belg4mit]

The hardware store analogy ignores my first point, being a public service/infrastructure. If I own a toll bridge, and it's the only way to get across town, I cannot ban my enemies, people I've fired or those who complain about unfair practices. Concessions were made when the bridge was built, and it is there to serve, even if I get to make money.

We need to revisit the concept of corporate charters, and the idea that businesses are allowed to exist only in so much as they serve the public good.

Constitution, schmonstitution.

[Webmoth]

I can't speak in terms of Canada's constitution, but constitutions in general are written to define the powers of government and not individuals, enterprises, not-for-profits, or other non-governmental organizations. A constutition SHOULD place strict and severe limits on the powers of goverments and their subordinate organizations, and grant all rights of freedom to its people -- including the right to step on the freedoms of fellow citizens.

In America, our Constitution conatains this nifty little clause, popularly known as the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

You'll notice that this applies to CONGRESS (and, by extension, other governmental organizations), not to individuals. This means that I don't have to listen to your Radical Islamist Tripe (I can go elsewhere), and you don't have to listen to me evangelize my Christian beliefs (You, too, can go elsewhere). Likewise, I don't have to print your propaganda in my newspaper, and Al Jazeera doesn't have to repeat my preaching. Nevertheless, the idea that you don't have to listen to me doesn't extend to say that you can supress my speech in a public venue (In the United States, newspapers, ISPs, television, and radio are NOT public venues).

Part of freedom...of the press is the right to refuse to print articles, or in this case, to refuse access to content to a subscriber.

I do not know if Telus is a private enterprise, a public entity, or an authorized private monopoly. Nevertheless, I believe a private enterprise which wishes to censor content within its organization or on its infrastructure should have every right to do so. If, however, Telus is an authorized monopoly then perhaps they should be regulated by a different rulebook.

money under the mattress theory

[toiletmonster]

All they are doing is funneling more and more money from the bottom up, with none of it moving the other way.

The only way money could go to the top with out coming back down is if the people at the top put their dollar bills under the mattress. The people at the top either buy stuff, or invest it, or put in the bank. Any way you look at it jobs and growth are created. More venture capital means more companies and more jobs for everyone from construction, to janitors, to executives.

Capitalism is nice, but I don't consider it a free market when one unit wields so much power

Just because one company dominates a particular area of commerce doesn't make it unfair. If walmart ever started to have poor performance other companies would come in to take a piece of the pie. See target for example.

And by the way walmart never lobbied any politician for anything until recently. Walmart actually earns its money, unlike unions who spend pretty much all of their dues (about half of which is forced from unwilling members) on paying off politicians.

sue 'em

[um... Lucas]

In the past, insofar as illegal activities have went through an ISP (ie, file sharing/copyright infringement), ISP's would say they had no control of the content going through their network. Since this one apparently is, who ever has material tha is being "infringed" by a user of the ISP should be able to sue. Afterall, they've opened themselves up for it. They can't plead no knowledge on one hand and on the other hand selectively filter websites based on content of politcal view.

Even users who are offended by things should complain to them.

Something like that needs to happen, just to show others that they can't start selectively doing stuff like this...

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[raehl]

When that's hand-in-hand with 20% lower wages, there's no benefit. That supercenter is cheaper now because it's in the "destroy the competition" phase of its lifetime. When all the other supermarkets in the area go out of business (putting people out of work) you'll see those prices go up. And the people who are out of work will probably have to work at the supercenter at lower wages.

It's a benefit to me, since my wages havn't gone down and my groceries are cheaper, just like it's a benefit to everyone else who doesn't work at Wal-Mart.

Of course, your whole point assumes that Wal-Mart pays its employees less than other retailers. This is unlikely to be true.

Additionally, Wal-Mart never gets out of kill-the-competition mode. It's not like Wal-Mart is the only company that has supercenters - you may kill off a local grocery or two, but some will remain just because many people like to buy grocieries at the place that is closest to their home. And other companies have a business model similar to walmart - walmart may be better at it, but there's also Target supercenters, Meijer supercenters, and whatever else there is outside of the Midwest.

If someone is making minimum wage working at Wal-Mart, chances are that it's because all the other jobs they could do with their skill set have disappeared because Wal-Mart has crushed them. Believe it or not, customer service, inventory management, employee management, etc. are all job skills.

And...? If Wal-Mart has figured out how to sell grocereies without needing to pay people to manage inventory, that's a GOOD thing - it allows our economy to be more productive. Automotive assembly is a job skill, but one of the reasons our cars are so good but stilll affordable is automated assembly. That means a lot fewer people are employed building cars, but cars are also a lot cheaper. The benefits elsewhere in the economy of cheaper cars outweigh the cost to the economy of the lost assembly jobs. The same is tue here - if we don't need to pay people to manage inventory, then we can take that cost out of the good, and then consumers can spend that money on something else. Like electronics.

This is true on a level playing field. However, a large part of Wal-Mart's business model is elimination of the competition. When there are fewer jobs available to workers in a given talent pool, wages go down. What the worker is worth isn't a consideration, it's how little they can get away with paying them.

This is true for EVERY business that exists in a competitive environment, so what's your point?

True, living wages would have an effect on consumer pricing, because big business would simply pass the costs on to the consumer instead of taking as much as a 1% hit to their profits.

Huh? Could you be using a number like 1% because it's small and easier to pull out of your ass? Maybe you mean 1% of revenue? Minimum wage is what, $5.15? Let's assume Wal-Mart pays its work force minimum wage (which it doesn't), and let's say Wal-Mart were, just because it suddenly decides to be a welfare company, to raise everyone's wage to $6.2. That's a 20% increase.

In order for that 20% increase to ONLY result in a 1% change in expenses, wages would need to make up less than 5% of expenses, which is obviously too low, but we'll assume you meant that it wouldonly make a 1% difference in expenses and that, if you had actually said that, you'd be right.

Wal-Mart made 2.5 billion in net income on 70.6 billion in revenue in Q1CY05, leaving 69.1 billion in expenses. 1% of 69.1 billion is 690 million - or over 25% of profit, not 1%. Andthat's after giving you several very generous assumptions. Clearly, whatever you were trying to say here is just made-up garbage.

However, by paying as little as they do, Wal-Mart costs the American taxpayer (read: everyone, including you) billions of dollars each year. This might not make sense until you realize that the majority of people wor

Re:Point 1.

[despisethesun]

If I had to peg it, I would say southern Alberta, small town, maybe Brooks? Nothing against Alberta, lived there, loved it. But no one grows rednecks like Alberta.

Someone's never been to Saskatchewan or eastern BC.

Let me rephrase that for you...

[RedBear]

Is it reasonable for an ISP to censor webpages they don't agree with during contract negotiations?

Here, let me rephrase that for you:

Is it reasonable for an [any organization that controls anything public] to censor [anything] they don't agree with during [some event]?

Answer: NO. It is never reasonable. Not under any circumstances. Any organization that stoops to doing this can never be trusted again. How do you know what else they have/are/will censor?

Re:Let me rephrase that for you...

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

In general I agree

But what about the safety of the Telus Management who are replacing the strikers ... the people in the blocked photos? They must go to work. They aren't in the union.

In Canada, some of the basic freedoms are justly limited when someone or a group's safety is in danger. ... another example is anti-hate laws.

Sound unreasonable? ... well at least the Canadian Government has Judges with enough balls to strike down laws that break our constitution, unlike the American judges who have let the Patriot Act stand and be extended with its many illegalities and abuses.

Life has far more freedom up here.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[Darby]

Well, I don't think the reason that you got a hostile response has anything to do with differing viewpoints or you playing devil's advocate. It has to do with the fact that you are dead wrong and don't even understand the actual issue.

If you did, then you wouldn't keep on harping on about "free market" and Telus's rights to do what they will with their network.
As was already pointed out to you before you typed this response, this has nothing at all to do with a free market. (nice idiotic jab about slashdotters being anti free market as well. Too bad you don't even know what one is though, right? Hot tip monopolies and corporate welfare are anethema to a free market)

They are a monopoly. Therefore to give them the rights you want to would utterly destroy the rioghts of everybody in their coverage area.
These are simple concepts, so your attempt to look like you were actually trying to look after poor little Telus's rights when you don't even have the foggiest understanding of the subject just makes you look silly and sycophantic.

Re:For crying out loud

[aduzik]

Actually, you can ban your enemies, people you've fired, or those who complain about unfair practices unless there's specific legislation to stop you. Never seen protesters escorted out of a store, have you? Hell, until the US passed a friggin Constitutional amendment, it was legal to deny even the the most basic of public services to people on the basis of their race. (By the way, there are a lot of groups that aren't covered by that amendment. And even for the ones that are, it's not exactly a cakewalk.)

And your mythical bridge would be neither a toll bridge, nor privately owned if it's the only way across town. In fact, when have you ever seen privately owned roadways? Governments exist for the public good, not businesses. Businesses exist to make a profit. But everyone's got a profit motive, haven't they? Even (especially?) the Telus union. After all, they're holding out for more money. I doubt they give a shit about the public good if they're willing to undermine the company by threatening its employees.

BTW: Telus, you know, used to be a public entity. Just like BT. If you want to blame someone for their monopoly status, blame the Canadian government. Competition is good. So are bananas. Bananas are good.

I'm shocked...

[Stoutlimb]

That geeks on Slashdot are against network admins defending their network and infrastructure. Infrastructure also includes personnel and management.

If some union dweeb was DDOS'ing a Telus server, would the admin have the right to ban (CENSOR) certain IP addresses or ranges? Damn straight he would.

If some union dweeb was using the Web to threaten and harass network staff, the admin has the right to ban (CENSOR) that traffic. Damn straight, and rightly so.

I'm all for the union to stick it to Telus, as I think Telus management are dicks, and in general, Telus staff have gotten the short end of the stick. However heavy handed and illegal tactics by unions are nothing new, and self defence is rightly justifiable when the few union hotheads get out of line.

If the Union apologised for any illegal stuff on it's site, and promised to keep that stuff of the net from now on, then I think Telus should allow access again. But not before that.

As to you Slashdot-robots who are screaming how Telus is wrong for censoring, open your mind and tell me how you would react if it was YOUR network staff who's safety was being threatened. Hell, half of you were glad when that spammer was murdered, imagine if someone actually THREATENED your staff.

Stop, think, and get off your high horses people.

Re:I'm shocked...

[StrongAxe]

As to you Slashdot-robots who are screaming how Telus is wrong for censoring, open your mind and tell me how you would react if it was YOUR network staff who's safety was being threatened. Hell, half of you were glad when that spammer was murdered, imagine if someone actually THREATENED your staff.

Well, considering that their ban will ONLY protect their network staff from Telus customers and nobody else, it's a pretty shoddy security measure. It owuld be far more effective to go to a judge to get an injunction against the site itself, and possibly file a lawsuit (assuming, of course that judge would buy their arguments).

Re:I'm shocked...

[Mr. Slippery]

However heavy handed and illegal tactics by unions are nothing new

Heavy handed and illegal tactics by the state and by owners are also nothing new, indeed are far more common.

Re:Unions vs workers? There is no such thing

[theglassishalf]

I'm not going to cover most of your arguments (the NRA/sexual harrasment analogy doesn't make any sense, and you need to look real closely at the definition of democracy).
However, I will talk about a couple of them.
You missunderstand the term "free rider." In this case, the free rider is the person who gets the benefit from a union contract, but refuses to pay the union dues that support that contract. Union securty clauses in contracts are the only effective way to prevent free-riding.
Unions are non-profit organizations; your money goes to pay the wages of the people who negotiate and defend the contract.
Finally, in the US, DUES MONEY CAN'T GO TO POLITICAL CANDIDATES. I can't be more clear about that. It's already illegal, it doesn't happen. When you see union political ads, they are funded by the union's PAC, which is funded through volentary contributions.

-Daniel

Re:Forced membership

[theglassishalf]

You're cute.

I won't bother with the rest of your comments, except to let you know that you're compleatly wrong about the political thing (I work for a labor union, and I know the hoops we go through to make sure that no agency fee money goes to anything even remotely political, and that no dues money goes to political ads, etc...so I'm going to trust my experience over your venom.), and to inform you that, in fact, most union members voted for the union. That's how it got there in the first place. In fact, the union can be voted out at any time with a simple majority. The workers do decide. You just don't like their choice.

-Daniel

Re:For crying out loud

[belg4mit]

You seem to be incapable of distinguishing apples from oranges.

In any event, there are many privately owned roadways in the US. For example http://www.c-b.com/information%20center/transporta tion/ic.asp?tID=23&pID=85&issue=5&p=2 and there may soon be more http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050630/ts_nm/bizhighw ays_dc

Get the facts

[__aadmub498]

You are wrong on both counts. Check your facts again. There has been no court injunction granted, Telus just decided to do this on their own. "Most" of Alberta is not crossing, but like BC, a "few" are. The new contract is "nice" for some employees, but crap for others. It is the Union's responsibility to ensure fair representation for all union employees, including the call centers which are without a doubt going to be outsourced to Ambergris Solutions (70% owned by Telus) which is located in Manila. BTW, I don't work for Telus, but have friends and neighbours that do.

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[archgoon]

Flamebait? An unpopular opinion, perhaps, but the parent poster has made an argument, and has not verbally attacked any other user, unlike the child AC who has been modded up.

Telus' Side (if you care)

[nirvanafreek]

Not to come to the defense of a Telus, which I generally consider to be entirely evil, but I saw this story on the TV News last night (I live in Vancouver, BC, Canada). Telus claims that they blocked access to the site because the site contains photos of non-union workers who have not given their permission for the union to user their images. That's basically bogus if you ask me, it's kind of selective enforcment of a law. If telus blocked access to any site that had picutures of people without their permission, or offered other illegal/questionable material, there wouldn't be much of an Internet left. But telus dosn't really supply access to the Internet anyways as they block all traffic to and from their clients on port 25 (smtp). That was the last straw for me. I live in BC, do everyting I can to avoid Telus.

Re:Telus' Side (if you care)

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

I too hate Telus, and live in Vancouver.

Your story is slightly incorrect.

The photos the Union are trying to show are Telus's 'strike contingency workers' ... Telus Management doing the jobs the strikers would usually do. They are the non-unionized management ... not non-unionized replacement workers.

Considering how the strikers have apparently started vandalizing phone lines in a bizarre attempt to get public support, I think its perfectly reasonable to block the images of the Telus Scabs lest they too get 'vandalized'.

The people crossing the line have every right to do so. No one, not even them deserves to be a victim of assault.

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[BVis]

Of course, your whole point assumes that Wal-Mart pays its employees less than other retailers. This is unlikely to be true.

Quite true. (warning, pdf.)Paraphrasing, the average supermarket worker makes $10.35 an hour, while the average Wal-mart clerk makes $8.23 an hour. This isn't open to debate, it's fact, as verified by multiple independent sources.

And...? If Wal-Mart has figured out how to sell grocereies without needing to pay people to manage inventory, that's a GOOD thing - it allows our economy to be more productive.

Except when people can't afford to buy groceries anymore.

Let's assume Wal-Mart pays its work force minimum wage (which it doesn't), and let's say Wal-Mart were, just because it suddenly decides to be a welfare company, to raise everyone's wage to $6.2. That's a 20% increase.

In order for that 20% increase to ONLY result in a 1% change in expenses, wages would need to make up less than 5% of expenses, which is obviously too low, but we'll assume you meant that it wouldonly make a 1% difference in expenses and that, if you had actually said that, you'd be right.

Wal-Mart made 2.5 billion in net income on 70.6 billion in revenue in Q1CY05, leaving 69.1 billion in expenses. 1% of 69.1 billion is 690 million - or over 25% of profit, not 1%.

Granted, my numbers were off, and it's clear that they weren't meant to be accurate, I was speaking in hyperbole. But you've proven the point I was trying to make: they could do it if they wanted to.

How does that cost me billions of dollars? If we were to assume this were true, which it isn't, wouldn't every other grocery store not paying its workers health insurance also be costing the tax payers billions of dollars?

Yes, actually. The numbers go into the billions for Wal-Mart because they're the world's largest retailer.

Where is this money going to come from? We've already shown that it's well beyond the ability of Wal-Marat to cover this with their profits

Disproven above, using your own numbers. 1.875 billion is still a ton of money for one quarter's business.

so short of the company going out of business, that means prices will have to go up, prices paid by.... oh yeah, the consumers/taxpayers.

You said yourself:

Eitehr we pay for everyone's healthcarein higher prices for goods, or we pay for it in taxes.

So we pay it either way.

Wal-Mart's business practices are cost-neutral in regards to tax payers.

Health insurance gives their insured access to medical care in such a way that efficiencies of scale and the benefits of negotiated rates can be realized. When an uninsured patient gets rolled into an ER after getting hit by a bus, it costs a lot more for the state to pick up their tab than an HMO. So no, it isn't cost-neutral. The amount that prices would have to rise to pay for health insurance for the workers would be exceeded by the amount of money saved by the taxpayers.

Lower prices aren't always a good thing. It's a vicious cycle: Consumers demand lower prices. Retailers (not just Wal-Mart) cut salary/benefits to workers. Workers can no longer afford existing prices. Retailers have to lower prices more, so they cut more salary/benefits. Workers can no longer afford existing prices. Lather, rinse, repeat. It's unsustainable. Improvements in efficiency are finite. Eventually retailers can't lower prices any more without going broke, and the economy implodes. Everyone loses.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[antarctican]

he University of Alberta, located in Edmonton, AB, uses Telus as it's primary ISP. By arbitrarily blocking this site, without consultation with the customer(s), they've breached a contract with the University, and by extension, the Alberta government. I expect there'll be some movement on this pretty quickly.

Ha! Doubtful, this is ALBERTA we're talking about. I'm sure King Ralph and his buddies would love the fact Telus is taking on these unionized workers. Can't let those lefties gain any support or have anything interfere in unfettered capitalism.

Alberta do anything that would help a union or worker's cause? Not in my lifetime. Remember, they're the home of the Canadian Alliance (or whatever mask they're going by this year).

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[Anonymous Luddite]

>> In short, Telus sucks, but because it has a monopoly on basic phone service, the consumer is left with no choice.

Fortunately where I live, I don't need to use them for anything. I do have a telus phone laying around somewhere, but haven't used it in years. It'll be a cold day in hell before I give them another cent of my money. I'm using a different carrier for cell now and have zero complaints.

>> even their revenue sources (aka the customer) take a distant second place.

Eventually the marketplace sorts this sort of shit out.

They give specific information

[Dire Bonobo]

> They also say the information on the union's site is somehow damaging to
> Telus and endangers their employees. Also the always loved claim of
> "they're distributing our proprietary information!" without
> elaborating on what that information is SCO-style.

Plenty of articles reporting this---such as this one---give specific information on what Telus objects to on the blocked website:

"the company said the site suggested striking workers jam Telus phone lines, and posted pictures of employees crossing the union picket lines.

Telus spokesman Drew Mcarthur said advocating jamming lines hurt the company, and access to the pictures threatened the privacy and safety of employees."

However, I have to agree with everyone who says this was a deeply stupid idea. Several phone lines supplying communities of hundreds of people have been cut (see same link), which one would expect Telus to use to turn public opinion against the locked-out union members. As it is, they've committed a massive PR blunder---one that has now been picked up by national news services in Canada and widely distributed---that will weigh against them for (literally) years when people decide whether to use their service. According to comments on the union web site (unblocked proxy here), that's already started to happen. It's like they're trying to disprove the idea that no publicity is bad publicity...

It should also be interesting to see whether this is legal. While the Charter doesn't directly prevent censorship by private entities, Telus has a regional monopoly on local telephone service, and so quite possibly may be vulnerable to legal measures.

Re:They give specific information

[KDR_11k]

"Encouraging jamming" isn't "posting proprietary information". They claimed both and didn't say what that proprietary information is.

Re:Forced membership

[Anonymous Coward]

> Are you totally unaware of the contradiction in what you said? Do you
> realize that if you are forced to pay dues to something, you are
> being forced to be a member?

I'm forced to pay taxes to the US government - does that mean I'm a member of the US government? Or a member of the US, even? (I'm not - I'm a legal resident alien.)

Being forced to pay dues does not mean you're de facto a member; what it does mean is that the company has decided to negotiate salaries and benefits with a designated representative of its employees, and all employees must pay their share of what it costs to run that representative. Since all workers benefit from that representative's negotiating, all workers pay for that service.

As for the rest of your complaints, well, this is the internet, remember; nobody believes a rant unless it's backed up by evidence. Unions have certainly been known to do bad things, so the evidence may well be out there, but without that evidence, you're not convincing anyone.

Not even someone who actively resisted being unionized, like me.

the union ought to sue these guys

[swschrad]

weasels.

Re:Reasonable? No. But that doesn't matter

[Miros]

yeah, in the US the government cant invalidate contracts line that.

The union is a scumbag, but does that justify it?

[Noishe]

I am currently affected by the telus union's worker strike. Considering that the union is cutting customer's telephone lines and threatening senior management with threats, I really have no sympathy at all for the union and whether they are blocked or not.

As a user of Telus Velocity...

[scott_karana]

As a user of Telus Velocity, I'm surprised they haven't censored this Slashdot article.

Re:Actually...

[dryeo]

Thats only half the story. The other half was BC Tel which also laid most of their infrastructure using tax dollars.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

to the legislature and government of each province in
respect of all matters within the authority of the
legislature of each province

What you're pointing out is the enabling legislation that REQUIRES both the feds and the provinces to bring their laws into line with the charter.

In other words, provincial laws were required to be updated so that they respected the freedoms guaranteed in the charter. The deadline was either 2000 or 2001.

So now all provinces are required to have legislation that protects the rights guaranteed by the charter, etc.

This was necessary because, while, for example, the criminal code is federal law, it is the provinces that enforce it.

So, yes, private entities can now be sued at the provincial level for violating charter rights. Its done all the time. Private schools are taken to court in respect to freedom of religion in regards to religious headgear, employers are taken to court for similar reasons, etc - because now the framework is there for people to take legal action at the provincial level.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

The section you are refering to was enabling legislation that required the feds and the provinces to bring their laws into line with the charter. The deadline was about 5 years ago.

So now, you don't have to "make a federal case" out of it - you can sue provincially.

If sec. 32 hadn't been included, there would have been no requirement for the either the feds or the provinces to amend their laws to respect the charter.

Privacy Issues with the website

[Kernel Kurtz]

Not that I agree with Telus' actions, as they are not a judge, but there are questions about the legality of some of the content on the union's website. They are supposedly publishing names, addresses, and pictures of union members crossing the picket lines. I think its pretty likely that this is in violation of both provincial and federal protection of privacy laws.

It will be interesting to see this go to court.

Free Publicity and Stupidity

[dotlin]

Agreed - it just gave the union free publicity. A contributing factor is that tensions have been running high with cut phone lines and union pickets impeding repairs.

http://vancouver.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?file name=bc_telus-cable20050725

Leading up to this dispute Telus has provoked the union in a number of ways leading to the Canada Labour Relations Board finding against Telus of "bargaining in bad faith".

http://www.cirb-ccri.gc.ca/whatsnew/LD1291_e.pdf

In war truth is the first casuality. In this dispute it looks like intelligence is the one getting hurt.

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[raehl]

I said retailers, not supermarket workers. You're also missing another problem: Wal-Mart has many more rural-area employees (on average) than supermarkets do (on average), as Wal-Mart is only recently breaking into urban, and more wealthy, areas. So while the dollar wage may be less, the buying power ofthat wage is not less in the same percentage. Another cause of the difference is that Wal-Mart employees are not unionized, while most supermarket employees are, and some of that wage difference also goes to paying the union.

Whether corporate health insurance is cheaper to the economy than emergency room treatment is debatable - but isn't a cause for blaming walmart for not providing healthcare, it's a cause for changing the rather stupid way we provide medical care to the uninsured.

Lower prices are almost ALWAYS a good thing, because they mean you're producing a good more effeciently. More efficient production frees up money to be spent on other things - we keep the same number of people employed, and we *ALL* get more stuff.

Perhaps protection of workers is not the motive?

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to be some speculation now as to whether or not this site blocking was meant to protect the employees or just keep people from seeing this video.

OK, but how does this answer the question?

[PCM2]

Does Canada recognize the concept of common carrier?

Thank you for that bit of information

[PCM2]

I had no idea there was a functioning goatse.ca. Now I know.

Re:Unions vs workers? There is no such thing

[theglassishalf]

I love that the best source you could find is the conservative propaganda-tank Heritage foundation.

Oh, and read the lead of the article you quoted: The contributions are voluntary, only 10 percent of the employees are giving them, and the only role the state had was to deduct more dues then they normally would.

Try again, except next time use facts from an actual news organization, not a propaganda machine.

-Daniel

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[BVis]

Wal-Mart is only recently breaking into urban, and more wealthy, areas. So while the dollar wage may be less, the buying power ofthat wage is not less in the same percentage.

I don't know how you're figuring that. Wal-Mart is paying the same rates to someone in the city as out in the rural areas; the problem is that the city has a much higher cost of living, so the wages are effectively lower.

Another cause of the difference is that Wal-Mart employees are not unionized, while most supermarket employees are, and some of that wage difference also goes to paying the union.

Perhaps, but certianly not all of it, and being able to bargain collectively with the company IMHO more than compensates for the union dues through improved benefits, progressive discipline, and improved working conditions.

Whether corporate health insurance is cheaper to the economy than emergency room treatment is debatable - but isn't a cause for blaming walmart for not providing healthcare, it's a cause for changing the rather stupid way we provide medical care to the uninsured.

No argument from me there, as far as I can tell the entire health care system in this country is broken. However, as that's unlikely to change anytime soon, it's irrelevant to this discussion. It is what it is, at least for the forseeable future.

Lower prices are almost ALWAYS a good thing, because they mean you're producing a good more effeciently.

Taken purely by itself, independent of any other factors, I would agree. It's how we get to those lower prices where we run into trouble. Getting to those prices on the backs of the workers damages the system.

More efficient production frees up money to be spent on other things

Such as health care for the workers. Or improved wages. Or, more often than not, bonuses for the executives.

we keep the same number of people employed, and we *ALL* get more stuff.

Problem, here. Let's say there's a group of 20 people getting a given wage. They have a certain amount of buying power, based on that wage and the cost of living where they are. If you cut their wages, they're still employed, but their buying power decreases. *They* don't get more stuff. (Wal-Mart providing lower prices doesn't make up for their loss in buying power. And you can't buy *everything* at Wal-Mart, eventually you're going to need a car or a refrigerator.) Multiply that by the literally millions of people that Wal-Mart employs, and you're talking about a serious dent in the public's ability to keep the economy running. Please see the grandparent for why this could spell disaster for the economy.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[McPierce]

Telus should be able to provide or not provide access to websites as they wish, unless they've agreed otherwise with their customers (or have been given a monopoly by the government).

And, as soon as they start controlling the content of their network then they become responsible for the content and are no longer a common carrier.

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[raehl]

Problem, here. Let's say there's a group of 20 people getting a given wage. They have a certain amount of buying power, based on that wage and the cost of living where they are. If you cut their wages, they're still employed, but their buying power decreases. *They* don't get more stuff. (Wal-Mart providing lower prices doesn't make up for their loss in buying power. And you can't buy *everything* at Wal-Mart, eventually you're going to need a car or a refrigerator.) Multiply that by the literally millions of people that Wal-Mart employs, and you're talking about a serious dent in the public's ability to keep the economy running. Please see the grandparent for why this could spell disaster for the economy.

That would be a problem, if WalMart were the only part of the economy becoming more efficient. But fortunately the economy doesn't work like that. The money everybody isn't spending on groceries now gets spent on other things, which makes them cheaper just on economy of scale alone. And other intustries also become more efficient - so prices across the board go down (well, the reality is prices go up, but wages go up more than prices. Been a long-term trend that wages go up more than prices.)

Tort Law Reform

[KnarfO]

"C: Who is going to spend $$$ suing a telco over a breach of a service agreement?"

Unfortuneately, (here in the states at least) we have an oversupply of lawyers, some of whom for reasons either out of desparation, or just plain being evil, will take a frivolous law suit at the drop of a hat, hoping to get a juicy settlement out of a company with pockets deep enough to view that as the path of least resistance.

Legal associations lobby hard to keep any kind of tort law reform from passing in congress so that the status quo remains, and all the lawyers can keep their jobs at the expense of John Q. Public (either via taxes paid to keep more judges employed, or via increased costs to the consumer from big businesses compensating for the loss).

All of the following entities benefit from feeding off the broken systems (legal and business) in our society, and are essentially adversaries to any one not part of their specific group:

• Big Business
• Unions
• Most attorneys

 

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[N3wsByt3]

Your anglo-saxon neo-liberal arguments are interesting, yet I think misguided.

I take it you're not from europe (at least the mainland)?

The whole discussion you had with the opther poster(s) revolve around what is 'best', in a way, but clearly you both have other subjects in mind. There is little doubt that cutting wages, not providing healthcare, etc. is best for walmart, as defined by profitmarges and stockvalue for the shareholders.

As it is equally clear that it's not the best thing for the 'lower' workers, nor for the people itself. Ofcourse, it's the same people that go there, wanting to buy cheap - a natural tendency for all people, including myself. People have mostly a short range vision, and when they can get something cheaper then elsewhere, they'll do it; that's what thrives the market, after all, and I agree with you that private firms care nothing for being a welfare-organisation.

Which is why, in most of europe, the state obliges them to be exactly that, at least to a certain point. The reason is, that the philospohy you stated is indeed those of the companies, and when left unchecked, it would lead to rampant ultra-capitalism, as it was in the 19th century. Therefor, a balance has to be made, between the greed (which it basically is) of companies, and the wellfare and health of the populace seen in the long term, which is where the government comes in (at least here).

Oblige every company to provide healthcare for their workers, for instance, and you level the playing field for all companies, because it counts for all (thus, not providing a way to false competition). Provide adequate minimum wages for all, and the buying power doesn't decrease under a certain point.

It's a difficult balance, especially in a world-economy. This system provides less of a 'flexible' economy (a term overused, IMHO), but it does provide more wellfare and better health for the populace at large. It's striking the balance between reasonable economic growth (thus, not 'maximal' per sé), while maintaining the level of wellfare for all people, which is difficult.

In the EU, some countries may have gone a bit too much one side (hence the reforms), but the USA certainly has gone way too much the other side.

And, you'll find that most ordinary people (thus, not CEO's and the lot) in the EU, actually prefer this system then the neo-liberal capitalistic system of the USA.

Free speech, not censorship.

[AtariAmarok]

Control over your own medium is exercising free speech. It is not censorship.

The "government censorship" you refer to is just one of those redundant terms that floats around. Excuse me while I go to use my ATM machine.

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[N3wsByt3]

"It is hard to argue against the idea of too much economic liberty for individuals. "

I can argue quite easily: it would invite rampant unequality, causing the wellfare of the populace (as a whole) to fall. I don't think it has yet to be proven that, when economical 'liberty' is left unchecked and unbalanced, you do not get the most wellfare for the most people, but rather the a concentration of wellfare for the few.

Depending on what you consider a worthy goal for a society, you may or may not accept the latter as a welcome evolution. I do not, however.

"The same would be true of you mandated all companies to provide food, housing, vacation airplane tickets, and Chia Pets. Where does it stop?"

It stops where the company stops making enough profit for continuing their business. As long as they see a benefit (thus, enough profit) going their way, they will continue. Furthermore, airplane-tickets and chi-pets are hardly as important as healthcare. (That said, it's funny you would mention that, because I have a nephew who's working for an air-company, and he *does* get free tickets...so aparently, it's not out of the ordinary. the reason why they do that, I suppose, is that they can afford it. Thus, being able to afford a system of healthcare is paramount.) The current revisals of the system, is exatly because, in a worldmarket, the cost is getting to high to maintain it as it is, currently. But the system istelf is not in discussion.

" Why not instead mandate nothing. Just pay the workers for the value of their work, and let them spend what they want on health care, food, and other things as they need."

a noble thought, and one I can relate too, frankly, because I have libertarian principles also. alas, just like communism, raw capitalism is fine, nay, even great in theory, but sucks in reality. We already had such capitalism in the 19th century, at least in europe, and if history has shown us anything, it's that unbalanced (with social laws and provisions, thus) capitalism is NOT to the benefit of the populace at large.

A system where everyone decides what to do with his money, would quicly lead to devastating social inequalities, unless one presumes that everyone is not only born equal, but gets the same possibilities in life, can not be struck by sheer 'unluck', and has the rationality to keep a balance to his own health -and other expenses. I do not share that optimistic vision.

In practise, what will happen is, that the few will reap the most benefits, while the most don't. The 'social divide' between the poor and the rich is a well known problem, and is considerably higher where people adher (more) to your vision of capitalism (such as in the US) then in EU countries. And this is the prime reason for it.

"You are overlooking the obvious. There is a major player here that you are giving a minor role. It is the government itself. The companies in fact do not engage in "greed": it is not greed to work to create wealth. The "greed" realm is dominated by the government. The important balance is between the greed of the government, and the freedom of the governed."

I disagree with your assessement of companies: most companies are all to greedy, even if they use euphemisms for it to conceil it. I agree with your statement about the government: clearly, any institution or entity that has power, seeks more power. Needles to say, each such power needs to be kept in check and be balanced. this is true for companies, but, indeed, for governments as well. Yet, of all meddlings of the government, I look at those which are used to give more social justice to the populace at large, as being the most tolerable.

Yes, I know governments often abuse this (for instance, by taking away individual liberties, while strictly speaking they don't have to), of course, but still. I think citizens, companies and the government should be in a permanent dance of balancing eachother. I think in the USA, the companies are leading too much.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[Calyth]

In Vancouver it's pretty hard to find an independent book/mag retailer that isn't Indigo/Chapters/Coles, often there's only one bookstore left in a mall and it's the conglomerate. Indeed they're basically censoring things if they don't sell certain book/magazine.
They did shot at a building, but using something relatively small, I think it was a .22. No one was hurt.

Re:Now down for the rest of it

[tomhudson]

sounds to me like a market ripe for the picking by some enterprising person.

Money talks. Future Shop tried to avoid carrying the Playboy game, and finally had to start selling it when people bitched too much.

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[jcr]

However, a large part of Wal-Mart's business model is elimination of the competition.

No, not really. Wal-Mart just cuts their prices and lets the chips fall where they may. If the competition adapts, they adapt. If they don't, they don't. Wal-Mart and Microsoft are very different animals.

-jcr

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[jcr]

We already had such capitalism in the 19th century, at least in europe, and if history has shown us anything, it's that unbalanced (with social laws and provisions, thus) capitalism is NOT to the benefit of the populace at large.

I think you're a little fuzzy on your history there. People streamed from the farms to the factories, to work in what we consider appalling conditions today, and they did so voluntarily. They went to the factories because it was preferrable to subsistence farming.

The effect of capitalism over time, is to raise the marginal productivity of labor, which results in a higher standard of living, even for the poorest of the poor.

It is rather remarkable that one of the major health problems of the poorest people in America is obesity.

-jcr

Not Flamebait

[GPS Pilot]

You are exactly correct about the positive effects Wal-Mart's had on the economy. It's dismaying that Slashdotters are too filled with kneejerk liberalism to appreciate your post.

Emotional arguments have no place

[GPS Pilot]

When that's hand-in-hand with 20% lower wages, there's no benefit.

The problem with your argument is, Wal-Mart has lowered the wages of precious few people. 100% of consumers benefit from Wal-Mart's lower prices, but only the employees of small mom-n-pop retailers have seen downward pressure on their wages as a result of Wal-Mart (and I would guess those people constitute less than 2% of all consumers). Definitely a net gain for the average person.

That supercenter is cheaper now because it's in the "destroy the competition" phase of its lifetime. When all the other supermarkets in the area go out of business (putting people out of work) you'll see those prices go up.

Sheer paranoia. Wal-Mart has been in business for 43 years. Just when do you think it will get past the "destroy the competition" phase?

In recent years Wal-Mart has built three stores in my city, and competing supermarkets have built seven.

True, living wages would have an effect on consumer pricing, because big business would simply pass the costs on to the consumer instead of taking as much as a 1% hit to their profits.

Here your desire for socialism actually would have been helped by a deeper understanding of economics. When a well-run business encounters increased costs, it never passes 100% of the increase along to its customers. Only if demand were perfectly inelastic would it be in the business's best interests to do so. Similarly, when a business encounters reduced costs, it tends to pass some but not all of its savings along to its customers.

the majority of people working at Wal-Mart, despite working full-time hours, 1) qualify for food stamps/welfare/WIC/$socialProgram, which costs the taxpayer money, and 2) do not have health insurance

They would qualify for even more social programs if they weren't working at all. You seem to think that Wal-Mart holds a gun to its employees' heads, threatening to pull the trigger if the employee accepts a job down the street that pays higher wages. That is not the case. People accept job offers from Wal-Mart because no one else offered them a better job offer. And there's no way you can blame Wal-Mart for that.

You're pretty thick.

[GPS Pilot]

I don't know how you're figuring that.

It's pretty simple, actually. If Company X operates predominantly in areas where three-bedroom houses cost $130,000 instead of $600,000, and Company Y does not, you would expect statistics to show that the average Company X employee earns less than the average Company Y employee. And that does not necessarily mean that Company X employees have less buying power.

Company X will not be able to expand into areas where three-bedroom houses cost $600,000, unless it offers employees in those areas wages that are competitive with Company Y. Period.

Re:Blame Wal-Mart!

[N3wsByt3]

"They went to the factories because it was preferrable to subsistence farming."

Which says a lot about the conditions then - but not indicate it was better when working in the factories.

In fact, you see exactly the same happening in third world countries all over: they think they will get a better life in the city, only most won't. Many acknowledge as much afterwards, but by then it's often to late. In any case, the fact they go there 'willingly' does not indicate that they aren't being exploited.

"The effect of capitalism over time, is to raise the marginal productivity of labor, which results in a higher standard of living, even for the poorest of the poor."

Only if it's balanced by social laws and protection.

"It is rather remarkable that one of the major health problems of the poorest people in America is obesity."

?

I fail to see your point. Maybe that's because fat, unhealthy food is cheap? In any case, I would not be very compelled to argue that exploitation is necessary as a way to loose weight. ;-)

Though, I grant you, the kids used in sweat-shops in the third world DO look pretty skinny.