Canadian Government Rejects Net Neutrality Rules

An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian Press reports that the Canadian government appears ready to reject net neutrality legislation, instead heeding the arguments of large telecommunications companies . Michael Geist has posted transcripts of the documents which can be summarized as the government thinks that blocking or prioritizing content is acceptable, it knows that this runs counter to recommended policy, and it doesn't care because it plans to the leave the issue to the dominant telecommunications providers."

Comments

Re:Net Neutrality?

[tinkerghost]

Net neutrality is the opposite of that. It dictates that all traffic must be treated equally.

Actually it's a bit more refined than that. Net neutrality dictates that all similar traffic must be treated equally.

• All HTTP requests have to be delivered equivalently reguardless of source or destination
• All VOIP requests have to be ....
• All torrent requests have to be ....
• ....

However, VOIP & HTTP requests can be routed with different priorities - VOIP is sensative to lag, HTTP isn't.

The concept of traffic shaping is to provide a QoS [Quality of Service]flagged route for packets which maximizes the use of the fastest, cleanest routes for lag/packet loss sensative protocols, while relegating less sensative packets to routes which may not be as responsive. The Telco extention[perversion] of packet shaping is to convert the selection criteria from protocol needs to accounting balance. Thus some of the Canadian telcos have already started to throttle Vonage service to the point of compromising service quality - remarkably just before they roll out their own service which doesn't seem to suffer the same problems.

To my brethren Canucks out there.

[oceanstream]

Find your MP and put the pressure on, please. I've already called mine (Laurie Hawn), to find his position on the debate. The rep at his office had never heard of the Net Neutrality issue. While I hope this isn't common, I wouldn't be surprised. If your MP is a Conservative, put the pressure about how damaging this will be to small businesses, startups, and our fancy new "Knowledge-based economy" idea. It may be easier to convince the Liberal or NDPs about how damaging this could be to the consumer. I urge EVERY Canadian on Slashdot to put in a courtesy call or two to their local Member of Parliament. While you're at it, contact your MLA to see if you can help pressure your provincial government as well. I'll include links:
Alberta
British Columbia
Manitoba
New Brunswick
Newfoundland
Northwest Territories
Nova Scotia
Nunavut Territory
Ontario
Prince Edward Island
Quebec
Saskatchewan
Yukon Territory