Slashdot Mirror
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."
Canada is unfortunetly under the minority rule of a conservative government that doesn't want to intervene too much in the economy etc. so it's normal that they reject net neutrality rules since they love big telco lobbying as well. This won't last too long. It's been a year since they've been in power and already the canadian population has become sick of this goverment. I predict elections this spring and with the result of a minority liberal government that will pay more attention to these netneutrality rules when time will come.
Adi
It's a series of tubes, ya hoser.
are we fucked? I actually had hopes in the Canadian government but it seems all they are capable of is causing shit. And what kind of a government would leave a thing such as THE WORLD WIDE WEB in the hands of business'?
Q: Know why Canadians do it doggie style? A: So they can watch the hockey game.
Just like when they recently voted on whether they should all get a 30% salary raise. We didn't get to vote, oh no, that wouldn't be fair.
I wish I was allowed to vote for my own raises. All in favor of a 5000% raise? ME! Well that's settled.
Blerg.
Wasn't that the ontario provincial parliament? or did i miss the feds doing it too?
I haven't thought much about Net Neutrality until Comcast disconnected my HSI service and terminated the account because I used the internet too much. Now I'm finding people all over the country who have had similar problems including a journalist for the Deseret Spectacle.
I've found other people throughout Utah who are dealing with this problem. My search has lead me to other states with people asking the same questions I have been asking .
This is just a couple of instances where Comcast has demonstrated unfair business practices. I'm wondering if Net Neutrality would curb this sort of abuse from companies. I'm ok with following the rules (don't get me wrong). But to be expected to minimize Internet usage without knowing what the rules are is pure B.S.
Heck, I've had people on my blog accuse me of all sorts of stuff. Unfortunately, it's not even close to the truth.
If I'm misunderstanding what Net Neutrality is please enlighten me.
BTW, if you are from Utah and have been disconnected by Comcast please contact me by posting on the blog. I receive all messages. I'm compiling a list and plan on passing it along to Bill Gephart. We've been working for the last few weeks to resolve this. He's already begun interviewing people I've found. Thanks!
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Let companies prioritize their delivery, but when they advertise performance, they're only allowed to use the lowest common denominator. Time Warner can then stream HD stuff just for their customers, but when they advertise 4 megabits down, they aren't allowed to throttle anyone below it.
This was the Liberal party of the Ontario Provincial Parliament. They also did it just before the Christmas break, to minimise debate on the subject when people were preoccupied with the holidays.
I am a bit disappointed in the federal government now though...the Conservatives aren't changing the policies of the previous Liberals in terms of media consolidation and copyright law. The more things change, the more they stay the same. We have more 3rd parties in Canadian politics than the US, but they serve more to offset the balance of power and have no real chance at governing (NDP, Greens, Bloc Quebecois).
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Government regulation is not incompatible with a free market. In a free-market society, government exists to enforce agreements between people. It is itself an agreement between the people to create a set of rules by which other disagreements can be resolved.
For example, if the people say, "Dumping pollution into the rivers is bad", in a free market they get together to define "pollution" and enforce the rule. Government is only the mechanism by which that happens. The market is still entirely free.
Of course, actual governments are composed of people who can be persuaded not to do their jobs properly. And the final results are always far more complicated than "don't pollute". That's why conservatives (confusingly also called "classic liberals" by economists) tend to prefer less government rather than more: the less there is the easier it is to see where it's going wrong. Just like in code.
So I'm reluctant to let the government enshrine net neutrality rules before we see what the big companies actually do. It restricts the ability to innovate, not just by big companies but also by small ones. Once the big companies actually start engaging in nightmare scenarios (e.g. forcing you to use their own download services rather than a competitor's), then regulation will be in order.
Put another way, companies that can afford to pay the extra fees will be high-speed, while companies that can't will be on dial-up speed. Wanna go surfing at 1200 bps again?
What was once true, is no longer so
I all honesty, what hasn't the Harper gov /not/ fucked up. In fact, every decision they've made, everything they've done, ONLY benefits the rich. Anyone surprised by this hasn't been paying attention.
Also, there's absolutely nothing that can be done. They'll just "go it alone" and do whatever they want to do anyway. All that without communicating at all with the media because they want our journalists to write down the question before press conferences and our journalists refused (yes we have real journalists here).
Hey, US people. We now have an un-government too! Now all of North America is fucked!
Once again it seems that large corporations have managed to win the day because people are stupid and/or lazy. Whenever a remotely complex topic arises, they manage to confuse the issue by making claims that the topic being discussed is really something else and they're against that something else. In this way, they and politicians lobbied by them can argue against that something else, while voting against the topic at hand. People with party loyalty can simply choose to believe them, and most everyone else is confused enough by the disconnect so that the big boys get their way.
In this instance, the issue is net neutrality. Basically, it was asserted that since much of the infrastructure was funded by the government and since many of the last-mile providers have government enforced monopolies, maybe it would be wise to ensure that companies are forbidden by law from discriminating against traffic on their network based upon who sent that traffic. For example, this would mean AT&T cannot intentionally slow down or lose VoIP packets from some company unless they treat their own VoIP traffic the same way. Let me repeat the important part here. Net neutrality is about stopping discrimination based upon who sends something, not what is being sent.
So the big companies hire some PR firms to make up a new issue, which they can claim is what the net neutrality laws are really about, and which the average person might conceivably be against (since no one in their right mind could argue that net neutrality as described above is a bad idea). So they claim that Net Neutrality is about stopping telecos from discriminating based upon the type of traffic. They use the example of file sharing networks as "bad" traffic they want to be able to run slower. They use VoIP as traffic they want to ensure runs faster. All the while they make sure to outright lie and claim that the proposed net neutrality legislation would stop Quality of Service traffic shaping.
Every time an expert looks into it, this is shown to be false. How many evaluations have we had now that say QoS is not restricted by proposed net neutrality legislation? And what about encryption? Widespread deployment of encrypted tunnels makes discriminating based upon the type of traffic useless anyway, and would certainly be adopted (and has been) to foil and attempt to use QoS to discriminate. So the entire argument is bull crap.
The net result of all of this is most people who have heard of net neutrality being completely misinformed about what it is, or scratching their heads in confusion while the large network operators laugh their asses off and prepare to discriminate against competitors and start extorting money from certain Web services providers who don't have anything to do with them other than the fact that some of their traffic ends up transiting their network, providing an opportunity to waylay it like some sort of internet highwayman. Hey Canadian government, I hope you're proud of yourselves for helping to undermine the most important innovation in the last 20 years.
Yay flamebait... but I'm cold, so what the hell.
The internet is a marketplace and the ISPs are at the doors. If you're, say, Youtube, and have a really swell stand at the market selling refrigerators, they can in theory extort money out of Youtube by not letting people in to see the refrigerators at all, or by only letting people pass through turnstiles, thereby precluidng the purchase of refrigerators.
At the same time, they can fool people coming into the market by advertising having a really big gate that funnels down to turnstiles that you can't see from the outside. You pay to pass through the big gate and are later screwed at the turnstiles because you realize there's no way you can leave with a refrigerator. All this would be fine if the number of doors was large as market forces would dictate price and availability of access, but doors are few in any one area and it's hard to build new ones.
In the long run, the market may die from this, but it may not, and at any rate I don't like the situation.
How's my analogy meter?
On the upside, if there is an upside, the days of the current Canadian government are numbered. We have what you might call a multi-party system (multi > 2) and the current party rules only on account of tentative support from other parties, and that ought to run out on one issue or another sometime this calendar year. We can only hope they don't pass any legislation regarding this (or any other) matter in the meantime.
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
... impeding competitive market outcomes....rigid net neutrality legislation may prevent such innovation. Except that user's don't have choices in ISPs. There are usually only 2: the local telecom and the local cable company. That's not enough to allow market forces to kick-in. Hence the need for regulation.
...previous business models that attempted to limit consumer access to content (e.g., AOL, Compuserve, otherwise known as 'walled gardens'), have failed... This is completely different. AOL and CompuServe were not ISPs, and they didn't advertise that they were ISPs. That was pre-internet and doesn't apply. Besides, we are talking about subtyle slowing-down internet traffic, not walling it off.
...without differentiated treatment, there may be no incentive to pay for the actual costs, resulting in under investment. The usual FUD about how Google gets a free ride, which isn't true. People think it makes sense if they don't know about peering.I wrote a quick-and-dirty anti-FUD article in an attempt to correct these misunderstandings. If anyone is fooled by the above arguemnts, point them there.
That our government - like most Western governments - is firmly in the grasp of big business, and no longer really represents the will or interests of the people. Welcome to the "Illusion of Democracy". Government seems to consistently represent the interests of corporations over the interests of the people, at least at the Federal level.
:(
Unfortunately, the Conservatives got in based on support of a lot of the older demographic, mostly in reaction to the horrid Liberal Government we had for years. The only thing I can't believe is that they were willing to elect Stephen Harper. The guy seems so insincere, so slimey, I wouldn't buy a used car from him. I can't believe hes head of the country at the moment. Its a sad period for Canada.
Time to contact your MP and protest I suppose, although I no longer have much hope that can accomplish anything. Our country seems to have the best politicians money can buy
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
If by "populists", you mean "lying assholes", then yes, you're right.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I wonder how much a canadian MP costs. Love to buy a couple. Sad to see that Canada is for sale.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
That's it. First this right-wing government gets in, then Bev Oda starts pushing RIAA-like rules, and DMCA crap comes along.. and now anti-net-neutrality! I'm done. I'm moving to The USA where they don't have these prob.... oh... hrmm... Engla... no.. France? ehhh... Russia, here I come!
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
Without net neutrality Slashdot's parent company could have blocked any attempts by Digg to prosper. Microsoft could have blocked Google. YouTube wouldn't have amounted to much compared to Google Video. Net Neutrality helps great ideas become reality. We would never even know about many of the little startups that have become the great sites that they are today.
Matthew 10:21
And those magical hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber are going to come from where, exactly? Sorry, but the whole "let the market fix the problem" idea just won't fly with anyone who does the math.
The reason that we don't have a vibrant infrastructure is that it costs thousands of dollars to fiber a house. At 40 cents a foot, the cost for a single fiber from New York, NY to Los Angeles, CA would be $5,199,744, and that's not counting the cost of actually laying the fiber, splicing it every so often, adding repeaters every so often, routing equipment, commercial buildings to house the gear, etc. And a backbone would have a lot more than one fiber. Conservatively, it would probably cost billions of dollars to add a single nationwide backbone in the United States that can compete with the existing regional backbones. You're proposing multiple such backbones. Find a way to squeeze $1,000 out of every man, woman, and child in the U.S., and you're probably in the ballpark.
The alternative is leased line systems in which wire providers lease lines to pseudo-backbone providers. That's what we have now. The problem is that those wire providers are in competition with those pseudo-backbone providers, and when push comes to shove, the companies leasing the lines lose their lease. As long as the infrastructure costs as much as it does, backbone providers will always tend towards monopoly or at best oligopoly. It's the nature of that type of business, just as it is the nature of regional last-mile ISPs to tend towards monopoly, and for the same reason.
The cost of building out the infrastructure exceeds the amount of money you'd make off of it even when amortized over decades. Thus, short of the government building out a public infrastructure, the "cartel" situation you describe is unlikely to change.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
There are about 10 companies doing this so there is competition. We just happen to have the best prices and the best service.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
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
Actually NDP and libs were about neck and neck during the last election (within a few percentage points). No one really noticed because the big story was the conservatives winning. The NDPs greatest obstacle is getting the Canadian population to stop believing that the NDP will never win. They have alot of support. On top of that, because of our stupid voting system, there are ALOT of would-be NDP voters who are scared of the conservative party winning, and end up voting strategically in favour of libs. It is worth noting that all of our small useless parties are left leaning. It is also worth noting that our one big right leaning party was formed by combining two smaller right leaning parties. You can thank our voting system for this stupid states of affairs where the majority of Canadians are clearly and decisively left leaning, but we are ruled by a minority conservative government. Crappy.
I am a bit disappointed in the federal government now though..
I am more than a bit disappointed with this government. Besides hacking away at social programs, increasing taxes for the lowest bracket ( http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2006/01/06/taxes-tor
- Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society...
- I don't know all the facts o-n Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans.
- I've always been clear, I support the traditional definition of marriage.
-
In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.
- "I was asked to speak about Canadian politics. It may not be true, but it's legendary that if you're like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians
I have nothing else to add except that I am saddened by the current leadership of my country .