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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
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
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.
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.
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.
Conceptually, this might make sense, but practically, it won't work. Can Time Warner guarantee that every service over the Web will be able to send them 4 mb? Look at it this way Time Warner Advertises 4mb and delivers it. AT&T, who happens to be sitting in between Time Warner and NetFlix, calls up NetFlix and says, "give us 10 million bucks or we slow down all packets from your servers that transit our network." If Netflix complies, maybe the end user will get 4mb through their network and all the way through Time Warner's as well. If Netflix does not comply and AT&T slows them all down, Netflix download at half that, but Time Warner hasn't done anything about it.
Theoretically, this probably violates AT&T and Time Warner's peering agreement and Time Warner can complain. Realistically, however, This isn't just Netflix, AT&T and Time Warner, but a dozen different networks in between, any of which might be the one degrading service because Netflix did not pay up. How much chance is their that Time Warner will be able to influence their peer's, peer's peer's peer's peer in getting them not violate a peering agreement they have with someone six contract negotiations removed from them?
On top of all that, even if it is Time Warner doing the extortion directly, they can advertise 4mb down, but still mess with latency or other traffic aspects that they don't advertise. Even if customers are smart enough to know what is up, in many localities they may be the only service provider and the law in that locality makes it illegal for anyone else to run lines to people's houses, even if they could afford to without the huge government subsidies given to Time Warner out of our tax dollars. Realistically speaking, I think legislation or free, government run internet access is the only way to solve this.
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