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Bell Canada Launches Its Own Online Video Store
rsax writes "Bell Canada recently announced that it is launching a downloadable video store just as it is caught up in a government inquiry into its traffic-shaping practices. Some consider this a conflict of interest since several content providers were in the process of distributing TV shows using P2P technology before the Bell throttling issue started getting media coverage. Bell's FAQ states that it is not available for Mac users right now (and not Linux either of course) because they are using Windows Media DRM. They do, however, invite feedback on their site."
How can we prove a provider is shaping our traffic?
they will probably allege the slow download is because of net traffic, spam, etc.
transparent bridges for traffic shaping are very hard to detect
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
And they have a form for feedback? Brace for obvious shit storm...
Why does everyone insist on using DRM when it clearly doesn't work
At first they (Bell) said it was because our Canadian dollar then was way below the US dollar. But even at parity or even greater value than the US currency, I still pay that same amount. What's going on here?
Great, another DRM service doomed to fail.
One thing that Bell doesnt understand is that nearly all of its subscribers know how to get non drmed content for free... and those are the ones that havnt left bell due to the bandwidth cap for a 3rd party reseller with an unlimited cap still.
Subject says it all.
According to their FAQ Apple doesn't support the right kind of DRM, so they have no option re platform. They ask for "ideas on how we can get MAC and PC to play nice together."
Here's one, Bell - strip the DRM and present the video using an open standard. Content provider doesn't like it? Well, as a big distribution channel, you might just have a bit of leverage with them to, you know, SERVE YOUR CUSTOMERS BETTER.
Light the blue touch-paper and retire immediately.
So is breathing. Stop stealing my Oxygen!
Dear Bell People:
It seems that you are not so competent at providing the one service you have been given a virtual monopoly to provide so how do you think you ould be able to compete with other firms offering the same downloadable content like I dont know iTunes, Netflix (maybe not in canada as yet), CBC etc.
Regards,
Someone who would never use Bell
"We're hoping that one day Microsoft, Apple, the content owners and video sites like ours will have a big group hug and we can all share content. Until that day comes, all video content is delivered to you wrapped with Digital Rights Management (DRM). ... Bell Video Store is required by the content owners to put DRM on every video."
Wouldn't it make more sense for all *content delivery services* to have a group hug refusing to deliver content with DRM?
Test if your ISP is throttling - That link should help some of it at least.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
To make more bandwidth for their customers to download movies off their site.
*collective duuuuuuuhhhhh*
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Bell's FAQ states that it is not available for Mac users right now (and not Linux either of course) because they are using Windows Media DRM. They do, however, invite feedback on their site."
The thousand nerds of the Slashdot Empire will descend on you! Their flames will blot out the internet!
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I see a two issues with Bell Canada. First, this so-called Traffic Shaping is really a way to artificially screw up what would otherwise be a nicely working system. Who are they to dictate what traffic gets priority? Secondly, on the issue of using DRM, I think Steve Jobs put it nicely in his open paper about DRM-less music being sold on iTunes. Turns out that all this hoopla about piracy that caused the invention of DRM is over-exaggerated and some big businesses are agreeing with him. After all, if piracy were as large a problem as many would like us to believe, then how come iTunes is making Apple boatloads of money? I think Bell Canada would be wise to stop the traffic shaping and do something to support Linux and Mac. Otherwise they are really limiting themselves to that portion of the market that doesn't care about P2P and doesn't use Macs or Linux. Just my two cents on the whole matter.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
I'm taking bets on how long it'll take them before they consider p2p distribution after they use a million gigabytes of bandwidth and it costs them a lot of whatever money they use in Canada...dollars still I think. So yeah, large file download services are kinda expensive which is why MMO patches and Linux images are p2p. *gasp* they use p2p legitamately? Witches! Burn them!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
75% percent of the portable media player market is Apple's iPod. 75%. Any online store that prevents their target demographic from transferring their videos and music to the overwhelming media player of choice is choosing failure as a business plan. Bell has chosen failure. Microsoft's business plans are not in the best interest's of consumers or even business partners. Surely the latest MSN license server fiasco and the Play For Sure Zune betrayal are painfully evident lessons in who not to partner with when setting up a media distribution shop.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
Oh no, this is great. You can remove windows drm with ease, just run drmbg then FairUse4Wm, and the drm is history.
Why they would use it when its so trivial to reverse is a puzzler to be sure.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Strange Brew and Canadian Bacon.
When I attempt to go to their FAQ to verify the article, all I get is a series of "Unknown Browser Type" popups.
I find myself unsurprised.
There is no chance that I will *ever* use your service. Maybe before you started throttling my DSL connection, which coincidently, is not even provided by Sympatico!!! I am in the process of doing some of my own throttling. When complete, my land line and long distance will be moved from Bell onto a competitor and Bell will have been 'throttled' from my bank account. The irony is, I am not even a Bittorrent user ... but as they say, 'live by the sword, die by the sword'. Good job Bell, you managed to make a customer into a non-customer.
Let me see if I understand this right... they're getting ready to open up their own video store, at the same time they are starting to deliberately degrade the performance of other content providers their customers are using which are using P2P to distribute?
That's gotta be covered under some anticompetitive law somewhere? "We're going to start selling you a product, while at the same time sabotaging our competition's product, to make sure you buy ours instead."
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I am with a small DSL player like Teksavvy. These smaller players are great. They offer lower rates and MUCH BETTER customer service. I have no idea why anyone stays with Bell for DSL.
Teksavvy is in the lead for customer service and standing up to Bell, but it does little good, unless they win, because all DSL sucks now that Bell is throttling the last mile for everyone. (BT runs at about 20kB/s during waking hours, but full bandwidth is there for web and presumably Bells competing services).
I seriously doubt this throttling on the last mile of the competition is necessary, but once Bell throttled it's own customers (more likely to contain back end internet bandwidth than last mile bandwidth) it was losing them to the competition, so they throttled the competition.
The particularly heinous parts of this, is that the small DSL player pay $20/month to Bell for the last mile connnection, a last mile monopoly of twisted pair that was largely granted by Canadian citizens.
Bell is largely attempting to eliminate the competition.Users seemingly have little recourse, but we have one.
Bell is pervasive, you might not even be able to complain about DSL if they aren't your provider, but Bells pervasiveness is their weakness as well as strength.
Cancel your DSL and move to Cable. Tell your provider why. This will deny bell revenues and may give small players ammunition in their legal action against Bell. True the Cable side of the duopoly are no angels either but the throttling is no near as restrictive, and it cuts off any revenue to Bell.
Cancel any Bell long distance plans.
Cancel you landline and switch to Voip.
Cancel your Bell ExpressVu Satellite TV.
Cancel you Bell cell phone (or any provider reseslling the service).
Basically become Bell free, on every cancellation tell them why.
I have started the transition. In a month I will be entirely Bell free! I will no longer feel dirty know my money is funding these monopolistic pigs with hideous service.
It all makes sense now. Bell Canada is the Company that orchestrated Salem-style witch hunts against mom & pop brick & mortar satellite TV shops prior to launching their ExpressVu service. Even before they managed to lobby a dictatorship-style law forbidding foreign satellite service, they were orchestrating raids against their future competitors. The bandwidth throttling is just a modern day version of their Monopoly status abuse.
Shame on me for posting anonymously...
Cancel your DSL and move to Cable.
Teksavvy doesn't provide internet over cable. Rogers and Shaw have a tighter grip on their network than Bell has on the phone lines.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
It is a case of choosing the lesser of evils, and in this case that is cable. I get to drop all of Bell and tell them why. As a bonus my throughput will probably quadruple (DSL is 1.5mb/s where I am) Rogers throttling doesn't appear as choking as Bells.
There is nothing to stop me from switching back to DSL in a few months if Rogers annoys me and the 3rd party DSL situation improves. Or maybe looking into a 3rd party wireless option.
I realize this may hurt tekSavvy and other small DSL players, but it is the only way, I can stop paying Bell any revenues at all. If enough people did this, there would be policy changes.
There is a cable reseller, CIA/3Web/Cybersurf. They offer very little customer service and as a result their "service" is cheaper than Rogers. A nice side effect is that they don't have stuff to enforce any traffic limits. And the connection is constant 8Mbit/s.
Of course, Rogers can stop this at any time, because the last mile is under their control.
Check out their new B/W caps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Yahoo!_Hi-Speed_Internet
http://www.rogers.com/web/Rogers.portal?_nfpb=true&_windowLabel=internetLanding_1_1&internetLanding_1_1_actionOverride=%2Fportlets%2Fconsumer%2Finternet%2FinternetLanding%2FcheckServiceabilityPostalCode
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
So I can use more than my "fair share" of bandwidth as long as im buying your movies?
This raises something that I've been thinking about for a while. There are two different kinds of network manipulation that ISPs can do and I think that it is important to make a distinction between them. They are:
1) Filtering/modifying/shaping traffic based on type (protocol), but not looking at source or destination. For example, giving streaming video priority over email.
2) Filtering/etc traffic based on source and/or destination. For example, giving streaming video from BellVideoLand priority over video from Youtube.
I think that ISPs can possibly make a case justifying the first type, based on protocol, on the basis of network management.
But the second, based on source, is just evil.
I think that we need to be careful to not lump both of these types under the single crusade of "net neutrality". I think that the term net neutrality should be reserved for source based filtering.
The feedback page is sending two emails each time you send a feedback. The feedback system doesnt have any limit (like cookie or anything else). Anyone got some time to write a bot to crash an ISP? :D
This has far more implications than just Bell Canada. ISPs used to be a dime a dozen. There were always the big ones but there was always other smaller ones around and were at least profitable. Now the biggest ISPs are (trying) to crush everyting in thier path. Why? Many offer satellite TV, cable TV, own video stores (aka Rogers), hold a miscellany of TV shows/assets, and moreso in the States own or are deeply connected through parent companies to Movie Studios and Record Labels.
... waiting 30 minutes for a question to be answered!), billing issues and ensure customer's bills are the same price every month. You might find happier customers.
Of course they want to shape traffic. They want to curb people from using YouTube. They want to block people from accessing legal or illegal IP from the Internet, even moreso the legal stuff. If you can get free, movies, music, news, books and magazines (latter applies to an AOLTW) then it stops them from making money generally off advertising revenue.
Bell has long been a backhand dealer. It says one thing to the public, media and regulators and is always playing something behind their backs. When the "CRTC" questions them on it, Bell says they've already implemented the system, etc etc, and its too late to change. The CRTC then says no problem and lets them continue.
While I'm at it and I only care for Bell because it employs a lot of people: fix your customer service (esp in the retail stores
Bell Canada is owned by the Ontario Teachers Pension fund. Six hours of work a day, 85-factor retirement plan, and all holidays and summers off aren't enough for them.
Uh ya, except for the part where Rogers chokes all encrypted traffic to unusable speeds. You know, stuff like ssh, VPN, most bittorrent clients...
Net neutrality in Canada is a joke. Everyone who owns the wires also owns a PPV offering of some sort. It reminds me a lot of this:
http://skeptisys.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/5z6vt4n3.jpg