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Canadians Organizing a Rally For Net Neutrality
taylortbb writes "Canadians are fighting back against Bell Canada's traffic shaping (recentlly discussed by Slashdot here and here) by organizing a rally in support of network neutrality. The rally is being backed by a long list of organizations including Google, two major political parties, three ISPs, and two major unions. It's set for Tuesday at 11:30am on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. The only question that remains is, will the government listen?"
Or at the ISP's that arent "for" this?
You could start a petition, send it off to whatever ISP you are under, wether they are involved or not, couldnt hurt, provided you arent rude about it.
If we put Government in charge of the Internet we will never stop them from imposing their will on us through it.
The internet can not be any more neutral than when it is left to markets.
The problem with it at the moment, is it is already too regulated in most countries. (Eg, the US)
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Maybe, but there is strength in visible numbers. Rallying for attention is more effective when it is clear that people care enough to show up on the front lawn. When they want to be elected badly enough, politicians will do exactly the same thing. It is a form of communication that is difficult to misunderstand.
If you can't make it, you can't make it. There is still a venue for involvement if you want to help out.
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
Seriously this is not about putting the government in charge, its about allowing the internet to remain open. How in the world would it be more neutral if the markets get their way? The markets are proving they can not stay neutral, they want more money without doing any work such as upgrading infrastructure. Obviously, they can't stay neutral because they will always choose what makes them more money, thats not neutral. If the government steps in and says "quit messing with the traffic that goes through the tubes" that will force them to stay neutral.
Really, not everything the government does is this horrible plot to enslave humanity and yes, corporations step out of line from time to time and need to be slapped back down. This is a perfect example of such a time.
Has anyone shown up in the proverbial front lawn over any Internet related issue? All I see is people posting in mad furies on message boards, with big opinions, but when it comes down to it, they give the impression of living in their parent's basement. Combine that with most politicians not reading the Internets, and things don't tend to get too far.
Look at all the hoopla over the DMCA in the US and it's injection in multiple forms around the world. Lots of hype on the web, but no governmental changes anywhere. Zippo.
Im sure some people who identify with this message deep in their hearts will take issue with this, and attack it or mock it, as it hurts them to face reality and their sad situation, but:
The stupid, fat, lazy, and brainwashed Americans will continue to take it in the ass. You could have $50 a gallon gas prices and people would complain, they would post to their blog and make videos for YouTube. They would bitch, moan, walk into stores and wring their fists at other Americans working retail and day-to-day service jobs and take it verbally out on them like they do today, instead of confronting the issue together. With Katrina we saw the reality which bubbles underneath the masturbatory Hollywood America. The television continues to control the minds and the people parrot back and forth whatever the television says, usually with a tiny opinion of their own, but little more.
They dont think, they are trained to consume, what they are given they accept and they dont challenge authority, they are mentally beaten and assaulted with powerful advertising on a daily basis and are so used to it they often mix commercial content and slogans or jingles in with their daily lifes communication.
Nothing will improve unless the people turned off their televisions, stopped parroting, stopped blogging about their ingrown toenail and how much they hate choice A and B and how terrible everything is and how they continue to FUND the issues they hate while they bitch about it and do NOTHING.
Unless you get together, turn off your televisions, stop being programmed by the rich corporations and political deviants, you arent going to change. Your system is constructed to contain you in a cage. You can disagree and feel you are somehow different, but if you are paying taxes and doing nothing to change the system, you are as broken, immoral, and to blame as the ones who commit the evils you claim to despise.
Raise the gas prices to $100 a gallon, raise the milk to $30 a gallon, it wont matter, the Americans will do nothing, they will continue to sit back while their taxes pay for drones to fly and spot marijuana so the DEA can continue busting non violent pot smokers and lady justice can throw them in jail to get violently sodomized and forced to suck gang members pensies and maybe leave jail with a nice disease, rather than get together, switch off corporate television, and think for themselves and shape their nation with their own minds.
No, they will continue to go to Youtube and post stupid videos of them sharing their thoughts about things they hate which their taxes continue to fund, post blogs about their stupid lives which fund the system they hate, and talk about choices A and B which are parties which are not people friendly, but corporate friendly.
You are fucked, and you will continue to deny it. When faced with the facts you will either (A) Ignore it, (B) Mock it, (C) Argue it, (D) Launch personal attacks, (E) remain in denial, (F) Lace it with humor, (G) Or another cowardly response.
Enjoy your mess.
Corporations make value judgements on what provides them with profit while providing their customers with service. This means if people want neutrality, they need only change providers.
However, there are restrictions in certain regions on which providers you can go to because these providers have been given a monopoly.
This is the problem with the American market, a lot of these companies have been given monopoly, and so you have no choice.
Additionally, since their profit model is setup around providing this neutrality, they will not be as profitable as before, and so they will have an argument to levy taxes or give them a greater monopoly.
Further more, their businesses are doing this so they can provide the unlimited plans you enjoy. If their hands are tied, it is likely you will get plans that are limited in other ways.
So lets go over this...
Instead of deregulating and having a choice, you choose more regulation which will most likely have little effect anyway, narrow your choices and increase your average costs?
Does that about sum it up?
Business is not stupid, no matter what it will be profitable, the only variable left is whether you want the ability to choose?
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I think the government will listen. They might not act, but they will listen (while trying to ignore).
Rallies like this usually get a good amount of attention. Furthermore, there is some political backing (check out the speaker list) and there has already been a lot of coverage for this rally before it has begun. Plus, being on the Hill, it draws a lot of public attention from newspapers, local workers, etc.. Every time a protest comes through the downtown core, I can hear it and always wonder what it's about.
So even if the government does nothing immediately, which is expected, this rally has already been extremely successful at bringing the issue to the Canadian public. This is all over the news and will be throughout the day. I would call that a success already.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
I wish I had found out about this YESTERDAY instead of today. I would have taken the day off to go, now it's pretty much too late. I somewhat agree with the multiple venues, but if this brings MORE people to 1 spot instead of a handful in several spots, it might carry more weight.
most recently lebanon and palestine ... dont read the news much?
.... after israel bombed the to near oblivion they built up into a good country. They were doing well in tourism. Recently israel again bombed them "into the stone age" (quote from israels military leader). So the strife that resulted has caused some infighting. The group that stopped lebanon from being obliterated like in the 80s are folk heros in the area. And are regarded internationally as terrorists thanks to american support of israel. Now lebanon is split between people wanting to support their heros and those who are in complete fear of israel turning them into a palestine. (remember hamas was a legitimately voted in government which palestine got attacked violently for).
anyways theres infighting in palestine because israel is strangling the country to death. Half are calling it quits and half refuse to bow to pressure. So israel gives weapons to some of them. And if a peace might be forming they go in with a few hundred troops and obliterate a town to increase ire. Then to suck up to the reasonable palestinians they say they'll talk peace.... but that doesnt stop them from building cities on palestinian land or running more tank raids into towns.
Lebanon was kown as the gem of the middle east since the 80s
Any country that applauds getting 15:1 kill ratios in a battle is not a good guy. Please think about it.
Action: Bell throttles their own traffic, blocks ports, etc, causing massive irritation/disruption to their own customers
Result: Customers leave Bell for ISP's that aren't interfering with their traffic
Action: Bell then institutes throttling and other abusive behavior against the other ISP's customers
Result: Customers have nowhere to go. Other ISP's may not lose so many customers (because there's no good alternative), but they also wouldn't gain the customers that would otherwise be coming in because of superior service.
In a nutshell, the third-party ISP's need to use Bell's infrastructure. As such, they cannot offer anything better than Bell in those regards. Their main competing points were the additional features offered that Bell was not offering (or was cutting back on), with non-throttled service being one of the key points. As Bell has removed their ability to offer such service, they have, in-fact, removed the third-party ISP's as competitors in this arena.
How is this NOT anti-competitive? Is it OK so long as it's "we're going to make everyone suck as much as us so that customers don't move elsewhere" instead of "we're going to make everyone else suck more so that customers come to us instead"
Both are equally anti-competitive and discriminatory.
If a Canadian terrorist group was sending religious fanatics into America to bulldoze American houses, take over orange groves in California and Florida, fund dissident political wings in the country to shoot at each other, compel people to leave their houses out of fear and then occupy those houses, break the arms of children who throw rocks at tanks, etc etc and so on; all in the guise of a religious quest, then maybe I could believe in a lie. But when the people in power write the history books and do the journalism then we will only see hypocrisy.
Unless the people who are being suppressed are given access to conventional weapons of war like F16's, tanks and attack helicopters, then do not expect them to fight a conventional war.
One last point; Keep your Trolls to yourself.
Yep, except the part where it isn't their faith that demands the destruction of Israel. It's their survival. Don't think this is a religious war, its a cultural/national war. Religion just happens to be involved.
And the lines are run through public property.
Thats like saying for the government you dont have to obey the rules of the road because you bought a car (private property) but everywhere you use it on the roads is public property.
Basically they've been given money to build infrastructure and keep it up to date... If they cant handle streaming video and torrents and what not then obvious they've failed to keep it up to date. Maybe a legislative smackdown telling them they cant fiddle with throttling will encourage them to upgrade the infrastructure once again rather than milk it for all its worth like Comcast in the states.
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+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
... As opposed to those who's faith tells them they are the chosen ones, and doesn't demand anyone's destruction but they do it anyway.
Have you ever seen what Judeo-Christian texts say to do with heretics? It's not pretty.
Do you not agree that "last mile" carriers for both DSL and cable actively throttling and using DPI to shape the traffic of their wholesale customers creates a situation where I cannot get unfucked-with bandwidth at a reasonable cost? Now I don't quite agree that unfucked-with bandwidth is necessarily a right, but when the government-sanctioned monopolies of the last mile are also a supplier to the end-user, I think that is an unfair market, and *that* is something the government is in control of.
I'm genuinely curious if Bell believes that DPI and throttling of their commercial customers (not just their wholesale providers) is acceptable, too. I.e. if I get my own 10 meg LAN extension to a server at 151 Front, and my provider there is cross-connected with Bell... would Bell feel justified in throttling traffic to/from my IP into their network?