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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?"
sounds great and all, but not all of us can pack up and head to ottawa everytime these issues need to be brought forth, would not these demonstrations carry more weight if they were occuring in multiple venues simultaneously?
net neutrality won't mean a god damn if net privacy tools and net privacy in general are completely destroyed by canada's participation with ACTA.
Maybe they should be frying both fish in the same pan here?
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I am an IT radio chronicler in Quebec city, in a radio which has been nearly dismantled by the CRTC 2 years ago. We were 50 000 people walking down the street to get our message heard by the politicians, we received a lot of attention from the medias saying that freedom of speech was taking a hit...
What happened? The minister responsible for the CRTC said that she would not get involved in the debate, saying that the CRTC was an independant regulation commission and that it would be perceived as an invasion of the government in an independent commission.
What did she do 2 weeks later? She got involved and promised to make room for an Italian television station in Toronto, spoke to the CRTC to make sure the television station would get approved. Why did she do it? She had Italian roots.
Politicians in Canada get involved only when they can get a personal benefit of the actions they take. If the Minister responsible for the CRTC had suffered from Bell Canada's traffic shaping policy, he would make sure that the CRTC will take the decision to make Bell remove its traffic shaping policy, unless a brown enveloppe full of dirty money lying on his doorstep has been put there by some Bell Canada executive.
Like everywhere in the world, politics is no more than corruption. Even in Canada.
And what happened with my radio station? It's been bought by a friend of the regime who frequently has dinner with CRTC administration members, the controversial morningman has been fired, a new and more "regime friendly" morningman has been hired, and now, the ex-morningman has his own radio station on XM satellite radio, struggling to get 300 listeners.
Has ACTA gone through yet?
The fact that people are starting to demonstrate that "we are aware of what's going on, we're watching, and we're not happy" should give the government an idea that stupid decisions about internet and telecommunications will get a negetive reaction from voters. Perhaps it will influence them not to approve idiotic new bills or trade provisions.
I walked up to the Hill on my lunch break. There were 300 people or so (rough estimate), some clever signs, and media coverage - TV and newspaper.
Apparently the first batch of speakers spoke right away and were finished by the time I got there. Everyone was waiting for Mauril Belanger (liberal MP) who was expected to speak at 12:45.
At 12:40 rally organizers tried to get the crowd pumped up with cries of "Who's net? OUR NET!" and "Our net... NOT FOR SALE!". I had to go back to the office, but you could hear their shouts echoing off the buildings for a few blocks... pretty cool!
Hopefully it raises the issue to the awareness of the general public. Most people seem to have no idea whatsoever that Net Neutrality is even an issue, let alone an important one.
Would that be CHOI? Bare in mind though, the refusal to act was by a Liberal minister, and it is now the Conservatives in power. Maybe they'll be more willing to listen, maybe not. Either way, it's worth a shot.
Cynical Idealist