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Net Neutrality Bill Introduced In Canadian Parliament
FeatherBoa points out that the New Democratic Party in Canada has introduced legislation to limit the amount of control Canadian ISPs can exert over their subscribers. The bill would amend the Telecommunications Act to "prohibit network operators from engaging in network management practices that favour, degrade or prioritize any content, application or service transmitted over a broadband network based on its source, ownership or destination, subject to certain exceptions." Support for net neutrality in Canada has been building for quite a while now. Quoting CBC News:
"'This bill is about fairness to consumers,' said Charlie Angus, the NDP's digital spokesman. It also looks to prohibit 'network operators from preventing a user from attaching any device to their network and requires network operators to make information about the user's access to the internet available to the user.' The proposed bill makes exception for ISPs to manage traffic in reasonable cases, Angus said, such as providing stable speeds for applications such as gaming or video conferencing."
Sounds like a good idea.
Just what are these "certain exceptions"? The very fact there are exceptions, even if they aren't related to freedoms now, should be a little worrying, since the exceptions can probably be added to.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
...subject to certain exceptions. Doesn't this one line pretty much negate most of the positive potential in this bill?Several celebrities came out in favour of the ammendment, stating that they were "excited, because their online content would now deliver all this new internet money". Other celebrities were not as elated about this bill, arguing that "You're not my buddy, guy".
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
But as always in law, what is "reasonable", and who exactly is the honest and reasonable person? More to the point are either usually ISP's or politicians, and how about their lawyers?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
because they think it's an ice-hockey term (Sorry MetaMystics).
Disclaimer: I'm a card-carrying NDP member.
Now on to things...
I was at the TekSavvy Net Neutrality rally in Ottawa on May 27th. While it was a great rally, we found ourselves competing against a parliamentary sex scandal for press coverage. Sex sells. Arcane concepts like net traffic throttling don't, so much.
Let's look at reality. Customers of most ISPs in Canada are now traffic-shaped, with a few exceptions:
Videotron[Cable] (which substitutes shaping for a 50GB usage cap on a 50Mbps/1Mbps Docsis2.0 connection)
Telus[DSL]
A few ISPs such as Primus[DSL-wholesaler] and Colba[DSL-wholesaler] with their own equipment in Bell DSLAMS
There's a workaround to bypass Bell's throttling using MLPPP, only for subscribers to TekSavvy[DSL-wholesaler], but it requires some Linux-savvy or a modded router. To their credit, I believe Acanac[DSL-wholesaler] has set up an ssh tunnel for the same effect.
Otherwise, Bell[DSL] and Rogers[Cable] both shape encrypted traffic on their networks.
I see a lot of opposition for Net Neutrality regulations from people concerned about their impact on VOIP and such. Well, that's what exceptions in the law are for! Good on the NDP for finally stepping up to bat on this issue. That makes them the only party in parliament who can be bothered to take notice.
To anyone still opposed: Look at the massive, pervasive presence of the Internet in people's everyday lives, especially those under 30. It's about time we started treating it as an essential service. It's become one. Essential services (generally) have their quality regulated by government, and this bill is a step in the right direction.
Let's face facts. Canada is falling behind in the quality and penetration of broadband service. It's time to force the greedy telcos to invest in infrastructure instead of trying to save money by throttling their users and degrading the network for everyone!
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
That's the bill in question.
In the highly unlikely event that this private members bill makes it through to royal assent, it will have almost no effect. Telecoms will all make use of the exception in clause 2, subsection a:
"The proposed bill makes exception for ISPs to manage traffic in reasonable cases..."
Who gets to decide 'reasonable cases'?
BT traffic? any encrypted traffic?, whatever ISP's decide traffic they don't like?
Hopefully there are important details we are missing out on- if not, then you Canadians are fscked over again.
(no, there is no moral superiority involved here, we in the USA are fscked up even worse!)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
What if users could select their own priority settings an a per-application basis? Games, VoIP, video conferencing, etc would be highest priority; web browsing, email, etc would be standard priority; streaming video would be low priority.
In these cases, I don't mean for the actual bandwidth to be reduced. That would not help the network much anyway, since the same amount of data would be transferred eventually. A lower priority flag would just mean that a delay of a few extra ms, maybe even a second, is acceptable. This would enable routers to avoid bottlenecks better and use available capacity more efficiently.
There could also be an (optional) even lower priority option for long, non-urgent downloads that would throttle the speed when there is congestion.
Ideally, ISPs would then bill customers depending on how much bandwidth they use, with the lower priority settings charging less per gb than the higher ones.
Just an idea, not necessarily saying its a good one.
Even here in Greece I see typical DSL performance which is to say the least crapulent. Being charitable I'll pretend OTEnet (the former state monopoly) isn't traffic shaping (heh - that's why my torrent of ubuntu dropped dead to 10Kb/s)...
Funny that it does that after about an hour regardless of time of day...(well not always but too often to be attributable to teh interweb being busy from Greece).
A car which may or may not be able to hit 100kph with the wind behind it being sold as a Ferrari wouldn't be acceptable (unless you're a retro Citroen freak).
A Ferrari with three wheels one of which refuses to be circular on wednesdays if we're driving to visit a mistress (hey i'm in southern europe not the puritanical domain of the U.S) wouldn't be acceptable.
Some traffic shaping is inevitable. But it's a stopgap measure not an acceptable solution. If 90% of new traffic is e.g. bittorrent then the answer is either to make this premium usage (and spell it out in the contract) OR STFU and put more capacity.
Should be really simple - either *BE* a provider with acceptable use spelled out transparently or *DIE* in the marketplace.
BTW I think the "exception" is to soften the blow for ISPS so they don't end up sued to death. YMMV. Remember - legislators are mostly (ex optional) sharks^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers so there will always be exceptions. Good luck Canada. Now if we can only persuade the UK to tighten the screws and torch the bloody Phorm thing - which ought to worry everyone much much more than traffic shaping...
Which leads me to a truly dumb idea. Allocation of the RF spectrum is controlled internationally via the ITU (A UN organization). Given the nature of the Internet shouldn't it be regulated the *same* way? (Running for bomb shelter and donning asbestos undergarments right now...).
Andy.
Good use of crap, roses. Bad use of crap - Vista.
The UK rail system. It is universally acknowledged that privatization was a disaster just to make the fat cats fatter.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
You're putting up a strawman in the form of a false dichotomy here. How did this drivel get modded up?
The idea would be that the IAPs should split their bandwidth fairly among all their users. In its bandwidth share, the user should prioritize its outgoing traffic. The IAP should shape the incomming traffic fairly between each of its user. In this scenario, low latency network applications are dead (video conferencing/telephony/video games...): in an home network lan, the momy is watching a HD internet TV channel, the boy can forget playing online its favorite FPS and the girl cannot have a decent IP phone line call. That's why there is a exception to let the IAP to shape further specifically on low lantency protocols... but they will never be able to embrace all past-present-futur low latency protocols on the net. Of course they could favor only the protocols of big bucks corporations. So you could trash any open low latency protocols...
But there is a another way: IPv6. Indeed the protocol does have labels that let you tag traffic. Its means the user network apps can tell the IAP equipement what type of traffic they send. So the IAPs can apply shaping rules based on that type of traffic on cross-user boundaries. Nethertheless in a traffic priority class, the IAP still has to provide fairness among users. Basically, fairness among user is not applied on traffic as a whole but on a per traffic class basis.
Of course in the real world, low latency traffic will have to be shaped to very small bandwidth... smart users would push their P2P traffic on high priority. The idea on high priority traffic classes is to have just enough bandwidth to let signaling, highly compressed voice, intense action FPS game data. Of course, you can have several high priority classes. BUT there is a BIG exception to all of this, emergency services: for instance you want to call from the net the "internet US 911". In this case the IAP equipement will have to know without IPv6 label that you are calling an emergency service (IP based shaping, but amount of IPs must be minimal to avoid overloaded routing tables and increased latency that will degrade internet quality significantly).
I let you imagine what it will be when users will have Fiber To The Home with upload bandwidth on a 100's of Mb scale!
This does mean, rewritting many network applications. Deep IAP topology reconfiguration. More expensive IAP equipements: must be able to perform shaping extremely quickly in order to minimize the latency cost(=forget high level protocol shaping or shaping based on too much data(IPs)).
And the last but not the least... IPv6!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
filtering (404 checkers)
throttling ( now ISPs have a video on demand)
and ad-injection.
biz will win out over net neutralization..
privacy, copyright, and other issues already taken care of.
packrat ; writer-informer. http://packrat.comicgenesis.com http://www.youtube.com/area163 https://www.smashwords.com/
These regulations' only justification was the inherent inflexibility of the particular markets. If a consumer dies from food poisoning, he will not be able to switch to a different supplier. If a building collapses, (most of) its occupants will not be able to opt for a better builder next time. This provides some justification to government's preemptive interference in some cases.
Internet Service Provision is vastly different. A dissatisfied customer remains perfectly healthy and is able to switch to a competitor very quickly. Ensuring availability of wide variety of such competitors is what government should concentrate on.
Instead, we may well get saddled with very few very big ISPs, who will negotiate a (near) monopoly (a'la AT&T) from the government in exchange for the on-paper adherence to various regulations, which may be too cumbersome to pass through as laws ("net-neutrality", porn-filtering, cooperation on eavesdropping, etc.). The companies will then, inevitably, outsmart the regulators making the rest of us (far) worse off.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather just switch ISPs, than file complaints with government bureaucrats... Free market is usually the best regulator.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This sounds like a good idea, but I doubt nothing will happen. This is a private bill. I can see the whole NDP and Bloc voting for it. However, knowing the conservatives, they will not be happy about that bill, and will likely make it a confidence vote. And the liberals will fall flat once again.
The gas company sells me gas by the cubic meter. The water company sells me water by the cubic meter. So why not have the ISP's sell me throughput (up and down) by the bit. The more I use the more I pay for. (Yes I know there will be other delivery/infastructure charges same as for water and gas)
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
I think they maybe referring more to your connection speed (ie yes its upto 5Mb or whatever, but what is it actually syncing at?) Line Status: In Service UpTime: Line Profile Name: al2_d2496-2496-256_u640-640-256 Last State Change: Wed May 28 22:00:29 EDT 2008 Operational Status Speed (Kbs) Relative Capacity Occupation (%) Noise Margin (0..31 dB) Signal Power (0-20 dBm) Attenuation (0-60 dB) Block count UpStream 640 71 16.0 12.0 32.0 1.4006229E7 DownStream 2496 68 13.0 15.0 60.0 3.5324464E7 Thats for my home connection, its a little hard to read, but you can see my profile "al2_d2496-2496-256_u640-640-256". So basically I pay for up to 5Mb and I sync at 2.5Mb ... hardly seems fair (well I get it free from work, but we pay for it as 5Mb ;). Since its completely impossible for me to get even 5Mb back to the ISP.
Oh and on a side note, only the ISP your with can give you this info (as far as I know) not another DSL provider.
*sigh* Hate replying to my own, I should have used preview as it all went together ;)
que Senator Ted Stevens babbling about not getting his "internet" (meaning email) until 3 days later and its all because of Netflix.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE
Total nutbars.
However, explains Michael Liberal Geist's non-coverage.
yawn
Although I completely agree that ISPs are screwing nearly everyone, net neutrality is still unrealistic.
It's better to think of your internet connection like a tolled highway. When you pay $X to get onto the tolled highway, and your car can go 120kmph, thinking that you should rightfully be able to drive at a constant 120kmph is unrealistic. If there's lots of traffic, it doesn't matter what you paid for, you've still got to wait. Yet people seem to accept this, and not accept when their internet connection is slow.
Yes, you do pay for a certain speed with your ISP, and I don't think this business model is correct or even accurate. But the same principles apply.
ISPs should be run more like tolled highways. You pay a certain fee to get access to a range of kbps (like how you pay different fees for access to different highways at 60kmph, 80kmph, 100kmph). You then pay-per-bits downloaded on your connection (like how you pay-per-distance travelled on the highway).
I think this makes perfect sense.
36.1 (1) Network operators shall not engage in network management practices that favour, degrade or prioritize any content, application or service transmitted over a broadband network based on its source, ownership or destination.
>>This sounds ok to me.
Exceptions
(2) Nothing in subsection (1) shall be construed as limiting or restricting the right of a network operator to
>>>Loophole city. Keep your eyes wide open...
"
(a) manage the flow of network traffic in a reasonable manner in order to relieve congestion;
"
>>>The internet providers mention congestion as an excuse to shape traffic. Government should instead enforce the ISP's to buy adequate hardware to guarantee everyone has the bandwidth the ISP promised in the first place and stop traffic shaping policies.
(b) provide reasonable security protection for a user's computer or the network;
>>>the ISP's have not really mentioned how they have been proactive on this front. The only thing I perceive are the packet long capabilities that log internet crimes after the fact. Apart from that I don't see how ISP's have anything to protect the user's computer. I don't perceive ISP's should have a right to control the security on a user's computer. This item may be interpreted as giving ISP's the right to control the user's computer for the ISP's network-security's sake. Obviously, this will lead to invasion of privacy.
>>>"
(c) give priority to emergency communications;
"
>>>In my humble opinion, some of these exceptions indicate a poor separation of concerns. Emergency communications infrastructures should not be blended into the consumer internet infrastructure.
Internet consumers should not be paying to build emergency infrastructures into consumer internet services. It will make the internet experience much slower and it gives government emergency officials carte-blanche VIP internet bandwidth even when it's not an emergency. I don't like it.
It's smells like a potential abuse of power.
(d) offer directly to each user service at different prices based on defined levels of bandwidth or the actual quantity of data flow over a user's connection;
>>>"or the actual quantity of data flow over a user's connection;"
>>>This is a wonderful loophole for the ISP to vary bandwidth speeds. Their pricing is re-worded as number of Gigabytes transferred in a month instead of guaranteed bandwidth.
I don't agree with this exception. They should remove it and guarantee pricing based solely on guaranteed upload bandwidth speeds and guaranteed download bandwidth speeds. They should also be enforced to be explicit about both of these. I have seen providers solely mention download speeds which is truly deceptive and in my opinion leads to false advertising and other business practices that should be mentioned to the better business bureau.
(e) offer directly to each user consumer protection services, including parental controls for indecency or unwanted content, software for the prevention of unsolicited commercial electronic messages, or other similar capabilities, provided that the user is given clear and accurate advance notice of their ability to refuse or subsequently disable each consumer protection service;
>>>BIG LOOPHOLE: This is a mechanism for ISP's to sell extra services that have nothing to do with internet bandwidth and traffic-shaping. This has all to do with the ISP's unethical business practice of aggressively proposing extra sales a number of times on the same phone call for firewall/anti-virus/parental-control/games and music packages while closing the deal for the internet connection. I've seen this sales strategy at one ISP which will remain nameless. In my humble opinion, they should remove this item. It is irrelevant. The consumer can find these services on their own if they want them.
(f) handle breaches of the terms of service, provided the terms of service are not inconsistent with subsection (1); and
>>>ok
(g) prevent any violation of federal or provincial law.
>>>ok
After spending 20 minutes really reading the post, and any +1 replies to it, I'm starting to wonder if I need to see a doctor about paranoia problem.
That, or is this not the trying to throw another comfortable, familiar line around the rural 56k users in Canada?
I work for a crown controllers Canadian ISP. There's not many of us. It's suprising to see exactly how many people in our province alone are still on 56k service. Be in 5000, 10,000, or more - it's still very very high for a single province. I'm not actually meaning to imply that the company I work for is at fault, just that it goes to show exactly how much population density affects broadband in Canada - and exactly how many people live in rural areas that may never see broadband in the traditional sense.
A lot of these people know this to their core. I honestly don't know why, but it really occured to me that the NDP could swing this to encompass a very number of voters in -every single province and territory- with a neat little turn of words.
Not really true. Frequently, in Canada's multi-party parliamentary system, NDP proposals have formed the core of major legislative changes that were enacted into law - it's not like the United Russian States of America, comrade. They negotiate.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --