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Canadian ISPs Speak Out Against Net Neutrality
Ars Technica reports on a proceeding being held by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission regarding net neutrality. They requested comments from the public as part of the debate, and several Canadian ISPs took the opportunity to explain why they think it's a bad idea. Quoting:
"One of the more interesting responses came from an ISP called Videotron, which told the CRTC that controlling access to content ... 'could be beneficial not only to users of Internet services but to society in general.' As examples of such benefits, Videotron mentioned the control of spam, viruses, and child pornography. It went on to suggest that graduated response rules — kicking users off the 'Net after several accusations of copyright infringement — could also be included as a benefit to society in general. ... Rogers, one of Canada's big ISPs, also chimed in and explained that new regulations might limit its ability to throttle P2P uploads, which it does at the moment. 'P2P file sharing is designed to cause network congestion,' says the company. 'It contributes significantly to latency, thereby making the network unreliable for certain users at periods of such congestion.'"
If you can't provide what you're being paid for, stop overselling the network you have.
'P2P file sharing is designed to cause network congestion,' says the company.
Yes! Clearly, when designing a P2P protocol, my first concern was to make absolutely sure that your network would be congested, because I hate the Internet!
This isn't all about you, ISPs. It's about us, and what we want to use our bandwidth for. And yes, P2P filesharing does have design goals other than clogging your tubes.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
are hard pressed to hurt others. Indeed, we are quite safe when everyone is controlled and limited. Sadly, Videotron is playing the typical "think of the children" and "trade freedom for safety" thing because they think it'll get them in good with the media companies.
Or something retarded like that.
I would prefer they elaborate on this generic "benefit for society" that comes from protecting the copyright interests of corporate entities. I don't really see how this particular item helps all of us lead better lives.
"kicking users off the 'Net after several accusations of copyright infringement"
notice how he used the word "accusations" instead of anything that would imply the necessity of evidence.
But that's just the genertional gap just being shown.
Back in the old days, /. was a purists tech site. They had some funnies as in (groan), but mostly was discussion and Linux advocation. Then, we really didnt care about the legality of whatever. As long as it was technologically feasible and interesting, it was worth doing.
Fast forward past the Napster years....
We now live in a world of "Papers Please", and surveillance tech. Most of our cool ideas have been deemed "illegal", as they were gray first. The 2600 judgment said that just linking was violating. Now, most of our efforts are to try to turn this tide around, telling politicians how stupid their policies really are.
We now talk about network neutrality, but that's solved by encryption. Next they block encryption and we set it up to look like html over http "share servers". And then we have the 750-35000 dollar fine if we are found trading. Look at NewYorkCountryLawyer for those situations. He's a techie geek lawyer who fights on our side.
i thought you were strong and free? why do i feel so disappointed?
"they didn't know it was impossible, so they did it!" - Mark Twain
Anyone who's dealt with Videotron before recognizes their double speak. They have a long history of draconian practices such as capping the bandwidth of their users at a very low level, preventing the use of *any* sort of server, charging $50 per static IP you request, etc.
They go out of their way to rip off their users and then try to impose the same draconian measures on their competitors in order to discourage users from jumping ship. The same applies to Bell.
The Canadian government should outlaw any one company from owning *both* the infrastructure and service components of media services. Right now Bell is abusing their monopoly on phone lines to lock competitors out of the ADSL space and Videotron monopolizes its control of cable lines to lock competitors out of the TV space.
Net neutrality is like highway neutrality.
Would you be upset if companies were allowed to contruct paying-subscriber-only lanes on the freeway? Or if they were able to just throw out traffic cones wherever they wanted?
It really is that fucking simple. There is no benefit from any deviation from net neutrality.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Videotron is not not just an ISP.
They are also a cable company, phone company
and they own stores where you can rent dvds
and games.
The are own by Quebecor, which is a publishing
company, which also owns TVA, a tv station,
and stores selling video games, and the list goes on and on.
Basically, they tend to be a monopole which
wants to make you pay for everything you watch and
play.
They are certainly not neutral about net neutrality.
Agreed. Their arguments should fall on deaf ears - the problem is that they fall on uneducated ears. Most judges have no idea what goes on in the real world, let alone in the world of technology. If their packet shaping goes through, Canada's internet go down the crapper... all we need is content filtering - uhm..if ISPs are that concerned, offer services like netnanny for free..parents should be taking onus for what their kids browse!
Fantastic shining example of why we NEED network neutrality; to stop companies like this from having a monopoly on all entertainment and in doing so drag your business and information needs into the same quagmire of unregulated information highway robbery.
Time for an information age robin hood?
This sort of greed is disgusting.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Oh wait. I thought it was the government's job to regulate businesses. The latest economic crisis has pretty much shot businesses in the foot on that matter.
Last time I heard, they have 100 mbps in Japan and Korea, a great infrastructure, and no bottleneck issues. If Videotron, or any other western ISP, can't keep up with technology, maybe they just need to fail, and admit that our communication infrastructure isn't something to be entrusted to people out to make a buck.
They only have a say in it because they think they "own the pipes", but guess what? Most of the "pipe" network was actually built with public money. If Verizon closed their business operations tomorrow the Net would continue to exist, which proves that the "pipes" Verizon own are actually just a tiny, irrelevant bit of the Net.
Is it just me... but will anyone lose any sleep over this if canada filter/limit their users and content.
Sometimes I'm an idiot! I do sincerely apologize for these occasions, like just now.
"Videotron mentioned the control of spam, viruses, and child pornography"
That's hilarious. A couple of years ago most of the spam I received from Canadian sources was coming from Videotron domains, and it would keep on coming even after reporting it to them. I don't know if they ever cleaned up their act, but it got so bad that I eventually added anything with a videotron.ca domain into my e-mail spam filter.
Your argument might be valid if A. you had an impressively low uid to backup your differing opinion, and B. they weren't absolutely correct. That said, a low user id doesn't mean you actually /know/ anything, just that you've been around longer; age does not necessarily correlate with sense.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
not like you and your infinity low uid? I've used slashdot since the day I heard about it post as an anonymous coward for almost a year before feeling the need to participate and get a user account. I have a fairly low uid but it would have been lower if I had signed up earlier. Who are you to say someone hasn't been following slashdot for years just because of a stupid fucking number that means nothing besides one day wanting to go and click register instead of reply and posting as anonymous.
Stop trolling or if your going to bitch about uids at least have the balls to use your own and take the karma hit for being an idiot.
No. Net Neutrality ensures no discrimination based on traffic source or destination. This has nothing to do with Quality of Service filtering, which is discrimination based on traffic type. They can still throttle my P2P all they like, they just can't throttle my access to YouTube because YouTube didn't pony up some "high traffic site fee".
"General usage of the internet can cause congestion and latency on the network. We therefore propose that no one should be allowed to use the internet. Any usage would lead to depletion of the valuable network bandwidth. Oh, and, uhm, think of the children."
What blatant misdirection! There's a huge difference between blocking spam and viruses in order to protect customers against hassle and harm, and blocking access to content because it allows you to make a buck once the content producer begs you to please stop blocking their content. Protecting customers against spam and viruses is a service; blocking content because the content provider hasn't paid you off, on the other hand, is extortion. Net Neutrality is supposed to prevent just this kind of extortion.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
First of all last time I checked and looked at my stack of blank cdr's I paid for the right to legally download music all I want. Want it any other way best remove the levi and pay me back the money I paid into it for the pleasure of storing my own Photos and documents.
I'll sending Shaw off a nice letter today and a pre cancelation notice they can keep and use the day they decided to limit my rights and INTERNET connection.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Talking to the copyright cartels. They NEVER mention that they have a monopoly and copyright gives them that.
Because they want
a) Free market for their use
b) Monopoly for their use
c) Nobody to know they're getting both
It looks like the ISPs are standing up to traffic throttling in in response to Google, Amazon and Skype's request to the CRTC to ban traffic throttling.
With big recognizable names like Google, Amazon and Skype backing net neutrality, hopefully the CRTC will be swayed to rule in favor of stopping traffic shaping or at least scrutinize the current behavior of ISPs like Rogers and Bell.
Google, Amazon ask CRTC to stop Internet traffic shaping
http://www.saveournet.ca/ for supporting net neutrality in Canada.
Maybe we should make the tubes owned by a public company that leases lines to ISPs rather than letting Rogers, Bell and all these other companies do it.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Grandparent clearly deserves it.
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
The cocksuckers at videotron saying such bullshit is up to par with the company line. you see, Videotron are part of Quebecor Media corporation, a media entity that has a solid hold on information over this province. Owning multiple newspapers, radio stations, a television channel and videotron, these bastards have made it a corporate strategy to auto-pimp everything that they do. Their newspapers will pimp their french language big brother, which will redirect to canoe.ca ( their own infotainment portal) to vote that week, etc etc.
To them, control over everything is key, so of course they don't fucking want net neutrality, cuz it would be bad for their strategy of walling everything media related in this province. Thank the Bob for the quality news of radio-canada.ca(the french cbc) and Le devoir, THE independent newspaper in this province (http://www.ledevoir.com).
Quebecor are monopolist bastards and I wish the politicians in this province would force them to sell off some of their media properties, as this is getting ridiculous.
Peace and happyness to you, by LullySing
... even if it's "for the children."
Michael Geist's comments in the article pretty much strike to the heart of the matter. There are only a handful of major ISPs (which are parts of a larger media/telecomm corporation), and typically only two exist in the same community. The rest are resellers who are at the whim of the incumbent carriers.
Frankly, I think the internet should function like hydro - you get hooked up, you have a meter, and are billed for the amount you use. If you want to buy bulk bandwidth (or other extras ie email addresses, webspace, tv access), then you can go to an ISP and get those extras.
I wouldn't mind the extra taxes having a public infrastructure would incur. It's Canada after all, we're used to taxes.
So wait, you (ISPs) are complaining about people using your bandwidth? Excuse me, but isn't that what we're paying you for?
Right now you're offering a product where you give us bandwidth in exchange for our money. Now, according to you, it's unreasonable for you to have to provide that bandwidth. Doesn't that leave the entire description of what you offer as "You pay us money"? I think you may be missing a key part of selling a product. You know... the product?
I think it's clear from several other posts that one of the big problems here is the underlying conflict-of-interest. Videotron, Rogers, and Bell (not sure about Shaw) all do distribution and also own/manage content creators/distributors. From my standpoint, this makes it difficult to see them ever wanting true "neutrality", given their need to leverage revenue opportunities gained from giving preference to their own respective content sources and other service offerings (like VoIP).
So how about a small suggestion? No "neutrality" laws, provided these companies separate their "carrier" and "content" arms. That way, the "carrier" units will be able to offer alternative content offerings, helping drive better completion for services in this area. This is similar to the existing logic for power "generation" versus "distribution" that exists for Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and other states and provinces in North America. Multiple different generation companies provide the electricity; same distribution grid to your door.
Of course, I expect no takers on this option - leveraging the "synergy" of owning the distribution network as well as the content to be sold through it is an old, old dream. Just ask the big Hollywood movie companies, which only relatively recently were allowed to once again own/control the theaters that display their content. Imagine what it would be like if Cineplex gave preference to Warner Brothers movies along with Atlantis Alliance, while AMC mainly showed Paramount and Lions' Gate films. Makes about as much sense as running the 407 as a private toll-road (yes, I live in the Toronto area).
My view? "Neutrality" laws are as mandatory for cable and data communication network providers as utility regulation was for gas and electricity, so long as the "carrier" in question is not independently contracted by the state or province for providing service. If Videotron doesn't like the current legal strategy, they just have to divest themselves of their cable distribution network, and work with the Government of Quebec to provide a regulated distribution grid for content. Pretty simple, actually.
Some may view this as "more regulation" and state control. My answer is simply this - if information distribution is to this century what electric, natural gas, and highway networks were to the last, why does it make more sense now to allow unregulated private ownership of such an important public capability? Who's going to own the information economy?
Regulation of radio and television, railroads, electrical utilities was done for a reason. Up until now these cable communication networks have been able to argue against this same kind of logic applying to them. "Internet Neutrality" is a step towards the management of this information network in a way that is analogous to what was required for the earlier ones. For the sake of the future of this economy, I am hoping I am not the only one that sees this need.
YACC
Canada, being a banana republic with snowploughs, has no stringent media ownership requirements, as the various liberal governments are in the pockets of media, and the rarer conservative governments are pro-business, so there is not real incentive to have laws geared towards protecting the people.
Québecor owns newspapers and a TV network, and it already discriminates against non-internet customers by blocking access to some of it's content (only Vidéoétron subscribers can access TV content for free, for example).
Overselling is okay, but you have to be ready to invest and deliver the product to those of your customers who actually do intent to use your product to the full extend.
If you don't want to do that then change the pricing scheme!
I have a friend who is into the habit of downloading gigs of media by P2P and who then takes one look at it and throws it away. I think if you must throttle as an ISP with shitty uplinks then maybe P2P is not the worst thing you could throttle.
And unlimited means unlimited.
Well, really since if time didn't put a limit to you traffic usage ISPs could argue that truly unlimited is a physical impossibility...
Would you be upset if companies were allowed to contruct paying-subscriber-only lanes on the freeway?
No, I would not be upset by this because I would be paying for exactly what I got. What would upset me would be if I found I could not leave at the exit I wanted to because the local town had reached the maximum number of cars that day and refused to pay for a larger quota from the highway company despite the fact that they had built an exit easily capable of handling more.
I pay my ISP for access to the internet at a particular bandwidth. The company I connect to is also paying their ISP for a particular bandwidth access to the internet. Some of that money should go to ensuring that there is sufficient infrastructure to connect us together without the ISP trying to extort more money from either of us just because they have realised that they can.
Hey, I used to have a 5 digit UID, but after spending some time away from the site, I forgot my password. Had to re-register. I bet there are a few of us in the same boat; UID level does not necessarily equal experience.
What was once true, is no longer so
Actually, no. Disregard that, I mean what I said the first time l4m3 a$$ c0cksux0rz!!1!
Once they start having to disconnect 50% of their client base for 3 copyright infringements, they'll change their mind rather quickly.
Hello, the Internet. I would like to propose Godwin's Law for Networks: In any discussion on network policy, such as net neutrality, traffic shaping, quality of service, protocol-based filtering, etc., if you introduce a claim that involves child pornography, you lose the argument.
The child pornography community will use whatever technology is available for information transfer, just like the rest of us. Any policy short of inspection of every document that passes through the network and forbidding any opaque encoding (which includes forbidding anything novel and forbidding all encryption), is irrelevant to the issue of child pornography.
The child pornography issue is being used for its shock value. It's as if "child pornography" is a magic phrase that is expected to turn people's brains off and prevent them from critically examining the surrounding proposal. We cannot allow this kind of irresponsible irrational advocacy to dominate our public discussion.
Fight sound bites with sound bites: "Godwin's Law for Networks".
P2P file sharing is designed to cause network congestion
What does this mean? File sharing is designed to share files. Short-sighted ISP management, on the other hand, is guaranteed to cause network congestion.
Idiots. P2P is the killer app that has justified the expense of a high-speed connection for untold millions of people, and all they can think about is killing it.
I repeat. Idiots.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
this will begin to give htem a new message.
YUP lets start suing those cheap european servers for somehting useful like hosting local businesses.
YES thats right begin the under cut and take away there rogers, shaw, bell, telus clients, take them to the land of freedom and cheap pricing , make those companies more affordable in that they wont have terms of service that are retarded and overpriced.
This is now beginning to happen and in time you will begin to see a new angle, if they screw with net neutrality it ends a businesses right to host on another server with affordable prices and as such is UNENFORCEABLE in long run.
'P2P file sharing is designed to cause network congestion,' says the company. 'It contributes significantly to latency, thereby making the network unreliable for certain users at periods of such congestion.'
It's nice to see that a large Canadian ISP doesn't know anything about how P2P is designed. Also nice to see that they don't know the differences between latency, reliability and congestion.
Oh well, corporate research is highly overrated anyway.
I was about to cancel my subscription to Teksavvy (a fantastic ISP) to go with Videotron because, being cable, it's slightly faster.
Now that I'm aware of Videotron's stance on Net Neutrality (something Teksavvy is fight vehemently for), I'm canning the idea. Videotron will not be receiving my money.
Thank you, slashdot.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Our country is continuously littered with news of regulators supposedly established to help me 'the little guy' when in fact all they do is help keep monopolies and oligarchies from losing control. In fact the regulatory bodies up here continually vote in favour of screwing the little guy for the big corps.
CRTC Forces us folks to keep lazy and lousy TV content providers in business through fees even though I only watch the Asian/Indian/Far East/5 french channels only for the few minutes per week when my fetish mood kicks in. The CRTC won't even touch the internet neutrality issues up here - 'not our problem' we don't regulate the internet - however they are the ones who require the fees set at X. DNS hijacking isn't our problem etc etc.
Heck - we have a regulatory body that allows a few farmers to charge whatever they want for milk and cheese and butter with NO ability for the 99% of the rest of the country who buy the damn stuff to voice an opinion that we should allow open market forces into the sway. Sounds funny - but since the rural ridings have a disproportionate amount of sway in parliament- the farmers get their way at the expense of the consumers.
Worst of all perhaps is the fact that we have governemtns who regulate the minimum price of beer to help the two large breweries and stifle competition. Enabling fat laziness to take hold in corporate Canada.
Look assnuggets, if bandwidth continues to increase at the speed you made it do for the last 15 years the point will be moot in 2 years anyway... if you slow down you're just hardballing us... and your use... kinda done.
Second there will be an effort to integrate all transmissions around a custom standard... open wireless or mesh networks... your choice[note, you won't get money from the mesh].
Meanwhile, yes people are downloading more and that might interfere with legitimate services such as email and web access, do some routing... make T1s available for those who require them and see who bites.
VDSL is your friend, grow a pair and buy some from Korea.
Charge less... then you won't need so much security... coupled with this improve your damn tech support by giving them more power. They usually need to kick upstairs because they can't handle both billing and technical issues... hire techies pay them enough they know it's a stable career (with advancement into design and development) and give them the power to actually help people.
But I'm being silly, you already know all this and more about the problems associated with each of these issues... so go make lists of the problems and benefits, choose a solution and get to it.
Also... stay the fuck away from our liberties ( first amendment or Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms equivalent) otherwise you're going to stunt history and even you twisted bastards aren't that [insult insulting term based on your assesment of this risk]
Downloading audio files is a waste of time. It is much more efficient to bring your drive to a friend's house and copy it all en masse, and then weed it out as you go. Especially now that I and my buddies have all migrated to FLAC which sounds WAY better.
Same with movies. Any digital data.
file sharing was cool back when drive space was expensive and DSL/cable held a comparative advantage. That is no longer the case.
Online is only useful as a streaming system, such as somafm.com or pandora or NPR or WFMU or whatever. Choking online won't stop the bleeding.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20071210
Having a lower uid doesn't mean you've been around longer, just that your account's been around longer. Plenty of /. readers never bother making an account.
1. In the name of better society
2. We need more power over our clients
3. Profit.
Always works!
All it takes on YouTube is an accusation - even if it's your own damned material, once you're accused, it's a strike against you. You can contest it, but the point is that you have to prove yourself innocent in order to keep from being booted. There is just FAR too much potential for abuse.
are just French communists, a.k.a. Gay French sent to the New World to die and relieve the homeland of their burden and reduce the perfered population of the surplus.
Its a recurring nightmare, these Bou vie Bou ...
If it were minute by minute throttling. for a given price the ISP and I decide on a number of Kb per minute. I get and send bytes in each minute until the limit is met, then my connection stops but only until the beginning of the next minute. At any time I can go to my ISP's Website and change my setting - paying more so I get a larger number of Kb per minute. Plans should start at $9.00 a month with a number of Kb equivalent to a fast dialup connection.
There are good reasons I know nobody who has internet access through Rogers or Bell.
I'm based out of Calgary, and Shaw treats us like kings. We get fantastic speeds for what we pay, and we get them for everything we do. INCLUDING P2P.
Even Telus is head and shoulders above Bell and Rogers (although, they still have their issues).
Bullshit like this is why I will NEVER recommend Rogers or Bell to any friends/clients/colleagues or even my enemies.
Frankly, I don't understand how they even stay afloat in this province. I have yet to meet someone who has even seen a Rogers or Bell internet setup here.
Furthermore, considering the gap in opinion between the East part of Canada and the West I can see how our common concerns (IE: Traffic Shaping and Net Neutrality) would fall on deaf ears; most other things fall on such ears too. On the flip side, I am glad they didn't implement those ridiculous Copyright changes mid 2008, phew.
Note that he said that a low UID means you've been around longer, not that having a high UID necessarily means you haven't been around longer. Of course, there's that guy running around with a bought UID invalidating that, too, but it still pretty much olds.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
"P2P file sharing is designed to prevent network congestion,"
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
The good thing about this is that it will spare the rest of us of this trauma.
There is a slight risk that our legislators will become persuaded that ''The Canadians are doing it so it must be OK'', but just slowing them down until the bad effects become obvious should protect us.
You could argue that it is like conducting noxious medical experiments on {{pick a disadvantaged section of society}}, but at least the Canadians brought this upon themselves and the effects will be completely reversible.
I understand the economics of consumer broadband. I've run an ISP before. I've leased dedicated lines and peered with other ISP's, etc. The fact that I can get 7mbps or so from my ISP (shaw.ca) for $40/month is nothing short of a miracle to me. What does Shaw do? They tell me that I can move a maximum of 60GB/month of traffic. It's not a hard limit; I occasionally exceed that by up to 20% or so. The only time they've complained to me is when I hit 140GB due to a few torrents that suddenly became popular and I was away from my desktop on business for a couple of weeks. I now adjust my torrent speeds so that I can easily stay within my allotment. If I want greater allotment, I can pay them more. I like that when I really want to download something, I can get it at almost 800KB/sec. I just mind how much I move overall. $40/month is good value for that.
Hardly, small farms get reamed by it: if you own less than 300 acres you're fucked. A friend of ours is a veal farmer because it's not as heavily regulated: she gives the milk to friends because legally she can't sell it as it costs 30.000 for a milk license, essentially her entire income.
Cable is so bad in Canada that I don't even 'pirate' it. I am not kidding: I can technically receive about 70ish channels without paying for them but anytime I tune in I get so depressed on the lousy quality of content that I turn it off and rather watch some legally streamed content from a certain European country I have ties to. Guess some "premium" channels are better but the regular stuff? Forget about it!
Should ISPs prioritize P2P above HTTP, and multicast above P2P?
They do; you just have to subscribe to the television service in order to get multicast.
Fantastic shining example of why we NEED network neutrality; to stop companies like this from having a monopoly on all entertainment
I thought the whole point of copyright is to give the creater/owner a monopoly on their content.
But it backfires. If you create something, a large company that owns many copyrights can talk a judge into believing that it should own the copyright instead of you, just because you happened to have heard something vaguely similar a decade ago. So if the big publishers own their own works, and they own your works, and they can take your Internet connection away for distributing copies of your own works, what is anyone outside the cartel to do?
There's a huge difference between blocking spam and viruses in order to protect customers against hassle and harm, and blocking access to content because it allows you to make a buck once the content producer begs you to please stop blocking their content. Protecting customers against spam and viruses is a service; blocking content because the content provider hasn't paid you off, on the other hand, is extortion.
Yet the video game console makers have been getting away with making the latter their core business model for two and a half decades.
I remember a while ago during the early Pear 2 Pear days, that various groups against p2p filesharing wanted to go after the ISPs and people said "no, the ISPs are our friends".
Well the ISPs are saying Frak You, we will decided what will be on our networks! Does this mean they are not responsible legally for what happens? Therefore they said they want to block viruses and spam, so if I get a virus or scammed by an email, I can sue my ISP for not blocking it? If someone is able to exchange child porn across the network, the CEO and various employers of the ISP get arrested for possession of child porn?
If they want to control the network, fine. But then anything that gets through, the ISPs will be the ones responsible, the ones to blame.
I think no. Why, because I dl mostly stuff I cannot get here in Canada, like BBC programs. Top Gear, fifth gear, hustle, and great documentaries are not possible to get here. from america I like to watch the TV show Burn notice, I cannot watch it "legally" here, as it is not syndicated here. so is this bad and evil? No.
p2p was designed to cause congestion in the same way that carpool* was designed to cause traffic jams.
* note. "carpool", not "carpool lanes"
#1) There are ONLY two real Canadian ISP's. Bell Canada, and Rogers Communication. All the rest are considered "independents" which I always thought funny as they are all "dependent" upon Bell or Roger lines.
#2) Bit torrent throttling != Net Neutrality.
#3) This has nothing to do with consumers not understanding what they are buying, this has everything to do with misrepresenting what they are selling.
#4) Both these companies are consummate crooks. They cheat, offer horrible service and limited options, collude, and are generally evil. Both have leveraged huge amounts of taxpayer money to build their infrastructure in their past, and neither seems to want to admit that. The harder the CRTC comes down on these clowns the better. The "independents" need more latitude, and the Bell and Rogers duopoly needs more limits as to what it can do with OUR infrastructure. They seem to forget they are only custodians, and that this is a Canadian resource, not a company asset.