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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.
"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
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.
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.
Um...I would disagree. Net Neutrality should (and, I believe, is generally accepted to) mean that my provider cannot screw with my traffic because it suits their interests to do so. What happens if they decide to throttle voip traffic due to 'network congestion', but the start of such throttling just happens to coincide with the launch of their own voip service? It has to be an open pipe, period.
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*
Don't you know that nothing had been invented before patents? And nothing was written before copyrights?
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
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".
I'd like to see Bell and Videotron being split into an ISP and Other business.
I'd like to see their senior executives split into a couple different pieces too.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
p2p was designed to cause congestion in the same way that carpool* was designed to cause traffic jams.
* note. "carpool", not "carpool lanes"