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.'"

Comments

"Benefit to society."

[TheFlyingBuddha]

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.

Tubes...

[Tuoqui]

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.

Re:Stop overselling

[Brickwall]

I'd like to reply to a bunch of comments above: First, I use Robbers high speed. I don't use torrents to download movies or music I should pay for (pr0n is different, but there's so much free stuff out there..); I like to think I'm honest. Once or twice a month I might find bandwidth restricted, but most of the time - and I'm online 12-16 hours a day - my response is very fast, and the downloads I request rarely take more than one minute in real time.

Do I have a problem with other people using p2p? Not at all. But, if you want to use a shared resource and expect to hog the entire bandwidth available, I have no sympathy. Either 1) get used to lower bandwidth, or 2) pay the extra to get dedicated bandwidth. TANSTAAFL.

But none of these issues are related to net neutrality. I don't think anyone should have to pay a premium to ensure that their sites are given priority - or even equal - access to bandwidth. I'm disappointed that so many Canadian ISP's are willing to throw in the towel; it makes me sad.