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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.
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.
Sometimes I'm an idiot! I do sincerely apologize for these occasions, like just now.
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.
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".
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."
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.
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 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]
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.
p2p was designed to cause congestion in the same way that carpool* was designed to cause traffic jams.
* note. "carpool", not "carpool lanes"