Canadians Find Traffic Shaping "Reasonable"

gehrehmee writes "A recent Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll on ISPs' use of traffic shaping suggests that 60% of survey respondents find the practice reasonable as long as customers are treated fairly, while 22% believe Internet management is unreasonable regardless. The major Canadian Internet and phone service provider Rogers, meanwhile, compared 'person-to-person file-sharing to a car that parks in one lane of a busy highway at all times of the day or night, clogging the roadways for everyone unless someone takes action.' Is there a lack of education about the long-term effects of traffic shaping on free communication? Or are net neutrality advocates just out of touch?" The poll found that only 20% of respondents had ever heard of traffic shaping. The article is unclear on whether the "60%" who found the practice "reasonable" are 60% of all respondents — most of whom don't know what they are talking about — or 60% of the minority who know. If the former, then the exact phrasing of the question is the overwhelming determinant of the response. At the CTRC hearings, which wrapped up today, Bell Canada executives revealed that the company "slows certain types of downloads [P2P] to as little as 1.5 to 3 per cent of their advertised speed during 9-1/2 hours of the day."

Comments

Re:Using the truth to bolster a lie

[bytesex]

If I may be so kind as to play the devil's advocate here, you might also rephrase the question as: do you think that people who think of themselves as l33t h4x0rs but who really just like to download shitloads of pr0n, music, software, gaming-data and movies at the expense of everyone else, should be given preference over those who would like to use the internet responsibly and who cannot believe that such arbitration would necessarily lead to the curbing of the freedom of speech ? Because that is the undertone I can just feel oozing out of the write-up here. O, it's about big bad companies who want to make a buck over all of our backs and potentially use their power to wedge out the competition ? Excuse me then - may they die in a fire !