Slashdot Mirror
Bell Canada Wants Pirate Websites Blocked For Canadians (www.cbc.ca)
New submitter wierzpio writes: According to Rob Malcolmson, Bell Canada's VP of regulatory affairs, Canada is a safe haven to internet pirates and the only solution is to create a federally mandated blacklist of pirate websites. Unlike the existing blacklist in the U.K., Bell's plan appears to involve no judicial oversight. "Engaging in extrajudicial attempts to block access to sites, I think, raises all kinds of Charter of Rights and Freedoms issues," argues Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa professor and internet law expert. Quebec also wants to block sites. The province recently introduced a provincial law that would force internet providers to block users' access to online gambling sites not approved by the government. It argues the legislation is necessary to ensure internet gambling companies maintain responsible gaming rules.
Hmm, the government and private companies putting together a list of sites they consider "prates" and blocking them from your view.
Certainly no potential for abuse here.
Don't sound as convincing as "Think of the children", but probably will be enforced anyway.
They should just ask DICE to run them for them. That'll take them down rather quickly.
Sourceforge and Slashdot have been doing the old "front-page-only" trick for a few days in a row now.
You made TheRegister too: https://www.theregister.co.uk/...
But not a mention on here?
We've had this debate, at least in my country, I think four or five times now. Canada is probably no different. It's always about blocking content someone or other wants blocked opening the door for censorship. Sometimes the approaches are a little different, be it some kinds of illegal content, terrorism etc.
There is always strong lobbying by the content industry that wants the mechanisms in place and some law that eventually can be extended to cover what they really want. Standing on the sidelines are religious communities that want blasphemy banned or other content they consider to be "dirty".
The first few times these attacks on civil rights met a strong reaction, there was a big discussion and the attack failed. Nevertheless the lobbyists simply start a new attack a few years later and the public just grows tired of having the same discussion over and over again.
Also the politicians either stay completely clueless regarding the subject or the bribes are just raising. Otherwise it's unexplainable why the lobbyists aren't simply ignored when they start the same debate after they've lost it previously. In my opinion politicians supporting such crap should be constantly hammered with accusations of corruptness until they leave politics.
Web blocking isn't the only debate where this happens, wire tapping, IP-logging, the cryptowar, it's all like:
"Not again, we had this debate already."
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Most likely they will use DNS blocking, like they do in other places. Easy to just use an open DNS server. Plenty around, even if you do not want to give Google even more data.
One of the lists
Or just use your own DNS server, like bind. The latter would be not a real solution for many.
Why is there no 'single PC' DNS server available? Only listen to localhost and does the resolving for everything that is not in the hosts file.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Bell, has always been aggressive on it's pricing and it's reputation in the government is not exactly spotless. They had a "internet security service" scam when by default they would give you a disk they told you to install (which I told people there is never a good reason to do with a legit ISP), that would install a remote access service and symantic antivirus, for which you would be billed an extra fee per month be default, whether you installed it or not (I can't remember the amount but I think it was ~$10 CAD). Analysis revealed this "solution" made people's computers LESS security as Bell in essence planed a back door for their technicians to use (their own, not MS's remote assistance). I remember advising people to remove the service, get their own antivirus (which was certainly less than $120/year) and cancel the "plan" that was by default tagged to their account. Several clients had taken my advice but 3 months later was still being charged. Each month out of the 3 when asked why the charge was still there,the support person said it was an "oversight". For a few of these I called Bell myself and told them if they didn't stop these charges and refund from the first cancellation immediately, there would be a class action lawsuit on their hands. As it turned out, the federal government took them to task for that.
Another incident involved their new Fiber internet service. They got a slap on the wrist again by government regulators for false advertising, claiming their fiber internet deal was less than it was. (I never signed up as I never trusted them, obviously).
My first and last experience with Bell as an ISP was when I got my own DSL modem, returned theirs (which they accepted) and they kept billing me an extra $5/month even when they acknowledged they had received their modem back. They said they couldn't cancel it as it was a required part of the deal (although they gave me an address to return the modem as I told them I now had my own). I cancelled their service. 3 days before the cancellation was finalized, I got a call telling me they would drop the fee if I stopped the cancellation. No go there.
So Bell has a bad business for consumer all round and government divisions coming down on their so their credibility is questionable there.
In addition, people are fed up with Bell's exorbitant fees for satellite tv fees.In Canada, Bell is the exclusive content distributor for HBO. They've had a deal for years. (Bell owns several phone company and at least one IPTV service). If you want to get say, "Game of Thrones" in Canada without using a "grey market" (it's not illegal to download restricted intellectual property, only to distribute), you have to pay them $60 basic fee, plus an extra fee to get a channel for extended HBO content including "Game of Thrones". HBO has a very nice Internet only service for $20 USD a month which I tried to sign up for. But it's not allowed in Canada because of Bell's deal. People are pissed and using streams. So bell wants to block that.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein