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Canada's Telco Bell Tried To Have VPNs Banned During NAFTA Negotiations (techdirt.com)
Telecom company Bell urged the Canadian government to formulate rules that would make some VPN services illegal in the country ahead of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations. The rationale behind the request? It doesn't want people in the country to use VPNs to access the US catalog of some streaming services like Netflix. TechDirt, quotes a paywalled report: "In its submission, Bell argued that Canadians accessing content from a US service with a VPN 'unjustly enriches the US service, which has not paid for the Canadian rights' but nonetheless makes that content available to Canadians. Bell's media arm reportedly spends millions on content for it streaming service, Crave TV, which allows Canadians to stream content from American networks such as HBO and Showtime."
Again though, it's not the VPN doing that. And if you want to stop users from flocking to better content catalogs elsewhere on the continent, you should focus your ire on the things causing that to happen -- like increasingly dated and absurd geo-viewing restrictions, and your own substandard content offerings that fail to adequately match up.
Again though, it's not the VPN doing that. And if you want to stop users from flocking to better content catalogs elsewhere on the continent, you should focus your ire on the things causing that to happen -- like increasingly dated and absurd geo-viewing restrictions, and your own substandard content offerings that fail to adequately match up.
Am I the only one that at first read that as "Taco Bell" and wondered why a fast food place gave two shits about VPNs on their WiFi?
It is important for the population to understand how trade effects your personal life.
However banning VPN's goes against Internet Freedom.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
can you still get tacos at the Telco Bell?
hahahahahahahahahhahahahahah. Good luck
Signed
The Internet.
If Bell wants this, then they should be stripped of their common carrier status (is that a thing in canada?) if they want to play traffic cop.
Perhaps it is time to give Bell the boot.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
Who the hell uses Bell in Canada? What a shitty company. Everyone I know uses Telus or Rogers or Freedom.
ISP's / TV system can't own content laws are needed.
Yes we want to lock you into our system and WE ARE the only choice for your ISP as well.
Computer says no. Let's ban Bell Canada instead.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Yes, I realize that this can still be gotten around by arranging to get a foreign billing address for a foreign card, but the logistics involved in doing this, at least for most people, would generally be considerably more complicated than just using a VPN.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I banned Bell Canada from my life long time ago because of infinite billing
issues, really poor customer service, abusive influence on the CRTC (our FTC),
... I'll NEVER do any business with them (personal and for my small business).
And with this, asking to ban some VPN services, this is the last nail in the
coffin for them.
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
I've noticed a number of posts recently by people unfamiliar with the country they are posting news about, where they use non-standard methods to describe it.
In Canada, one refers to them as Bell Canada.
On a related note, there is a vast difference between the University of Columbia and Columbia University.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Traveler 3468, you are off mission. Immediately cease planting tracking misspellings or The Director will take action.
How does Bell stand to make money off of this? Do they get some kind of kickback from Canadian streaming services?
Better known as 318230.
I see it from a different direction: the last mile needs to be a public utility. I have no problem with ISPs with content; I have a problem with monopoly.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Almost two years old movies and shows....
The only saving grace is their own generated content, and the interface is rather well thought out.
Apart from that....
This monopoly with special interests needs to be cut down
I mean, yes, you could put the onus on Canada's Bell to track down and acquire rights to all of the things on the US services. But why do they have to do that in the first place? Because rights holders decided that they'd make more money selling the same content to a US firm and then to a UK firm and then to a Canadian firm, each paying a premium for "exclusive" rights.
OK, OK, so, yes, the onus is kind of on Bell for participating in the system (I'm sure they defend their exclusive rights against other Canadian streamers).
Just remember to stay away from Telus, or anyone else that uses Telus equipment.
Why, because then you are using Bell. Telus cellphones run on the Bell network, and most telephone and Internet traffic from Telus goes over the nation wide Bell Internet backbone. Shaw have their own backbone.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
You aren't the only one.
Just require all devices to have GPS receivers, including desktop motherboards, and have them ping location out of band from the userspace.
Problem solved.
It all needs to be broken up, Canada and the US.
Content needs to be hosted by a company (eg Youtube as an independent, Hulu as an independent, Netflix, etc) that has no commercial interest in the connectivity (eg AT&T, Verizon, Bell, Rogers, etc), and no commercial interest in the last mile. That would allow the last mile to be delivered by any means (cable, dsl, fiber, WiFi, LTE, etc) and ensure that nobody can own all viable last mile options like many ISP's do.
Companies like Bell exist all over the world, and they act as expensive gatekeepers to US content instead of just allowing foreigners to access the US content directly. They whine because people don't want to use their rip-off CraveTV service, or have to spend an $150/mo just to access HBO.
Hell the entire reason Piracy is enabled by nVidia Kodi boxes+VPN at all is because it's cheaper and easier to buy one of those and access content ripped from Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu than it is to pay for those services legally.
Let me ask everyone. Look at your SmartTV and tell me which of these apps are available:
Shaw FreeRange TV
Telus Pik TV
Rogers Ignite TV
Bell CraveTV
CBC Gem
Netflix
Amazon Video
Hulu
CrunchyRoll
VRV
Sony Crackle
Disney/Disney XD
Cartoon Network
Hidive
Chances are none of those are available except Netflix.
Remember Zune ? Ever buy something on the Xbox VoD stuff? What about Playstation?
The problem we repeatedly run into is that the content owners make shitty deals for exclusivity and the only way to watch all the content is to either subscribe to 20 different apps, thus making it worse than cable, or to hope these content venues (eg VRV, Netflix) make it possible to subscribe to just one app, and support watching most content of that genre through that app (eg one app for sports, one app for live action film and tv, one app for animation (including japanese anime), one app for youth/pre-teen content.)
Like one email I received recently was the shutdown of UltraViolet. Can I move these movies to iTunes? No. This is why people don't want to buy or rent anything that has to be streamed, because what that service is merged with another or shuts down entirely, it's all gone.
plus the progressive point of view being forced down my throat. ugh.
It's not "Bell", it's "Bell Canada". They were simply the Canadian arm of the American Bell Telephone Company until 1975. Sounds like they still have the spirit of the original... You know, "We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company."
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe Bell needs to build a great firewall of Canada to block America's cultural imperialism
**Life is too short to be serious**
This story must be "Fake News".
I've been told I'm a racist in the US for opposing government regulated "Net Neutrality" (not sure how that makes sense). That we should be more like Canada in every way. How could this possibly even be proposed with the huge advancement in Canada with how much more down the Net Neutrality road than we are in the US?
Must be Fake News.
Funny how this happens in Canada (and China), but has never been suggested in the much more evil US.
Canada gets a free ride because they are "enlightened" socialist country. So it's ok if they do it.
I've switched entirely to Emby for my digital media, since its become so difficult to get content legally. I can play Netflix in 720p in mobile mode on my Android box, or I can pay less and get access to everything I want using a TV interface using an Embyshare. I'm not about to buy another weaker box to accommodate their DRM.
Just search for EmbyShares if you are Canadian, you'll be far better off.
Time to nationalize & regionalize Bell.
The only telcomm provider in the country not acticely fucking people is Sasktel, the Crown Corporation with the mandate to provide service (vs generate profits, although its done too much of that for the Cons to be able to Privatize it like they did to SaskPotash!).
Nationalize Bell Justin!!
Canada is nothing if not monopolies. The citizens paying the lowest prices are the ones served by Sasktel, the telcomm owned by the people.
The ONLY way to make affordable services in our vast country is to have a government owned monopoly. ANYTHING else costs more, and if you have ever been 100km beyond Toronto you'ld know this as fact.
> Bell argued that Canadians accessing content from a US service with a VPN 'unjustly enriches the US service, which has not paid for the Canadian rights' but nonetheless makes that content available to Canadians
When a Canadian has a legitimate "Netflix Canada" subscription, Netflix *is* paying for the rights. So they're not complaining about that (well, except for Quebec, but that's for an entirely different--but equally stupid--pretense).
Go ahead and try to create a "Netflix US" account and pay for it with a Canadian credit card and/or a Canadian street address. Not gonna work; you need a US CC and/or US address.
*These* are the people they need to go after. Not a technology that serves a completely different purpose.
Expat Canadian in the US... haven't lived in Canada for 20 years.
Just came here to say fuck Bell. Horrible monopolist/oligopolist mentality. To this day I despise them for the terrible customer service and price gouging back in the day.
No surprise. Bell are pigs.
It is a testament to the passivity of Canadians that they put up with their telco oligopoly, headed by Bell.
Wont someone think of the security services and the fun they had in Canada with the BULLRUN /Edgehill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... like US/UK support.
Why would the gov of Canada approve a VPN ban when they get the VPN keys under full 5 eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... sharing?
A ban on VPN use in Canada would make VPN decryption difficult in Canada as few interesting people would not want to risk detection using a banned VPN service.
Keep VPN services and Canada can collect on everyone as a VPN is just another trusted and secure service.
The security services in a 5 eye nation love a VPN.
The user feels safe and their real need for a VPN quickly shows.
A consumer VPN service a 5 eye nation that can be fully decrypted in real time is better than a Canadian person of interest sending "messages" via their faith/cult/criminal network in person.
Keep all VPN services and keep VPN plain text decryption flowing back in real time to the Canadian security services.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
because odds are you're just going to do business with a subsidiary. And even if they company isn't owned outright odds are good that it's the same people sitting on the board of directors and the same folks are the major owners via stocks. In short, you can't get away from Mega corps anymore.
This is why we need more government regulation. We've let too many mergers & acquisitions go on.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Any UV movies that you have, that are also linked to moviesanywhere, will transfer.
If they Really wanted to stop this --- then stop trying to Geo Identify IP addresses, and
instead: Step 1. require services to use Customer's Billing Information. If the customer's billing
address is in Canada, then they cannot access the US library.
Step 2. On mobile apps, require the service to cross-check customer's location using the GPS and location services
of the mobile device --- if the GPS does not say you are in the US, then you cannot access the US library, even if your billing address is in the US.
If you are a US resident but are going on a trip, then allow services to provide customers a way to login to the website,
Record the fact that they are going on a trip, and pay a $20 fee for "2 weeks - Access to Canada or other local country's library while on vacation", Premium charge required for out-of-region access, Limit to 2 2-week trips per year.
The REAL absurdity is that today, in 2019, content produced in the US or Canada STILL ends up with different owners of the licensing rights in both countries.
I mean, seriously. I can understand the problem of legacy stuff that was created years ago, back when things like making moving prints, physically transporting them from theater to theater around the country, and promoting them locally was a big deal, but Jesus Fucking Christ on Rollerblades... pretty much ANY English-language TV show or movie that gets produced today and released in one country is practically guaranteed to end up in the other country within a year.
Technically, the media market between the US and Canada is about as frictionless as two media markets can possibly GET. We both use the same TV standard, have the same TV framerates, watch the same TV shows and movies, and listen to the same music.
Before someone brings up Quebec, I'd argue that French-speaking Canadians endure even WORSE grief due to the silliness of US-Canadian licensing complexity. Consider, for example, the tens or hundreds of thousands of French Canadians who live in Florida and New York & have to jump through silly hoops to watch French-Canadian TV shows that haven't yet been officially licensed yet for distribution in the US. Also, there's no need to "protect" French-language shows... French is a major worldwide language with a HUGE international export market, and Canada has become a worldwide film and TV powerhouse precisely BECAUSE most Canadian actors & actresses are now bilingual. In Canada, you can produce a film or movie that shoots close-up speaking scenes twice (once in English, once in French, same actors for both), use the same actors to dub THEMSELVES for the remainder of the scenes, and cost-effectively produce content with "native" production values in BOTH languages.
Incidentally, the "shoot twice... once in English, once in another language" strategy is something that was uncommon in the past, but has become popular in recent years thanks to both cheaper digital editing workflows and multilingual actors. The Norwegian+Netflix TV show "Norsemen" is a perfect example of it -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ).
And I'm NOT arguing that the licensing barriers between other countries make much more sense... I'm just pointing out the utter and complete absurdity of the present state of licensing affairs between two countries whose media markets have about as close to 100% overlap as you can get. Of all the things NAFTA has dropped the ball on over the years, this is probably the most galling example of something that SHOULD today be completely frictionless and transparent.
It wouldn't even take much beyond a treaty between the US and Canada & the necessary enabling legislation to declare that henceforth, after some future date, all newly-created (or newly-licensed within the US-Canada market) content licensed for distribution in one country is automatically licensed for distribution in both, and that no contractual language limiting the rights of a licensee to do that will be enforced.
At first, there would be too much legacy content with split rights ownership for much to change... but eventually, there would be enough content with unified licensing that some new service would launch that didn't bother to distinguish between US and Canadian customers, and as a result would only license content AVAILABLE under unified licensing. The aftermath would be a flurry of companies who owned country-specific rights bartering, trading, selling, and buying those country-specific rights to consolidate their ownership and increase the content's value by making IT eligible for licensing to that country-agnostic service.
Eventually, there would be enough licensing-consolidation, even of legacy content, for services like Netflix and Comcast to decide that it simply wasn't worth bothering anymore with content that demanded geographic restrictions, which would render content that COULDN'T be licensed under unified terms almost without commercial value until someone DID manage to buy up and aggregate the distribution rights.
Yo quiero telco bell
Can't get that image out of my head...
I am just pissed off that Canada and especially Mexico would work with this nutjob who is in the White House now. Why would they give him any positive news? Don't they realize how damaging it is for them in the long run too?
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2019/01/bell-urged-canadian-government-to-ban-some-vpn-services-in-nafta-submission/
Bell and Rogers cable are our local duopoly
davecb@spamcop.net
Not long ago they were advocating for internet censorship. This is just a logical extension of that mindset. They want your internet to be more like cable TV.
Hard to imagine a company that works so actively against the interests of its customers still has any.
NBC has rights for many programs they don't broadcast in the USA, so we use a VPN into Canada to watch those programs.
Some sports groups like FINA embargo the USA, so we can't pay for their content too. Usually, I VPN into the country where the meet is happening and watch a local streaming channel instead. It would be easier to pay the $35/yr however, if I could.
Bell.CA should be more competitive if they don't want Canadians using VPNs to access content in the USA. TV content is one thing the US does really well, except small-interest sports.
There will be a national championship in my US town in 3 months, but none of that competition will be shown on any broadcast or CATV here. There will be 5 days of events, ZERO on any TV. It will have streaming coverage only because someone sets up a camera in a corner and uses their LTE service pushing the content for 8 hrs a day. No zoom. No commentary, lots of echo in the audio from the announcers.
The Canadian National Championships for the same sport will have 100% coverage, professional commentary in English and French, Olympic quality video coverage. It is a joy to watch. All for the price of my annual VPN service.
Cant let citizens have any level of anonymity.. in 10 years they wont exist, being legislated out of business.
Agreed. Dialup times were nicer because everything went to central exchange and was leased from there. Anybody could start an ISP.
This TV I use as my monitor has
TV+ Netflix, Prime video, Hulu, Directv now, google play/tv, Vudu, Youtube, and Fandango.
Does this help your point? Its a samsuckit TV.
A VPN being a VPN, how to they tell the difference between a corporate, defense, or law firm VPN and someone watching Netflix without some sort of encryption intrusion?
Bell's actions are all about self-interest, as it is their tendency to do. Another poster has pointed out the various Bell-owned companies, which makes it abundantly clear that their actions have nothing to do with Candian content regulations, and everything to do with trying to control the internet. Just like they're opposing net neutrality with all possible gusto.
In the USA those laws existed. They where removed about decade ago.
Free markets but regulated by corporations... Like a mafia!
Quite interesting. But it's just impossible to ban vpns I think. I myself don't use such services much but I have the best free vpn for torrenting installed just in case and sometimes it allows me to save some money getting software for free.
Companies like Bell exist all over the world, and they act as expensive gatekeepers to US content instead of just allowing foreigners to access the US content directly.
This is entirely the fault of the US content producers and not companies like Bell. They could provide worldwide access themselves or license to one global entity like Netflix. But they make a lot more money licensing per country and geofencing it.