Canadian Government Rejects Net Neutrality Rules

An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian Press reports that the Canadian government appears ready to reject net neutrality legislation, instead heeding the arguments of large telecommunications companies . Michael Geist has posted transcripts of the documents which can be summarized as the government thinks that blocking or prioritizing content is acceptable, it knows that this runs counter to recommended policy, and it doesn't care because it plans to the leave the issue to the dominant telecommunications providers."

Re:what's the problem?

[Brickwall]

Yes, you don't understand the problem. The issue is not what content the ISP provides; the issue is that they will require companies to pay them in order to get preferential treatment. So Joe Blow's - who likely can't afford to pay extra - weblog that I like may take 10 minutes to load, while Kraft or Molson's sites - who will write off the extra cost as advertising or marketing expense - load in seconds.

Put another way, companies that can afford to pay the extra fees will be high-speed, while companies that can't will be on dial-up speed. Wanna go surfing at 1200 bps again?

Re:Net Neutrality?

[Annirak]

Telecom companies are implementing things like traffic shaping--that thing which squashes your bittorrent traffic while still allowing VOIP and google access to run at full speed. Lately, the telecom companies have started hinting that they might start charging for optimal delivery. That is that CNN's website, having paid for premium delivery with your ISP, will have 8x the bandwidth available to you as, for instance, youtube.

Net neutrality is the opposite of that. It dictates that all traffic must be treated equally.

Re:Net Neutrality?

[u-235-sentinel]

Telecom companies are implementing things like traffic shaping--that thing which squashes your bittorrent traffic while still allowing VOIP and google access to run at full speed.

I'm ok with that. I pull down Linux ISO's occasionally, the WoW patches I believe are all through p2p plus I'm a big fan of Zudeo (reign of the fallen DVD rocks!). If it took longer to download I'm not terribly worried about it. Disconnecting customers on the other hand... :-)

Lately, the telecom companies have started hinting that they might start charging for optimal delivery. That is that CNN's website, having paid for premium delivery with your ISP, will have 8x the bandwidth available to you as, for instance, youtube.

Net neutrality is the opposite of that. It dictates that all traffic must be treated equally.

Ok I get it. That's not terribly great for the consumer especially since we're the ones paying for everything already. To charge us again is double dipping.

Harper is anti-Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone really surprised? This is the same guy who undermined our national interests by widely circulating calls for action against Canada for our smart decision to stay out of Iraq in 2003. His buddies at the US based "National Review" even called for bombing Canada for our decision to stay out of that idiotic war. This is the same guy who has regularly called Canada and Canadians "stupid" and refers to us as a "northern european welfare state". The guy hates Canada, he wants us to imitate every policy of the US government, and would probably be happiest as "state governor of Alberta" rather than a Prime Minister of Canada.

Re:Harper's at it again

[Markus_UW]

My GST cheque's the same, as far as I can tell... though it prob. wouldn't be till next year tat that changes. Anyways, this and the comment above it are pretty troll-y... like sure this government hasn't done a lot in the last year, but the government before it, you know the one that was in offics with a majority for 12 years or so? what all did they do? NOTHING. And i'm pretty sure that they (the liberals) were discussing doing this too, when they got knocked out of power.

Re:Net Neutrality?

[tinkerghost]

Net neutrality is the opposite of that. It dictates that all traffic must be treated equally.

Actually it's a bit more refined than that. Net neutrality dictates that all similar traffic must be treated equally.

• All HTTP requests have to be delivered equivalently reguardless of source or destination
• All VOIP requests have to be ....
• All torrent requests have to be ....
• ....

However, VOIP & HTTP requests can be routed with different priorities - VOIP is sensative to lag, HTTP isn't.

The concept of traffic shaping is to provide a QoS [Quality of Service]flagged route for packets which maximizes the use of the fastest, cleanest routes for lag/packet loss sensative protocols, while relegating less sensative packets to routes which may not be as responsive. The Telco extention[perversion] of packet shaping is to convert the selection criteria from protocol needs to accounting balance. Thus some of the Canadian telcos have already started to throttle Vonage service to the point of compromising service quality - remarkably just before they roll out their own service which doesn't seem to suffer the same problems.

Re:Remind me Again...

[Idarubicin]

Remind me again what makes Canada so superior to the USA. I seem to have forgotten at the moment.

No problem; here you go: "It's not just the weather that's cooler in Canada", by Samantha Bennett [post-gazette.com].

Oh, and Canada is also superior to the United States because Budweiser 'beer' isn't made there.

To my brethren Canucks out there.

[oceanstream]

Find your MP [parl.gc.ca] and put the pressure on, please. I've already called mine (Laurie Hawn), to find his position on the debate. The rep at his office had never heard of the Net Neutrality issue. While I hope this isn't common, I wouldn't be surprised. If your MP is a Conservative, put the pressure about how damaging this will be to small businesses, startups, and our fancy new "Knowledge-based economy" idea. It may be easier to convince the Liberal or NDPs about how damaging this could be to the consumer. I urge EVERY Canadian on Slashdot to put in a courtesy call or two to their local Member of Parliament. While you're at it, contact your MLA to see if you can help pressure your provincial government as well. I'll include links:
Alberta [electionsalberta.ab.ca]
British Columbia [leg.bc.ca]
Manitoba [electionsmanitoba.ca]
New Brunswick [7700.gnb.ca]
Newfoundland [gov.nl.ca]
Northwest Territories [gov.nt.ca]
Nova Scotia [gov.ns.ca]
Nunavut Territory [assembly.nu.ca]
Ontario [listingsca.com]
Prince Edward Island [assembly.pe.ca]
Quebec [gouv.qc.ca]
Saskatchewan [legassembly.sk.ca]
Yukon Territory [gov.yk.ca]

Re:A Common Problem

[David_Shultz]

We have more 3rd parties in Canadian politics than the US, but they serve more to offset the balance of power and have no real chance at governing (NDP, Greens, Bloc Quebecois).

Actually NDP and libs were about neck and neck during the last election (within a few percentage points). No one really noticed because the big story was the conservatives winning. The NDPs greatest obstacle is getting the Canadian population to stop believing that the NDP will never win. They have alot of support. On top of that, because of our stupid voting system, there are ALOT of would-be NDP voters who are scared of the conservative party winning, and end up voting strategically in favour of libs. It is worth noting that all of our small useless parties are left leaning. It is also worth noting that our one big right leaning party was formed by combining two smaller right leaning parties. You can thank our voting system for this stupid states of affairs where the majority of Canadians are clearly and decisively left leaning, but we are ruled by a minority conservative government. Crappy.

I am a bit disappointed in the federal government now though..

I am more than a bit disappointed with this government. Besides hacking away at social programs, increasing taxes for the lowest bracket ( http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2006/01/06/taxes-tory 060122.html [www.cbc.ca] ), and refusing to speak with the media ( http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/05/24/harper05 242006.html [www.cbc.ca] ), the conservatives, who ran on a platform of "accountability", are already being investigated for illegal activities ( http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNew s/20061226/conservatives_donations_061226/20061226 ?hub=Canada [www.ctv.ca] , http://www.wernerpatels.com/musings/2007/01/conser vative_pa.html [wernerpatels.com], http://bcinto.blogspot.com/2007/01/putting-con-in- conservative.html [blogspot.com]), after only a year! Not to mention the fact that Harper is a climate change denier (until about three days ago when I suppose a pollster told him the issue was important to Canadians). Plus, I think the fact that he's spending massive amounts of money for military patrols of Northern waters is a nice touch; only Americans ever trespass there -is Harper planning to shoot them? To finish, how about some nice quotes from Canada's present leader (sadly), Steve (as Bush called him):

• Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society...
• I don't know all the facts o-n Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans.
• I've always been clear, I support the traditional definition of marriage.
• In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.
• "I was asked to speak about Canadian politics. It may not be true, but it's legendary that if you're like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians

I have nothing else to add except that I am saddened by the current leadership of my country .

Re:Net Neutrality?

[jZnat]

Somewhere along the way to the destination, a router won't support QoS, so it really only helps when you have full control over the network in question. You can't abuse QoS because nobody supports it over the internet.