Canadian Government Rejects Net Neutrality Rules 287
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."
Net Neutrality? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've found other people throughout Utah who are dealing with this problem. My search has lead me to other states with people asking the same questions I have been asking [youtube.com].
This is just a couple of instances where Comcast has demonstrated unfair business practices. I'm wondering if Net Neutrality would curb this sort of abuse from companies. I'm ok with following the rules (don't get me wrong). But to be expected to minimize Internet usage without knowing what the rules are is pure B.S.
Heck, I've had people on my blog accuse me of all sorts of stuff. Unfortunately, it's not even close to the truth.
If I'm misunderstanding what Net Neutrality [wikipedia.org] is please enlighten me.
BTW, if you are from Utah and have been disconnected by Comcast please contact me by posting on the blog. I receive all messages. I'm compiling a list and plan on passing it along to Bill Gephart. We've been working for the last few weeks to resolve this. He's already begun interviewing people I've found. Thanks!
Re:easy solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Harper's at it again (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, there's absolutely nothing that can be done. They'll just "go it alone" and do whatever they want to do anyway. All that without communicating at all with the media because they want our journalists to write down the question before press conferences and our journalists refused (yes we have real journalists here).
Hey, US people. We now have an un-government too! Now all of North America is fucked!
Re:what's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
The internet is a marketplace and the ISPs are at the doors. If you're, say, Youtube, and have a really swell stand at the market selling refrigerators, they can in theory extort money out of Youtube by not letting people in to see the refrigerators at all, or by only letting people pass through turnstiles, thereby precluidng the purchase of refrigerators.
At the same time, they can fool people coming into the market by advertising having a really big gate that funnels down to turnstiles that you can't see from the outside. You pay to pass through the big gate and are later screwed at the turnstiles because you realize there's no way you can leave with a refrigerator. All this would be fine if the number of doors was large as market forces would dictate price and availability of access, but doors are few in any one area and it's hard to build new ones.
In the long run, the market may die from this, but it may not, and at any rate I don't like the situation.
How's my analogy meter?
On the upside, if there is an upside, the days of the current Canadian government are numbered. We have what you might call a multi-party system (multi > 2) and the current party rules only on account of tentative support from other parties, and that ought to run out on one issue or another sometime this calendar year. We can only hope they don't pass any legislation regarding this (or any other) matter in the meantime.
A Different Approach (Score:2, Interesting)
If providers are going to do it, and governments aren't going to stop it, what can those of us who aren't convinced this will be better do? The obvious solution is to prove the providers wrong: new providers specifically targetting customers who don't want this service. The problem is that many of the providers who want to limit content control a disproportionate amount of the Internet itself. So how about instead of trying to force providers not to limit content, governments and consumers aim to force them to provide uncensored content to other, smaller, providers?
I bet Bell is happy (Score:2, Interesting)
The day I notice this in my day-to-day browsing is the day my ISP gets a call from a VERY pissed customer. I bet ISPs who don't do this will get a flood of people switching to them.
Re:Conservatives (Score:3, Interesting)
First, what do you mean here by "free market"? The only consistent definition I've run across for the term essentially means a nonaggressive market society (i.e. a society where ethical/moral behavior is defined in terms of property rights, homesteading, and contractual transfer of ownership). However, since governments are defined by "legitimate" aggression -- any organization that was not considered "legitimate", or did not employ aggression, would not be called a government -- the very existance of a government, much less government regulations, is by definition impossible in a free-market society. In a free-market society a "government" has no legitimacy -- from the definition, there can be no legitimate aggression in a free market -- and is thus no different from any other criminal organization.
On the other hand, you may have been making the common mistake of confusing "perfect competition" with "free market". That seems to occur all too frequently.
I think this is closer to the definition of the common law than to that of government. The common law is a protocol for resolving disputes -- and completely compatible with a free-market society. Government, on the other hand, does not primarily resolve disputes; it may occasionally do so, but its core purpose is closer to social engineering via organized aggression than genuine resolution of disputes between private parties.
This example is interesting because pollution was originally a common law, issue resolved through the courts; it had nothing to do with government rule-making. Some time during the Industrial Revolution, though, the courts decided to drop the property-rights approach to pollution disputes in favor of an ideology rooted in merchantilism and utilitarian calculus. (This ruling would never have been accepted in private arbitration, for obvious reasons, but this was a government court and its rulings thus generally beyond challenge.) If the courts had just done their job at the time and ruled according to property rights there wouldn't have been any opportunity for government to get involved, and the market would have remained free in that area.
Re:If we had competition (Score:3, Interesting)
There are about 10 companies doing this so there is competition. We just happen to have the best prices and the best service.
Re:If we had competition (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Net Neutrality? (Score:1, Interesting)
What if someone proposed a law so any company could get "emergency vehicle" status for their delivery trucks and vans. Perhaps someone like FedEx would pay for it, so they can guarantee faster delivery than say UPS. But then UPS would pay so they can be competitive. As a result of all the FedExes and UPSes slowing everyone down, Domino's is taking longer and losing profits. So then Dominos decides to pay the tax. and then..... etc., etc., etc.
You're not new here are you? (Score:1, Interesting)
The story you quote was, a you obviously know, often told by Tommy Douglas. For those who don't know, he was elected the greatest Canadian. http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/ [www.cbc.ca] He was an honorable man even when nobody was looking. Even in my darkest most cynical hours, I am forced to admit that there was at least one unimpeachably good politician.
TELUS is at it again (Score:3, Interesting)
However, TELUS has a terrible tendency to overcompensate when they actually do something. Don't like certain servers sitting on residential line? Block incoming ports on residential service and call it an anti-virus policy. I don't want to pay TELUS anything and still have DSL service -- not possible because you need a phone line and you can only get one from TELUS. They just lurk in the shadows for ages, then BAM! they have a policy they want implemented -- and it happens. Keep in mind that the infrastructure that made TELUS big was paid for largely by Canadian Taxpayers and now once again, we have to sit back and watch TELUS make self-serving decisions with property that was given to them by the Canadian Public.
This is crap. I don't care if Google loads 2ms faster or is available even when other sites are not. We haven't seen the pay-TELUS-or-your-blog-gets-slow-delivery-to-Cana