Survey Finds Canadians Support Net Neutrality Law 201
An anonymous reader writes "A new public opinion survey conducted in Canada finds overwhelming public support in that country for net neutrality legislation. Three-quarters of Canadians believe the government should pass a law to confirm the right of Internet consumers to access publicly available Internet applications and content of their choice — even though most of those surveyed did not know the term 'net neutrality.' The survey was commissioned by eBay." Of course the devil is in the wording. Given the survey's sponsorship, it's unlikely that respondents were presented with examples of the value that ISPs say packet shaping can bring, or asked to weigh such against net neutrality.
Somebody define net neutrality (Score:4, Interesting)
No doubt (Score:3, Interesting)
The devil is still in the wording (Score:5, Interesting)
1. People are nice social beings. They tell you what they think you'd like to hear. It's a reflex and enculturation effect that, well, I suppose helps us live with each other. If you know someone, say, likes pink, the nice social reflex is to say "yes, it's a nice colour."
Why does that matter? Most people, even on a perfectly anonymous poll, tend to answer what they think would please the poller. If they're polled by eBay, of course they'll say what they think eBay would like to hear.
2. (Or 1.b.) The wording is very important. If you present a skewed view where option 1 is pure good and option 2 is pure evil, you've already told them what you think on that matter. So they'll subconsciously try to be nice and agree with what you told them you like, regardless of what they actually think on the matter, and regardless of whether they even give a damn at all.
3. All things being equal, there's a bias towards answering more "yes" and less "no". I guess we've all been educated that it's not nice to disagree all the time. So well design polls actually randomize the questionnaires so 50% will ask the question one way, and 50% ask the negative version.
E.g., if half the questionnaires ask "should we stay in Iraq?", the other half must ask "should we pull out of Iraq?", because otherwise you get it skewed towards "yes". If you only ask "should we stay in Iraq?" you'll get your results skewed as some people will vote "yes" just because it's, you know, a "yes."
4. Biased sample fallacies. Was that sample representative, or was it, say, only the people who visit site X? E.g., if you were to make a poll about computers or OSes on Slashdot, I hope you can see how the results wouldn't really reflect what the whole population thinks.
Etc.
Now I don't know how the poll in TFA was done, so I'm not commenting on that. But basically if you want to know what people _think_, then you _don't_ do a poll along the lines of "do you think we should stop ISP extortion?" If you do that, you'll just get a false result that's good for self-shoulder-patting, but won't reflect what they actually vote for in the next elections.
Just saying...
Re:Right? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want to stream some music produced by some heavy metal band you just heard about, and your ISP says, "Sorry, we don't carry packets from that server, how about some nice Britney Spears?" then they're interfering with your first amendment rights. Also committing a crime against nature, but that's another issue.
Re:Ok (Score:4, Interesting)
God beware my neighbor actually uses what he pays for!
Re: Right? (Score:2, Interesting)
Because an oppressive government uses stolen money (i.e. taxes) to fund its operations, and it prevents competition through physical violence or violent threats. In contrast, a company must acquire its money by providing goods and services, and a company can not use violence or violent threats to stop competition. A company can only oppress you to the extent that you allow yourself to be oppressed.
Another poster mentioned that it's dangerous to allow a random CEO to price a provider out of the market. Yes, a CEO exercising his right to control his company's property on behalf of the shareholders is dangerous to your "freedom" to dictate to that company how they will use their property. However, I don't believe in your so-called freedom. Build your own damn network.
And no, I don't think the government has a right to control the internet because it was partially built with tax dollars. If the government has funded the internet infrastructure in the past, then the solution is for that money to be repaid to the government, and for the government, in turn, to return the money to the taxpayers. The solution is not to treat the internet as though it is a "public resource", because that is both immoral and inefficient.
Re:So What? (Score:3, Interesting)
I am strongly for complete net neutrality, and not the watered out version that the grand parent represents. ISPs should not be allowed to filter packets based on destination nor content. The only exception being if it is provided as an optional service.
If I use too much bandwidth I should be capped, independent of what I am using it for.
Re:Right? (Score:3, Interesting)
People in the US never seemed to have learned that lesson.
Re:Ok (Score:3, Interesting)
"Why are you allowed to download video at such a high rate that it interfers with your opponents p2p traffic?". I can tell you for sure that users on ISP that shape bittorrent traffic shaped does notice it.
Using bandwidth limits is in my opinion the only fair compromise. Anything else is basically claiming that your information is more important than my information. In the few cases where that is true, that information should probably be transmitted via a more expensive connection, or be small enough that it fits the within bandwidth limits (like a call to the police over VoIP).
If there isn't enough total bandwidth to even be able to handle the bandwidth of a VoIP call for each user you would have a point. However, in that case, I think the ISP needs to upgrade before trying to sell VoIP.
Flawed (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a Canadian and I have had Internet access since the dark days of dial-up (which at the time were rather sunny and bright come to think of it) and no one asked me about this. I'm appalled. If they had asked me, whoa boy, I'd have given them my opinion, which since I wasn't asked I guess is irrelevant.
Well shit.
I guess I'll just go... away.
Canadians != USians (Score:3, Interesting)
Americans of all strips are deeply skeptical of all large organizations, including especially their governments. Some Canadians are, but many more trust these organizations to at least look out for their long-term interests. There is an understanding, acceptance and even hono[u]ring of authority. Civil servants aren't pariahs. Many people aspire to Cdn civil service jobs.
There is a certain public spirit in Canada that transcends the profit motive in many cases. And an utter horror [naivete] when the public trust is betrayed, rather than a cynical "what did you expect"?