Liberal Party of Canada Comes Out In Support of Net Neutrality 142
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Soulskill
from the free-tubes-eh dept.
from the free-tubes-eh dept.
bryxal writes "The Liberal Party of Canada, currently leading in most polls, has announced yesterday that it supports Net Neutrality, saying, 'Internet management should be neutral and not be permitted for anti-competitive behaviour, nor should it target certain websites, users, providers or legitimate software applications. We must protect the openness and freedom of the internet, and maintain competition to spur innovation, improve service levels and reduce costs to users.'"
Now... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:wow (Score:5, Informative)
Canada just keeps getting more and more impressive. Again, ahead of the curve on social justice. They put the US to shame.
Not really. This is the opposition the article is about. And its not even a very good opposition. Harper, the PM, got passed minimum sentences for marijuana possession with the Liberals help. His mandate is to make Canada more like the US, and bit by bit perhaps he'll succeed. The left is split and he only needs about a third of the popular vote to form the gov't. If Canadians don't learn to vote strategically, he'll get in again and again.
Information about the "Liberal" in Liberal Party (Score:2, Informative)
The "liberal" in "Liberal Party" has the traditional American meaning and is not used in the European sense. In Europe, a "liberal" is one who favors market liberalization: lower taxes, less regulation, and longer work hours. For example, France's Nicolas Sarkozy was accused of being a "liberal" when he ran in the presidential election.
Not necessarily what Canadians are hoping for. (Score:5, Informative)
Bell Canada is in hot water with their wholesale ISP customers because they are throttling the bandwidth from the cabinets/COs upstream. However, they are throttling both their own retail subscribers _and_ these ISP resellers. Personally, I see this as a commercial issue between the ISPs and Bell. The ISPs should have SLAs that document precisely how much bandwidth they are allowed to peak at.
However, ISPs, instead of negotiating, running their own wire, or buying their own DSLAMs have gone lobbying. They tried the regulator, who told them to get lost. They've managed to convince a lot of customers that Bell is being anti-competitive and against "Net Neutrality" by throttling. Remember, Bell applies the same shaping to their own customers.
So, everyone is hoping that this means that the Liberals are against this throttling. However, I can't see how it would have any bearing on that, since all subscribers are throttled the same.
Net Neutrality is a complex issue - where are you allowed to throttle, how are you allowed to throttle, are you allowed QoS, preferential feeds over a common connection, preferential feeds over independent connections. What's the difference between a VPN on one wire and a separate wire? Are you allowed to host local mirrors of high traffic sites? Are you allowed to charge fees for that hosting? If you're a VoIP provider as well as the ISP, are you allowed to provide preferential services? If you offer DTV, how about then? What makes a cable TV provider able to give preferential treatment to cable TV channels, but an ISP can't do it for Internet TV?
This was purely a publicity stunt without any real substance behind it. Particularly since Canada has a minority government and could be voted down at any point in time. Heck, they managed to get mentioned on slashdot - talk about hitting the target market!
I saw the same thing in New Zealand. During the election, the opposition minister was quoting as saying that the copyright legislation was stupid, and that he didn't know why he voted for it. As soon as they got in, NZ had S92A, three strikes and you're disconnected without appeal or evidence.
Re:Not necessarily what Canadians are hoping for. (Score:4, Informative)
They thought they did. They had contracted backhaul aggregation to their peering point at 151 Front St. One tariff covers the copper between end users and the CO, another tariff covers backhaul from COs to peering locations. The backhaul tariff resulted in Gig-E links from the Bell cloud. ISP looks at how much bandwidth they need, contract for that amount, plus error margin, plus expected growth. Peak requirement happens to occur during the hours Bell throttles. ISP is already tied into multi-year contracts for aggregated bandwidth that no longer matches their actual requirements.
The ideal world where third party providers can get customer concentrations high enough to create a business case for colocating DSLAMs and having their own backhaul or peering at each CO, or even at a meaningful number of COs, simply doesn't exist. Nevermind that many, many customers either cannot get dsl from a CO (only available through remotes, which Bell doesn't have to provide access to), or CO connections are available at embarassingly low sync rates.
Re:wow (Score:4, Informative)
Please. Once again, for all the creationists out there, evolution is not a religion. It is science. Science is based on observable phenomena. Religion is based on a feeling. And all this has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality.
Re:Now I'm Back and Drunk (Score:3, Informative)
And 150 years ago you'd be screaming about how them negros is only 3.5ths of a human and therefor should get their asses back out to the cotton fields. The nice thing about culture and evolution is MOST of us do evolve, unlike yourself.
Guys like you that are constantly screaming about "homos" remind me of that old Bobcat bit on gay bashing "I hate you because your queer and the bible says so, aaaaand I think you kinda cute and that makes me uncomfortable SO DIE FAG!". Get over it, okay? There is homosexual behavior in birds, in various species all along the chain, and you know what? They're all still here. If you are so damned scared of letting your kid know that gays exist you're probably secretly afriad that your kid may be one and you know what? They just might be.
I had a friend in HS whose parents were venom spewing bible thumpers, always spewing hatred about gays and non believers. I found out why a couple of years after Brian graduated when I ran into him on the street. It turns out they made his life a living hell, and the second he got accepted into college he told them he was gay and to go fuck themselves. Now they have no children and will spend their remaining years without knowing anything about their child's life. How fucking sad. of course I'm sure if that happens to you you'll just clutch your little book and pretend your child never existed. How fucking sad. I truly pity you. If Jesus could come back today and see how his message of love was turned into nothing but venomous hatred by guys like you I'm sure he'd throw the book into the fire and start over.
Re:Now... (Score:2, Informative)
commenting to undo moderation error.
Re:You don't care until your Skype is blocked.. (Score:3, Informative)
Skype isn't the answer to low-cost phone. Standards complient (SIP) Voip is. Acanac has unlimited calling in North America and a Canadian number for 10 bucks a month. Unlimitel has an a-la-carte model for $2.50 a month.
Standards compliant SIP means you can use a cheap voip ATA and a regular phone instead of a computer.
Re:Now... (Score:4, Informative)
If he gets a minority, the NDP also supports net neutrality.
http://www.ndp.ca/press/new-democrats-introduce-net-neutrality-bill [www.ndp.ca]
For anyone interested in Canadian net neutrality, http://neutrality.ca/ [neutrality.ca] has regular updates.
CRTC (Score:2, Informative)
The CRTC regulates communications in Canada and it's an arm's length agency. That is to say that the federal cabinet can't control its decisions. The Conservatives tried to force them to deregulate VOIP. The CRTC disobeyed the order. There was nothing the cabinet could do.
How do the Liberals expect to get around this fact?
Re:Now I'm Back and Drunk (Score:2, Informative)
Also Isreal has nothing to do with Jesus they killed him and the Jews do not believe Jesus was the messiah. Jews worship YHWH (god) but they do not believe Jesus (Yahshua) was his son.
The KKK was a Catholic (not christian group) and I was not refering to them.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler used the German word for evolution (Entwicklung) many times, citing "lower human types." He criticized the Jews for bringing "Negroes into the Rhineland" with the aim of "ruining the white race by the necessarily resulting ization." He spoke of "Monstrosities halfway between man and ape" and lamented the fact of Christians going to "Central Africa" to set up "Negro missions," resulting in the turning of "healthy . . . human beings into a rotten brood of s." In his chapter entitled "Nation and Race," he said, "The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable." A few pages later, he said, "Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live."
Comparing christians to the guy who shot the abortion doctor is like comparing evolutionists to Hitler.
And the bible was written by scribes mostly see the goat herders were busy herding goats.