Net Neutrality Bill Introduced In Canadian Parliament

FeatherBoa points out that the New Democratic Party in Canada has introduced legislation to limit the amount of control Canadian ISPs can exert over their subscribers. The bill would amend the Telecommunications Act to "prohibit network operators from engaging in network management practices that favour, degrade or prioritize any content, application or service transmitted over a broadband network based on its source, ownership or destination, subject to certain exceptions." Support for net neutrality in Canada has been building for quite a while now. Quoting CBC News: "'This bill is about fairness to consumers,' said Charlie Angus, the NDP's digital spokesman. It also looks to prohibit 'network operators from preventing a user from attaching any device to their network and requires network operators to make information about the user's access to the internet available to the user.' The proposed bill makes exception for ISPs to manage traffic in reasonable cases, Angus said, such as providing stable speeds for applications such as gaming or video conferencing."

The obvious question follows,

Just what are these "certain exceptions"? The very fact there are exceptions, even if they aren't related to freedoms now, should be a little worrying, since the exceptions can probably be added to.

Re:The obvious question follows,

On the other hand, the two exceptions listed in the summary make it pretty clear that straight up net neutrality isn't the best idea. Different services have different QoS requirements, and defining which ones are ok to support by law hinders future innovation.

Re:

To make it look like they are "doing good for the people"

There may not be many amendments now, but they could easily already have ones in queue.

"W00t great idea" now, 3 years from now "damnit, turns out that was a shitty idea"

Paper Tiger

...subject to certain exceptions.

Doesn't this one line pretty much negate most of the positive potential in this bill?

Re:Paper Tiger

The proposed bill makes exception for ISPs to manage traffic in reasonable cases

Doesn't this one word pretty much negate your needless cynicism?

The point of the bill is to ensure that network flow happens in whatever way is most beneficial to the people instead of whatever way makes the most money for the ISP. Do you seriously think that there is no case in which the population experiences a gain from carefully exercised traffic shaping?

Re:Paper Tiger

Generally, whatever makes the most money is most beneficial to the people when there is no gov't interference in the market place.

[Citation Needed] Sorry but I'm wanting you to actually give some examples. I can cite all sorts of things that the free market has done at great profit that have not been of benefit to the people until the government got involved such as, oh, construction, coal mining, food preparation, etc...

When to regulate

I can cite all sorts of things that the free market has done at great profit that have not been of benefit to the people until the government got involved such as, oh, construction, coal mining, food preparation, etc...

These regulations' only justification was the inherent inflexibility of the particular markets. If a consumer dies from food poisoning, he will not be able to switch to a different supplier. If a building collapses, (most of) its occupants will not be able to opt for a better builder next time. This provides some justification to government's preemptive interference in some cases.

Internet Service Provision is vastly different. A dissatisfied customer remains perfectly healthy and is able to switch to a competitor very quickly. Ensuring availability of wide variety of such competitors is what government should concentrate on.

Instead, we may well get saddled with very few very big ISPs, who will negotiate a (near) monopoly (a'la AT&T) from the government in exchange for the on-paper adherence to various regulations, which may be too cumbersome to pass through as laws ("net-neutrality", porn-filtering, cooperation on eavesdropping, etc.). The companies will then, inevitably, outsmart the regulators making the rest of us (far) worse off.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather just switch ISPs, than file complaints with government bureaucrats... Free market is usually the best regulator.

Re:Paper Tiger

Generally, whatever makes the most money is most beneficial to the people when there is no gov't interference in the market place.

Most "backbone" ISPs around the world are former government monopolies that have been privatised. They are still reaping the benefits of being a former legally-mandated monopoly.

If there was any real competition in the expensive telecommunications infrastructure market, then net neutrality wouldn't be an issue. Until there is, we need this.

Counter Example

The UK rail system. It is universally acknowledged that privatization was a disaster just to make the fat cats fatter.

Re:Paper Tiger

Generally, whatever makes the most money is most beneficial to the people when there is no gov't interference in the market place.

You know, I could make a ton of money if I wanted to - just stand in a busy shopping street with a handgun and demand money from passers-by. Anyone causes trouble, I could just shoot them. It's just the governments unwarranted interference with a free market that stops me. If they didn't make murder, robbery and extortion illegal, then I could clean up.

That's the trouble with taking free market politics too religiously. You need a certain amount of government interference to establish the marketplace in the first place. Otherwise, the guys with the biggest clubs and the flimsiest morals just go around raping everyone they meet, and then boast about it in interviews with Fortune magazine.

Of course this piece of regulation will be different than all the others.

I think every piece of regulation is different from all the others. We have weights and measures laws, because merchants used to routinely cheat their customers, boosting their short term finances to the detriment of the economic system as a whole We have regulations about what you can put in foodstuffs, because unscrupulous vendors have shown a willingness to boost their profit by using ingredients that are addictive, toxic, or both.

It seems a dangerous oversimplification to say that all government regulation is harmful, just as it seems equally foolish to claim that regulation is always beneficial. I think we have to consider each proposal on its merits.

Re:Paper Tiger

Generally, whatever makes the most money is most beneficial to the people when there is no gov't interference in the market place.

If you enjoy living in a cesspool of pollution, getting 10cents for an 85 hour-week, you're welcome to it, but not in my country.

Has the brainwashing gone so deep? Libertarians are the worst kind of corporate-enslaved drones, because they have somehow been convinced being ruled by oligarchic, greed-driven, psychopathic organizations is a good thing.

When asked for comments,

Several celebrities came out in favour of the ammendment, stating that they were "excited, because their online content would now deliver all this new internet money". Other celebrities were not as elated about this bill, arguing that "You're not my buddy, guy".

Canadians only support net neutrality...

because they think it's an ice-hockey term (Sorry MetaMystics).

Re:

Even if that were the case, it's means to an end.

If people supported a cure for HIV because they thought it helped the production of honey, would it matter?

Re:

Yes. Motive always matters at some level.

the state of things

Disclaimer: I'm a card-carrying NDP member.

Now on to things...

I was at the TekSavvy Net Neutrality rally in Ottawa on May 27th. While it was a great rally, we found ourselves competing against a parliamentary sex scandal for press coverage. Sex sells. Arcane concepts like net traffic throttling don't, so much.

Let's look at reality. Customers of most ISPs in Canada are now traffic-shaped, with a few exceptions:

Videotron[Cable] (which substitutes shaping for a 50GB usage cap on a 50Mbps/1Mbps Docsis2.0 connection)
Telus[DSL]
A few ISPs such as Primus[DSL-wholesaler] and Colba[DSL-wholesaler] with their own equipment in Bell DSLAMS

There's a workaround to bypass Bell's throttling using MLPPP, only for subscribers to TekSavvy[DSL-wholesaler], but it requires some Linux-savvy or a modded router. To their credit, I believe Acanac[DSL-wholesaler] has set up an ssh tunnel for the same effect.

Otherwise, Bell[DSL] and Rogers[Cable] both shape encrypted traffic on their networks.

I see a lot of opposition for Net Neutrality regulations from people concerned about their impact on VOIP and such. Well, that's what exceptions in the law are for! Good on the NDP for finally stepping up to bat on this issue. That makes them the only party in parliament who can be bothered to take notice.

To anyone still opposed: Look at the massive, pervasive presence of the Internet in people's everyday lives, especially those under 30. It's about time we started treating it as an essential service. It's become one. Essential services (generally) have their quality regulated by government, and this bill is a step in the right direction.

Let's face facts. Canada is falling behind in the quality and penetration of broadband service. It's time to force the greedy telcos to invest in infrastructure instead of trying to save money by throttling their users and degrading the network for everyone!

Re:the state of things

If the service was sold to your neighbour as being unlimited, then he should be able to use it in any way he wishes. It's not your neighbours fault for using the service he paid for, it's the ISPs fault for not providing you the service you paid for. If they are overselling lines, which they are because every ISP does it, then ISPs are gambling on the fact that 90% of their subscribers only browse a few pages and use email.

Re:the state of things

There is no such thing as a bandwidth hog with an unlimited plan.

If I pay for it, it's not my fault anymore. It's the overselling telco's.

Re:the state of things

You clearly have no understanding of what net neutrality entails, so please stop talking about it.

First of all, the concept of 'shared resources' between you and your neighbour is a matter for your SLA with your ISP. If they sell you a certain amount of access and they can't provide it because of your neighbour then this is between you and them, and you should probably be advocating that they start charging for total data transferred as many ISPs do. Then, if your neighbour wants to pay a lot more than you, then he can use a lot more of your 'shared resource'. Mind you, if you are living somewhere where one person can make such a noticeable difference then perhaps you should be more interested in network upgrades, something non-neutral network advocates are interested in avoiding.

Secondly, QoS is nothing to do with network neutrality. Every pipe makes bandwidth versus latency trades. If your neighbour is using a lot of bandwidth then his latency will go up because your packets will have a higher priority. This is nothing to do with network neutrality either.

Network neutrality is about preventing traffic shaping based on endpoints. Preventing your ISP from prioritising your traffic if it goes to one online music store or news outlet and silently dropping packets and increasing latency if it goes to another one. If you're really happy that your ISP could enter into a partnership with MSN to make their search page load in a second and Google's load in 10 seconds or time out, then that's fine, and you are entitled to your opinion. If you're not, then please shut up about how great a non-neutral network is.

Ineffective.

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=3524372&Language=e&Mode=1&File=24#1 [parl.gc.ca]

That's the bill in question.

In the highly unlikely event that this private members bill makes it through to royal assent, it will have almost no effect. Telecoms will all make use of the exception in clause 2, subsection a:

(2) Nothing in subsection (1) shall be construed as limiting or restricting the right of a network operator to

(a) manage the flow of network traffic in a reasonable manner in order to relieve congestion;

Re:

Um, did somebody say NDP? Well, have the NDP ever got something through? I dunno. I kinda doubt it tho. They have great ideals, but no real way to implement them. At least it seems that way to me.

Bravo but...

If we were talking about cars or any other consumer thing then nobody would accept the sort of nonsense we've (not me or the average /.er) been conditioned into accepting.

Even here in Greece I see typical DSL performance which is to say the least crapulent. Being charitable I'll pretend OTEnet (the former state monopoly) isn't traffic shaping (heh - that's why my torrent of ubuntu dropped dead to 10Kb/s)...

Funny that it does that after about an hour regardless of time of day...(well not always but too often to be attributable to teh interweb being busy from Greece).

A car which may or may not be able to hit 100kph with the wind behind it being sold as a Ferrari wouldn't be acceptable (unless you're a retro Citroen freak).

A Ferrari with three wheels one of which refuses to be circular on wednesdays if we're driving to visit a mistress (hey i'm in southern europe not the puritanical domain of the U.S) wouldn't be acceptable.

Some traffic shaping is inevitable. But it's a stopgap measure not an acceptable solution. If 90% of new traffic is e.g. bittorrent then the answer is either to make this premium usage (and spell it out in the contract) OR STFU and put more capacity.

Should be really simple - either *BE* a provider with acceptable use spelled out transparently or *DIE* in the marketplace.

BTW I think the "exception" is to soften the blow for ISPS so they don't end up sued to death. YMMV. Remember - legislators are mostly (ex optional) sharks^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers so there will always be exceptions. Good luck Canada. Now if we can only persuade the UK to tighten the screws and torch the bloody Phorm thing - which ought to worry everyone much much more than traffic shaping...

Which leads me to a truly dumb idea. Allocation of the RF spectrum is controlled internationally via the ITU (A UN organization). Given the nature of the Internet shouldn't it be regulated the *same* way? (Running for bomb shelter and donning asbestos undergarments right now...).

Andy.

Good use of crap, roses. Bad use of crap - Vista.

Let the user choose...

The idea would be that the IAPs should split their bandwidth fairly among all their users. In its bandwidth share, the user should prioritize its outgoing traffic. The IAP should shape the incomming traffic fairly between each of its user. In this scenario, low latency network applications are dead (video conferencing/telephony/video games...): in an home network lan, the momy is watching a HD internet TV channel, the boy can forget playing online its favorite FPS and the girl cannot have a decent IP phone line call. That's why there is a exception to let the IAP to shape further specifically on low lantency protocols... but they will never be able to embrace all past-present-futur low latency protocols on the net. Of course they could favor only the protocols of big bucks corporations. So you could trash any open low latency protocols...

But there is a another way: IPv6. Indeed the protocol does have labels that let you tag traffic. Its means the user network apps can tell the IAP equipement what type of traffic they send. So the IAPs can apply shaping rules based on that type of traffic on cross-user boundaries. Nethertheless in a traffic priority class, the IAP still has to provide fairness among users. Basically, fairness among user is not applied on traffic as a whole but on a per traffic class basis.

Of course in the real world, low latency traffic will have to be shaped to very small bandwidth... smart users would push their P2P traffic on high priority. The idea on high priority traffic classes is to have just enough bandwidth to let signaling, highly compressed voice, intense action FPS game data. Of course, you can have several high priority classes. BUT there is a BIG exception to all of this, emergency services: for instance you want to call from the net the "internet US 911". In this case the IAP equipement will have to know without IPv6 label that you are calling an emergency service (IP based shaping, but amount of IPs must be minimal to avoid overloaded routing tables and increased latency that will degrade internet quality significantly).

I let you imagine what it will be when users will have Fiber To The Home with upload bandwidth on a 100's of Mb scale!

This does mean, rewritting many network applications. Deep IAP topology reconfiguration. More expensive IAP equipements: must be able to perform shaping extremely quickly in order to minimize the latency cost(=forget high level protocol shaping or shaping based on too much data(IPs)).

And the last but not the least... IPv6!

Re:Everyone onboard!!

'Reasonable cases' is in the area of VOIP.

One of the biggest concerns is the use of VOIP and the internet interfering with it. Some providers offer a VOIP based service with their internet package.

This is the 'exception' case that is to be allowed.

I just don't see how or why people like to scream bloody-fucking-murder on everything. The point is that for once someone (well, a group of people) is finally taking notice to an issue that has been around for a while. I know it's slashdot, but please... grow up.

Re:Hmm...

well, I think that a better idea is to mandate the declaration of the shaping in place on the connection. What if I want an isp that prioritize my voip traffic?