Net Neutrality in Canada
Protestos sobre a quebra de neutralidade da rede pela Bell Canada gera protestos. Matéria do ars technica, “Canadians debating net neutrality in wake of Bell throttling“, explica o problema. Campanha de protesto pode ser assinada na “Campaign fo Democratic Media”. No site pode-se ler:
“Bell and Rogers are changing how the Internet works by dictating how Web users access content. Bell is limiting Sympatico subscribers from downloading content. Subscribers of Internet hosting companies that buy wholesale services from Bell have already been feeling the pinch since mid-March. This policy is more accurately referred to as ‘throttling’, and it fundamentally changes how the Internet works. Meanwhile, Rogers, in addition to its own traffic shaping activities, has announced it will charge subscribers more for Internet activities that use more bandwidth. Instead of users deciding how we use the Internet, ISPs are now trying ‘shape’ our traffic.
The companies argue they are trying to limit activities that use up a lot of bandwidth in order to maintain speed for all users. But there is a dangerous reality hidden beneath the companies’ apparent concern for subscribers.
Using the same ‘traffic shaping’ principle, the companies can steer subscribers to their own content, or content produced by affiliated companies, and away from that offered by competitors – including the public broadcaster. For example, some Internet users who recently tried to download CBC’s The Next Greatest Prime Minister on Bittorrent were told it would take hours to do so.
For more than a decade, the Internet was a neutral resource for people around the world to share information with each other.
Do we really want Bell and Rogers to be able to tell us what we can and cannot view and do on the Internet?”
Trechos do post do Ars Technica
“Arguments about network neutrality haven’t made much headway in Canada (perhaps it’s hard to get traction on all that ice?), despite several years of traffic shaping from cable operators like Rogers. But now that Bell Canada has jumped aboard the P2P throttling dogsled and is mushing ahead with all possible speed, the issue has suddenly become high-profile news, spawning numerous articles in the mainstream press and launching several strenuous protest movements. It has also led Bell to dig in, arguing that it not only has the right to throttle its own customers and its wholesale buyers, but that the government should butt out of the wholesale line-sharing business altogether.
Bell Canada has been shaping P2P traffic for its own DSL customers for some time, but a real furor erupted late last month when it was revealed that Bell was also using deep packet inspection gear to throttle the access it sold to its wholesale customers. P2P traffic was bandwidth-limited during the evening hours, despite the fact that legitimate groups like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation have begun distributing video content using BitTorrent. This, of course, removed one of the keys ways that DSL resellers could differentiate themselves (no throttling here!) from Bell and it affected even those resellers who were explicitly anti-throttling.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is Canada’s version of the FCC, and its acronym is just as vowel-free as its US counterpart. It has been the target of a complaint against Bell’s tactics brought last week by the National Union of Public and General Employees. The labor labour union complained to CRTC’s wonderfully-named boss, Konrad W. von Finckenstein, and demanded a full investigation.
‘These Internet Service Providers are, with little or no public accountability, implementing measures that will discriminate against the use of legal software for legitimate uses,’ said the NUPGE letter. ‘This is unacceptable. The potential for violations of the privacy rights of users is clear. The continued silence on these matters by the CRTC and the Canadian government violates the trust the Canadian people have placed in you.’
In addition, the Campaign for Democratic Media today launched a pressure campaign of its own called “Stop the Throttler.” The campaign targets both Bell and Rogers for traffic shaping, pointing out the many legal uses of a technology that is now being adopted by even the biggest of media companies, such as NBC Universal in the US.(…)”