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Poll Finds Canadians Strongly Support Net Neutrality Legislation

A new poll by Leger Marketing (commissioned by eBay) finds that Canadians are generally unware of net neutrality issues, yet strongly support the principles that provide the foundation for net neutrality legislation.  In particular, the survey found that:

  • three in five Canadians concur that ISPs should be required to treat all content, sites and platforms equally.
  • two-thirds of Canadians disagree with the proposal that ISPs should be allowed to impose additional fees for access to specific content on the web.
  • 76% of Canadians (including 70% of Conservative supporters, 79% Liberal and 86% NDP) believe the federal government should pass a law to confirm the right of Internet consumers to access publicly available Internet applications and content of their choice.
  • 77% of Canadians agree that net neutrality policies protect the rights of Internet consumers.

While critics will undoubtedly note that the majority of Canadians were unaware of net neutrality, that has not stopped other groups – including copyright lobby groups and the telcos – from commissioning similar surveys and reporting them as fact.  Indeed, the survey's results point again to the lack of transparency within the Canadian marketplace as most consumers can hardly be faulted for being unaware of instances of traffic shaping since ISPs do not disclose such practices.  Canadian politicians have long ignored the net neutrality issue on the basis that it does not resonate with the public.  The Leger survey suggests that this is simply not the case and that legislative action would find broad public support.

18 Comments

  1. Net neutrality by any other name. Many Canadians like myself see internet usage in our day to day lives as the norm, and something that we do not want to go without. While a large number of Canadians do not have any idea what “net neutrality” or “packet shaping” are, they will come to a general consensus on what is proper behaviour by our internet providers.
    To this end I have a few examples which many would agree upon.
    1) Given two companies that deliver the same service (ie: voice over ip), most would agree that while ISP’s do have the right to throttle bandwidth of a given application, they must apply that throttling rule to all the applications of that type such that provider A is detremented as much as provider B.
    2) As Canadians pay for their internet (network A), and we know that the application providers (ie: Ebay) also pay to connect to the internet (network C), even while the data must flow through (network B), network B should correct their honing agreements with net A and net C, and not charge either the user nor the application provider more money for going over the network in the middle. (ie: double dipping).
    3) Your ISP offers a service (say offering driving directions and a map). Most Canadians do not think it is fair, nor right, to purposefully block access to other providers of the same service by another provider going over your network.

    Net neutrality? What does that mean exactly?

  2. Richard Sexton says:

    Who would argue against such things? But I have a problem with all this.

    There seems to be some idea there is some such thing as a “public internet” when in fact there is not.

    The internet protocols we all agree to use to connect our computers together with do not confer any notion that the sum of all these is some sort of public resource.

    I own my network and servers, you own yours, ISP’s own theirs. We agree to use TCP/IP to connect them but at the end of the day the net is still just a concatenation of a bunch of privatly owned networks. I really balk at the idea there might be laws that say what I can and cannot do with my network.

    I see the idea that ISPs will charge you more to connec to google or ebay or whatever as utterly insane, nd this all seemed to start when some of Google’s upstream providers began making noise about charging google more.

    It’s a free market. Let them, or let them at least try. If all the long haul carriers do this it simply sets up an environment where some new player can come along, be perfectly neutral and will presumably get lots and lots of peers as people migrate away from the other, now broken, long haul carriers.

    This is what, year three of the net.neutrality debate? So far it’s just been all FUD.

    And from what I’ve seen so far with the DNS wars, the less laws, regulations and government involvment with the net the better; this cannot be overstated.

    Be very very careful what you ask for.

    At this juncture I’m more concerned with poll.neutrality, not net.neutrality as this one seems to have an obvious bias.

    It’s like asking Americans if fighting in Iraq to “protect our freedoms” is a good idea. What yank is gonna say no to this? What canuck is gonna say “sure I’d love to pay a surcharge so I can get ebay”.

    Dumb.

  3. I’m inclined to agree with both Jason and Richard. To elaborate on Richard’s comments like “let them try”, I must admit that I’m starting to feel like a bit of an alarmist among my friends when I start spouting off about net neutrality. Everyone I try to tell about it basically laughs and takes the attitude that something “like that” could never happen – it’s outrageous. It’s like suggesting that the government will reinstate slavery or something. And even if the large telcos were given some of the power they’re looking for, just like Richard said, that’s where the new neutral guy steps in and wins everyone over.

    In that case, maybe this isn’t the monumental disaster I thought it was.

  4. What about Rogers unilaterally deciding that their users aren’t entitled to use bittorrent? I find that alone outrageous. I don’t think internet access is competitive enough to say that the free market will just solve all of our problems. If the average consumer isn’t aware of the issue, their decisions about what ISP to use will not reflect such misbehavior. On top of that, switching ISPs opens up the possibility that internet service will be disrupted, which is quite a deterrent for many, and will only become worse as the internet becomes more useful.

  5. I believe the whole debate about legislating net neutrality is pointless since net neutrality never existed in the first place. Internet is NOT a crown corporation and businesses that own it paid the government (Canadians) in both licensing fees and taxes.

    Besides it is so hypocritical of all the net neutrality proponents since most of them are against Microsoft for trying to introducing OS neutrality đŸ˜‰

  6. Richard Sexton says:

    “What about Rogers unilaterally deciding that their users aren’t entitled to use bittorrent?”

    Send an email to the police and ask them to disarm the guy holding a gun to your head forcing you to use Rogers.

  7. Richard, you need to ask yourself:
    1) Is Rogers the only ISP in my area? In some cases it is.
    2) Is the internet something I need to have? Like a phone, or cable tv?

    If so, then Rogers can be at least in that market could be considered as holding a gun to your head, you have no other options. In cases like this you complain to the CRTC [ link ]

  8. Looks like the telcos et al have their minions trolling relevant sites here in Canada as just like in the US to create confusion and doubt. The wonderful thing of the internet is the lack of barriers to entry, these have existed in television for decades now. The marketplace of ideas, both in political discourse, freedom of speech and innovative business will suffer when the established big boys (who now realize what enormous profits they can reap all the while restoring the concentration of power) set up a new system of exclusiveness.

    Look at the greater good for society, not at the bottom line of a few companies who already charge both a business like Google and myself as an end user for bandwidth, the more bandwidth Google uses the more they are charged and I as well, the whole idea of penalizing a company for being successful is ridiculous and highly suspect…this is nothing more than a desperate cash grab with the added bonus of creating a anti-competitive atmosphere with a nullification of democratic dissent and free speech possibly thrown in as well. I say regulate, b/c looking down south at AT&T and Pearl-Jam or Telus out in BC re VIOP we already have enough evidence that the current companies are incapable of maintaining the public trust on their say-so alone.

  9. Written by Richard Sexton on 2007-10-03 09:43:44
    Send an email to the police and ask them to disarm the guy holding a gun to your head forcing you to use Rogers.
    ========

    Please, Richard the problem here is that there are only two or three providers of broadband internet, it\\\’s an oligopoly ripe for collusion. Your flippant statement is somewhat ignorant. For the competitive argument to work then the ability to enter in to the marketplace needs to exist, to enable startups to enter the marketplace to compete with Rogers or Bell. But that is nearly impossible and the example that comes to mind is Rogers fighting tooth and nail to stop businesses from piggy-backing on their lines even though they were paying a reasonable fee to Rogers. So please take your tired industry talking points someplace else, remember Ma Bell in the US, they broke that up for a very similar reason to the one I am trying to impart here…business will act to prevent competition, its just the way it works, profit is number one for them not fostering competition.

    The internet is too important of a medium, both for knowledge, understanding, free speech and innovation to trust 2 or 3 companies to do whats right, and given the results of this survey I would say Canadians once informed of the topic agree. I think it\\\’s time you headed back and got some new talking points, these have been thoroughly repudiated time and time again by those without a corporate agenda. [ link ]

  10. n/a
    I think the crux of the matter is that ISP’s need to deploy QOS to deliver inelastic services like Voice and soon video. Castrating an ISP’s ability to prioritize high value traffic is the wrong answer.

    “The internet is too important of a medium, both for knowledge, understanding, free speech and innovation ”

    your darn right – and ensuring your BitTorrent traffic doesn’t impact my Voice call is the appropriate and responsible management of a network.

  11. Written by :o) on 2007-10-05 10:12:14
    your darn right – and ensuring your BitTorrent traffic doesn’t impact my Voice call is the appropriate and responsible management of a network.
    ===
    My argument is not to defend bittorrent, funny how that seems to be everyones favorite horse to bring out and whip when trying to attack net neutrality. Not once in my posts did I reference bittorrent, you miss the point by selectively quoting me and then associating something to me that never mentioned in an attempt to smear my opinion. Nice try.

    And your point does not change the fact that regulation is needed by the government to assure that the existing system remains democratic and open and not go down the road of TV and radio where the public trust has been destroyed and the mediums become accessable only to a select few to the exclusion of all others.

    What you should be worried about(relating to the example you give) is another Telus fiasco where ‘your’ voice call is degraded anyways, regardless of bittorrent traffic, b/c Telus (or any ISP) is prioritizing their service at the expense of yours (for example a third party voip service) despite the fact that both you and the third party service pay fairly for bandwidth, that my friend is a two-tiered internet which goes down that slippery slope of erecting prohibitive barriers of entry to foster an anti-competitive atmosphere which hurts us all in the long run.

  12. :o)
    Written by TTFD on 2007-10-05 18:32:56

    “My argument is not to defend bittorrent…” sorry, it’s a fact. Bittorrent traffic impacts service delivery. That’s not a ‘tired industry talking point’ it is reality and needs to be a component of any net neutrality discussion.

    Secondly,

    “What you should be worried about(relating to the example you give) is another Telus fiasco where ‘your’ voice call is degraded anyways, regardless of bittorrent traffic, b/c Telus (or any ISP) is prioritizing their service at the expense of yours (for example a third party voip service) despite the fact that both you and the third party service pay fairly for bandwidth…”

    you’re missing the point my friend .. ‘Prioritizing’ = QOS (quality of service) see:

    [ link ]

    .. and more importantly does NOT equal degradation or a ‘2-tiered internet’. That’s misinformation.

    Thirdly,

    “Looks like the telcos et al have their minions trolling relevant sites here in Canada as just like in the US to create confusion and doubt.”

    and

    “Please, Richard the problem here is that there are only two or three providers of broadband internet, it\\\’s an oligopoly ripe for collusion.”

    is just ridiculous conspiracy theories that distract from relevant discussion.

    Lastly (and back to the topic) – surveying the canadians about net neutrality is a ridiculous undertaking. Nobody knows what it means.

  13. Hello again,

    “sorry, it’s a fact. Bittorrent traffic impacts service delivery. That’s not a ‘tired industry talking point’ it is reality and needs to be a component of any net neutrality discussion.”
    =========
    Yup and unbeknownst to most of it’s customers Rogers has been shaping that traffic yet advertising blistering speeds and referencing torrents tacitly in their advertising as a selling point re their blistering speeds, real trustworthy, Geist has written about this shady practice before, they hid the fact until they got caught on it…hence, regarding it being a necessary part of the discussion, I agree with you. Just not in the way you’re thinking. But as an example of why the public trust cannot be held by these few corporations, thanks for walking us to that example in favour of net neutrality. However I do agree that if the ISP does not have the capacity than they should be up front about it and have an open discussion regarding bandwidth and traffic. I don’t see the legislation/regulation existing to punish the ISP but only to counter the nature of greed and anti-competitive policies, not to mention [ link ] is a strong concern of mine. If we go down the road of regulation it does not have to be extreme in one way or another, a compromise can be reached. But to just say no to it is highly suspect and places too much trust in corporations that have exhibited in the past that they cannot be trusted. References available upon request re this or just google it (Verizon or AT&T is a good place to start regarding misplaced trust in corporations to do the right thing for competition and/or the consumer)

    “you’re missing the point my friend .. ‘Prioritizing’ = QOS (quality of service) see: ”
    =========
    and you seem to be still missing mine, QOS is only as good as the priority that is given to certain traffic by the ISP, when you have ISP’s who offer services that compete with similar services offered by third parties you have a situation where the ISP will be sorely tempted to prioritize their service over a competing one, regardless of what they say they are doing. I refer again to my example above re Telus. They want to theirs not the competition to sell, but rather than compete on a level playing ground they’ll unfairly relegate the competition to lower priority without making it known. That will hurt competition, innovation and new business startups, it’s just that simple. If you’d like I’ll scan some chapters from univ econ textbooks so you can get a better grasp of reality regarding this. Really, if you trust these few companies to do you right, well like the saying goes I have bridge to sell ya.

    “.. and more importantly does NOT equal degradation or a ‘2-tiered internet’. That’s misinformation. ”
    =========
    No of course that’s not what the ISPs want it to seem like, but it is…the ISP’s service (lets say VOIP) exists with a higher priority on the ISPs backbone because they want all the profit and competition, JoeBlow Voip service has to pay extra above and beyond what he would normally pay for the same bandwidth b/c it’s Voip and high value traffic and a threat to the ISP’s service…err that’s the definition of two-tier, one exists above the other…that example extends throughout, to many other instances of the same nature.

    “Looks like the Telco’s et al have their minions trolling relevant sites here in Canada as just like in the US to create confusion and doubt.” – is just ridiculous conspiracy theories ”
    =========
    Heh, I can see I’m debating with a very trusting individual, but if you don’t think that any corporations lobby both the public and politicians through mis-information campaigns well, that bridge is still for sale. I mean c’mon there a real examples right now in the US of groups being set up as fronts for the Telco companies lobbying the unknowing consumer and hammering the pols. References available upon request…or just do a search with a couple keywords and you’ll see plenty of examples or information that will point you in the right direction to expose the reality of the situation to you. Lobbying public and political opinion has been around since long before the internet came in to existence. You can’t really think it’s not happening on this subject can you?

    “… ripe for collusion.” – is just ridiculous conspiracy theories that distract from relevant discussion. ”
    =========
    Says who? You? Please, look at all of the examples of collusion and ripping the customer off, if you’d like I can reference hundreds of cases of companies colluding together to undercut the consumer. To just shut your eyes and hope for the best on a corporations say so is not only ignorant but also dangerous. And, just a real kicker on this one, there is a class-action lawsuit about cell-phone pricing collusion making its way through the legal system right now…dealing with some of the very corporations we’re talking about now!! Yup, shut your eyes real tight and everything will be ok my friend.

    Lastly (and back to the topic) – surveying the canadians about net neutrality is a ridiculous undertaking. Nobody knows what it means.
    =========
    And that means what? We should all just remain in the dark as an uninformed consumer or citizen? All the while allowing the corporations to take the lead on this? Wow, that’s terrible approach, to abdicate our rationale decision making to corporate entities is abhorrent and un-democratic. Because well we all know corporations have our best interest at heart right, right? Though if you disagree, I can cite many examples regarding corporations putting their own interest before that of the consumer and/or society as a whole to try and change your mind, think of the environment as a good obvious one right now as an example of shortsightedness in pursuit of profits…I’ll also refer to my examples above again. Thanks for playing. Oh and that bridge is still for sale, trust me. đŸ˜‰

    But really, Net Neutrality is a much more complex issue than just QOS, and to narrow the discussion to just that alone does us all a disservice…and will hurt us all in the long run. I’d hoped that through my posts I may have conveyed the other facets of the debate. Such as the inherent democracy the internet gives us and the threat that exists towards that…say for instance freedom of speech, it’s un-democratic to have a dissenting viewpoint be stifled like the AT&T incident for one example, but that’s not the only concern or example in a much larger debate. I’d be happy to expand my discussion to elaborate for you, but if you really read what I wrote I think you understand my concern goes beyond just the QOS.

  14. :o)
    Written by TTFD on 2007-10-06 13:18:26

    ——————————————————————————–
    Hello again,

    ——-
    “Yup and unbeknownst to most of it’s customers Rogers has been shaping that traffic yet advertising blistering speeds and referencing torrents tacitly in their advertising as a selling point re their blistering speeds, real trustworthy, Geist has written about this shady practice before, they hid the fact until they got caught on it…”

    Sure let’s take this example….

    the problem with both your postulation and Geists, is that you both are injecting emotion into the argument.

    Heres the facts:

    bittorrent traffic was severly impacting service delivery.
    Rogers does not block bittorrent traffic – it’s shaped and thus can advertise it’s transport
    Rogers states in every agreement/contract/etc that it reserves the right to manage their network as they see fit.
    Rogers must manage all traffic on it’s network
    Rogers has always used the words ‘Up to’ in reference to speeds
    Rogers is the fastest provider in it’s cable territory

    was this shady? um no, that was responsible management. So where’s the evil conspiracy .. the injustice? It doesn’t exist.

    ——-
    “hence, regarding it being a necessary part of the discussion, I agree with you. Just not in the way you’re thinking. But as an example of why the public trust cannot be held by these few corporations, thanks for walking us to that example in favour of net neutrality.”

    Well no. How would have net neutrality have had any effect in the example of Rogers? zero. Would allowing a new traffic type to overwhelm a network because some (yet to be defined) legislation from a government body DISallowed an ISP from taking action have been better? ‘The network’s down but don’t worry .. we’re neutral!’

    and I’m closing my eyes? Have I got some Floridian swamp land for you!

    ——-
    “However I do agree that if the ISP does not have the capacity than they should be up front about it and have an open discussion regarding bandwidth and traffic. I don’t see the legislation/regulation existing to punish the ISP but only to counter the nature of greed and anti-competitive policies, not to mention [ link ] is a strong concern of mine.
    If we go down the road of regulation it does not have to be extreme in one way or another, a compromise can be reached. But to just say no to it is highly suspect and places too much trust in corporations that have exhibited in the past that they cannot be trusted. References available upon request re this or just google it (Verizon or AT&T is a good place to start regarding misplaced trust in corporations to do the right thing for competition and/or the consumer)”

    I understand your point. I think you’re trying to highlight the ‘risk’ of collusion and I’ll give you that. It has happened before and you’ve highlighted a coulpe of US examples. But we’re not the states and I’m fairly confident that existing legislation covers this off.

    Also,..

    regulation takes looooooooooooooooooots of time + technological threats advance rapidly = problem for net neutrality

    gov’t bureaucracy is not the answer.

    ——–
    “and you seem to be still missing mine, QOS is only as good as the priority that is given to certain traffic by the ISP, when you have ISP’s who offer services that compete with similar services offered by third parties you have a situation where the ISP will be sorely tempted to prioritize their service over a competing one, regardless of what they say they are doing.
    I refer again to my example above re Telus. They want to theirs not the competition to sell, but rather than compete on a level playing ground they’ll unfairly relegate the competition to lower priority without making it known. That will hurt competition, innovation and new business startups, it’s just that simple. If you’d like I’ll scan some chapters from univ econ textbooks so you can get a better grasp of reality regarding this. Really, if you trust these few companies to do you right, well like the saying goes I have bridge to sell ya.”

    And you are mixing three arguments. 1) traffic priority 2) viability of third party resellers 3) evil Canadian telecom conspiracy

    I’ll let you guess which one is the emotional element ….. and oh yeah .. keep the bridge. :o)

    ——–

    “No of course that’s not what the ISPs want it to seem like, but it is…the ISP’s service (lets say VOIP) exists with a higher priority on the ISPs backbone because they want all the profit and competition, JoeBlow Voip service has to pay extra above and beyond what he would normally pay for the same bandwidth b/c it’s Voip and high value traffic and a threat to the ISP’s service…err that’s the definition of two-tier, one exists above the other…that example extends throughout, to many other instances of the same nature.”

    Err .. that’s called QOS. And err .. your mixing arguments again.

    Let’s use your example. JoeBlow VOIP has to know that his service is below ‘carrier’ grade because ….. JoeBlow is not a carrier. and never will be. JoeBlow has no network.

    Secondly, Are you suggesting JoeBlow can be a middleman betweeen Canadian carriers (cuz that’s what you have to do) and not expect to pay extra or will do something different? The reason why ‘Parasitic Carriers’ (like Vonage, the CLECs of the 90’s and JoeBlow) keep filing for bankruptcy is in the ‘univ econ textbooks’ you mentioned above .. not because of ‘evil conspiracy’. Probably under ‘Profit margin’.

    Now JoeBlow wants the same QOS as the carriers. Even if every Canadian carrier colourizes his packets the sames as their own VOIP packets JoeBlow is still hosed. Because JoeBlow is not a carrier and as soon as he’s dropped on a network outside of canada his profits go out the window. Because Canadian carriers are bound by Canadian law and voice is global. bye bye Joe.

    In order to have true competition we need more competing networks. Physical infrastructure. IMO that’s what we should be pushing for – not smoke and mirror third parties or govt bureacracy. Real technological investment and there are good examples across the globe we could follow.

    But the swamp is a callin’ You my friend!!! You’ll be a ‘Flocal’ in no time!

    (Flocal = native of Florida, USA)

    ——-
    Heh, I can see I’m debating with a very trusting individual, but if you don’t think that any corporations lobby both the public and politicians through mis-information campaigns well, that bridge is still for sale. I mean c’mon there a real examples right now in the US of groups being set up as fronts for the Telco companies lobbying the unknowing consumer and hammering the pols. References available upon request…or just do a search with a couple keywords and you’ll see plenty of examples or information that will point you in the right direction to expose the reality of the situation to you. Lobbying public and political opinion has been around since long before the internet came in to existence. You can’t really think it’s not happening on this subject can you?
    ——-

    I live in Canada. Do you?

    Seriously tho, the teleco’s in Canada are very cold to each other and so inept a communicating it would take a friggin miracle for them to actually agree on anything. let alone collude on traffic priority. Oh yeah, add a ex-cableco into the mix. Lots of talking, loooots of talking. :o)

    ——–
    “Says who? You? Please, look at all of the examples of collusion and ripping the customer off, if you’d like I can reference hundreds of cases of companies colluding together to undercut the consumer. To just shut your eyes and hope for the best on a corporations say so is not only ignorant but also dangerous. And, just a real kicker on this one, there is a class-action lawsuit about cell-phone pricing collusion making its way through the legal system right now…dealing with some of the very corporations we’re talking about now!! Yup, shut your eyes real tight and everything will be ok my friend.”
    ——–

    hate to burst your bubble – the lawsuit you mentioned is NOT collusion. sorry.

    As I mentioned above I think your right in highlighting a ‘risk’ of collusion. Have there been lots of examples of collusion stateside? You bet .. but you’re a looooooooong way off from proving to me that Canadian carriers have acted in the same way. But you know what really really works well in identifying problems …… facts. Which is why we need rational non-emotional debate.

    And is also why the results of the afore mentioned survey are so irrelevant. Allow me a quick example.

    I think I’ll phone up some of your ‘soon to be’ neighbours in FL and ask them who I should vote for Oct 10th.

    Hey, FLocal! Tory? McGuinty? How about Howard? Howard’s gonna give me $10 an hour!!!!!

    I’ll post the results .. break em out by Democrats, Repulicans, Has all their teeth, Dentally challenged .. verry interesting!!

    :o)

  15. n/a youre a shill, there are some real things you just ignore and just py attention to service and nothing else, pleae learn something b4 talking

    you didnt argue against anything really.,read it again

    and stop blaming bitorrent for everything, I download linux off it all the time, and hollywood is now using it too, you dont know any of this.

  16. reformed torrent downloader says:

    I think a couple results from that survey didn\’t get as much publicity as they deserve:
    -19 in 20 survey participants suffering from our survey bias responded as we intended. \”…when informed of the concern, strongly support…\”
    -18 in 20 survey participants don\’t really care about Net Neutrality because they are more concerned with the cost of housing and food or whether or not their kids will get good grades in school and end up with good jobs.

    Survey results and sarcasm aside, there is much talk about fairness in the comments above, but it\’s all pretty one-sided.

    The cablecos and telcos haven\’t stopped bit torrent from working. They throttle it such that 5% (a guess, btw) of their customers don\’t consume most of their router capacity being used by the other 95% of their customers. They could also start charging usage fees (I think a few do). That seems fair.

    My $50/month for internet access is the same $50/month that my parents pay. But their limited email and surfing consumes only a small portion of backbone bandwidth compared to my torrent downloading. From their perspective that doesn\’t seem fair. They should probably get a price break or I should probably have my prices increased. That seems fair.

    I hear that YouTube is sucking up all the backbone bandwidth these days. Google will soon be putting ads on all those videos. I wonder how much money Google will make from that Millions? Billions? I wonder how much money the cablecos and telcos will get from that? $0? $1,000? I wonder how much money the cablecos and telcos will need to spend to upgrade their parts of the internet backbone to support all those YouTube videos $Millions? Hopefully not billions! (But the internet is getting big!) Regardless, if I was the sole owner of one of these telcos or cablecos and I had to spend million of dollars every year to keep upgrading my part of the backbone, I\’d recoup it from somewhere. Should I raise all my customers\’ monthly rates, or should I monitor traffic and charge those that use specific sites (such as YouTube) or exceed capacity limits, or should I charge companies like YouTube directly? What\’s fair?

    Regardless of whether you\’re a critic or proponent of Net Neutrality, whether or not it impacts us in Canada will all be decided by the lobbyists in the US. The question is, who will be successful? Will it be Verizon and the telcos seeking to cover their costs (and, of course, make some profit)? Or will it be Google et al seeking a free ride on infrastructure that is a \”public good\” so they can make a profit? Hey! Who\’d have thought the Net Neutrality debate is all about money and not about this idealistic view that the internet is \”public good\” and is required for free speech and the betterment of humanity?

  17. But really, Net Neutrality is a much more complex issue than just QOS, and to narrow the discussion to just that alone does us all a disservice…and will hurt us all in the long run. I’d hoped that through my posts I may have conveyed the other facets of the debate. Such as the inherent democracy the internet gives us and the threat that exists towards that…say for instance freedom of speech, it’s un-democratic to have a dissenting viewpoint be stifled like the AT&T incident for one example, but that’s not the only concern or example in a much larger debate. I’d be happy to expand my discussion to elaborate for you, but if you really read what I wrote I think you understand my concern goes beyond just the QOS.

  18. Written by n/a on 2007-10-06 00:21:19 said:
    “does NOT equal degradation or a ‘2-tiered internet’. Thats misinformation
    ——

    hmmm really?

    Net neutrality proponents and critics unquestionably remain far apart on many issues. Indeed, a senior Bell executive recently acknowledged that the company would like to retain the right to establish a two-tier Internet where they can levy fees on both consumers and websites for the traffic that runs on their networks.

    [ link ]
    ——

    Lets not put all our trust in these corporations, stand up for your right not to be gouged or manipulated out of your money or rights! Or fall for industry shills trolling the internet spreading the real misinformation like ‘there will be no 2-tier internet.

    As you can see, its the reality that telcos want.