The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting Pieces Together
ACTA Guide, Part 1: The Talks To-Date
ACTA Guide, Part 2: The Documents (Official and Leaked)
ACTA Guide, Part 3: Transparency and ACTA Secrecy
Liberals Take A Stand For Net Neutrality |
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Friday June 19, 2009
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Yesterday's Question Period featured an unexpected and welcome surprise - the federal Liberal Party has expressed its support for net neutrality. Industry critic Marc Garneau rose on the floor of the House of Commons and asked (video version here): Update: The official Liberal press release on the issue is here. Comments (37)
Derek
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Great news This is great news! It is one of the most important issues of our time. I really hope this does not become a partisan issue as it is not a right/left issue. Jesse Brown has some great commentary about this on the most recent "Search Engine". Net Neutrality is something that everyone wants, except for a few short-sighted ISP's. |
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Net Neutrality That is an impressive statement but with that new Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act it completely contradicts Net Neutrality. I agree that we need to give law enforcement officials the ability to track people of interest online but it should be where a warrant needs to be given out by a judge and all there data from that account can be duplicated by the ISP for that person to a drive or image on a case by case basis, not by copying everything everyone does. Which can be used by the IRAA for suing users. With the first really big successful prosecution of Jammie Thomas (this is after appeal) parents and children will now be held accountable if the new Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act passes. For 24 songs at $80,000 each for a 1.92 million dollar awarding to the IRAA, parents will have to make sure there is no file sharing of any kind otherwise the IRAA can get a court order from the RCMP for all users internet traffic. Jammie Thomas Retrial Verdict http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/jammie-thomas-retrial-verdict.ars Summary of Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hTjNBE6VD5lRdO9EfAO30IWV8pkw |
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Video Sorry Adam, we changed the video to have both official languages in one clip. We send Dr Geist the new clip and he updated his link. Thanks! new clip with Clement's lack of answers in both languages: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u__FtuNwGiI |
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President, BlackCherry Digital Media Inc. Following up from an interesting discussion at NEXTmedia (http://www.nextmediaevents.com/banff/) between Dave Purdy (Rogers) and Eric Klinker (BitTorrent) I wonder what the minister will consider a 'legitimate business application'? Who will decide what these 'applications' whether software or process are? How can any decision making structure take into account applications that have yet to be conceived? |
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... In lamens terms, does this mean that the liberals are going to vote against the new bill? I really hope so because i do not think this should be allowed. It is a total invasion of someones privacy. |
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Priceless Garneau decides to ask the same question again and in french, who knows, maybe it'll unbalance Clement. But no. Not only does he answer back in french, he gives the EXACT same non-answer he did before... but in french. But there's a point where you cannot interpret a non-answer as anything else then a "NO" answer. Conservatives are against net neutrality. |
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... "Conservatives are against net neutrality" Obviously they are currently against it, they wrote up the surveillance bills. I think it is just an ignorance issue though, and they will likely flip (as the liberals seem to have) once this gets some decent media attention and they start to see a backlash. I'm confident there are relatively few who would support this agenda once informed. It is strange though how "conservative" ideology seems to include pushing for less government interference in business, and yet more interference in our personal lives in the interest of "security" |
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... I don't call Garneau's statement as support net neutrality. Net neutrality requires a law that states that a carrier cannot manage its network by looking beyond the headers of the protocol that the service is sold as. One could go further by requiring that no discrimination be made between source/destination of packets but this would be difficult to put into words because the internet routing does discriminate between those. |
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... just to rephrase by question from above,is this a step towards the bill being denied? I dont like the idea of being watched so I dont want this to pass. also, in a minority government one party needs the other correct? So I would say this is a great step to the bill being denied with the liberals against it? Thanks for any clarification. |
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... I have to admit I don't see the link between C-47 and net neutrality being made in many posts here, at least according to my understanding of the concept of net neutrality and what I read in C-47 (I haven't read C-46 in its entirety). My understanding of net neutrality is that the provider and the back-haul provider, do not block sites and that traffic management procedures don't care about the application, where it is from or where it is going. Neither does the provider or back haul provider engage in deep packet inspection to determine the timeliness requirements, or legality of the information being sent. Data is data. My reading of C-47 is that it is to assist with evidence gathering (including provision of intercepted information to law enforcement in the manner in which it hit the ISPs systems), save for a couple of provisions; those dealing with the requirement for the ISP to provide, on demand and without a warrant, subscriber information. The concern over those provisions I believe is valid. Am I missing something here? |
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C'mon ... Liberal party and NDP are just doing what opposition parties do... opposing. If either were in power now they'd be the ones pushing new powers for cops regarding the net, and the conservatives would be opposing it. |
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Where Does Net Neutrality Fit With Wireless? "Internet traffic management should not be permitted for anti-competitive behaviour, nor should it target specific websites, users or legitimate business applications." Would this classify offering different cell phone data packages based on which device the end user has, as 'anti-competitive behaviour'? Or, in other words - should carriers be allowed to keep prices higher for those people who do not buy an iPhone? |
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Doesn't affect wholesale plans. "Internet traffic management should not be permitted for anti-competitive behaviour" This would have no effect on Bell's throttling of wholesale plans as long as their own retail customers are throttled the same way. The same goes for mobile. It's targeted at wholesale buyers, and will have no effect on the end customer as long as they can choose another provider. There are plenty of mobile carriers to choose from. |
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Vote for it on slashdot, Digg and Reddit http://slashdot.org/submission...?art_pos=1 http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/8tyt6/liberal_party_of_canada_speak_out_in_support_of/ http://digg.com/tech_news/Liberal_Party_of_Canada_Supports_Net_Neutrality |
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Awesome! Kudos to the Liberals and NDP for choosing the right stance. Now if I could just have another crack at a federal election... |
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Re: Liberal party just declared support for net neutrality In watching the U-tube video segment, something very bothersome jumps out: Dear Mr. Clement: And whom pray tell is invited to this digital strategy conference to represent the voices of the millions of everyday Canadian citizens who are, or should be, demanding open and unfettered broadband access with more comprehensive competition than the oligopoly that at present is controlling the network access to their homes? You mention all the industry, business and academia representatives that will be involved, but where is the voice of the people, that elected yourself and the present government, that you are supposed to represent? |
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Bell WholeSale is anti competition Jason Said: "Doesn't affect wholesale plans. "Internet traffic management should not be permitted for anti-competitive behaviour" "This would have no effect on Bell's throttling of wholesale plans as long as their own retail customers are throttled the same way." Hey Jason, I understand you and your little friends might be scared, but the Canadian people know anti competitive behavior when they see it. And obviously so do the Liberals. No one is buying your FUD. |
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Corporate Control The NDP and Liberals should also declare the net as a human right like the E.U. did. This way Quebecor won't try and bring up their 3-strikes and your out proposal again (Like what France is still trying to do under corporate control w/o any oversight and w/o the people having any recourse). And if either are serious they should bring in new consumer laws to protect the people from these telco vultures. Till then, I think the liberals are blowing smoke. A summer recess grandstand. |
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Jason is most certainly not employed by any Telcos Since I live and work in New Zealand, I can't really be a "Bell Employee". I worked for Nortel and Bell Northern Research, but never Bell. In fact, feel free to google me. http://www.google.co.nz/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=s&hl=en&q=jason.pollock&meta=&btnG=Google+Search I'm link #3. (http://blog.jason.pollock.ca) Your paranoid delusions of an astroturf campaign against this blog are amazingly silly. However, feel free to ask the Liberals for clarification if they consider Bell's throttling "anti-competitive". You might be surprised at their unwillingness to provide a straight answer. |
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Corporate Control I agree with Jason. So far I think the strongest stance was that by Charlie Angus of the NDP and his bill C-398, An Act to amend the Telecommunications Act (Internet neutrality) http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=3935625&Language=e&Mode=1&File=27#1 I have seen some bash this section: "(a) manage the flow of network traffic in a reasonable manner in order to relieve extraordinary congestion;" as stating it means Bell can throttle everyone. But I don't read it that way. "Reasonable" does not equal 30kB/s 11-hrs per day on your 16-MB/s connection that you pay almost 100$ per month for. "extraordinary congestion" does not equal across the board throttling 11-hrs per day in all of Quebec and Ontario. So far I still think the NDP is stronger in their proposal and still need to do more. If they want to play ball they should state that if Bell et al. can't supply what they sell Canadians, then there needs to be money given back to the Canadian "customer". WTF, buy a service and not actually get it? This is Canadian telecommunications, pay and don't get what was sold to you. Bell's philosophy, supported by the conservatives, CRTC and CCTS (which is a joke). The Liberals are blowing smoke, Bell and Corporate Canada want their little tax haven from them that was taken away. NDP could have done a lot better in this arena. I don't know what held them back. |
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CBC Radio-Canada oh.. Found this in my mail box today. A paper from the Liberals stating: "The Harper conservatives have been ideologically opposed to the CBC and public broadcasting ever since the old reform Party called it "a government sponsored loser". Now they are squeezing the CBC financially, forcing it to lay off staff and scale back regional and local programming. Liberals will defend the CBC/Radio-Canada and defend our culture and communities from the Harper Conservative cuts." You can reply to this (and other) online at http://feedback.liberal.ca/cbc |
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Throttling Is Anti-Competitive because of Bell TV Online Jason; If the choice was between throttled Sympatico and a equivalently throttled independest ISP, then you would be right. But there are other activities on those lines. Bell TV Online apparently does NOT get throttled. So - competing television offerings run the risk of being capped by the throttle, but Bell's does not. |
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... I believe I said the following: This would have no effect on Bell's throttling of wholesale plans as long as their own retail customers are throttled the same way. If Bell isn't throttling access to Bell TV Online, but is throttling other web sites, then they may (my opinion is would) run afoul of a policy developed around the Liberal Party's statement. Specifically, this part: Internet traffic management [...] nor should it target specific websites Preferential treatment would seem to fit that. However, that is only if the throttling is happening _downstream_ from Bell TV Online. If the throttling is _upstream_ I don't see a problem. Basically, you can have different pipes, but once you select a pipe, all traffic should be equal. It does raise interesting questions about managing bandwidth. For example, should Cable TV operators have the same limitations? Why is a TV channel over DTV cable channel treated differently to a TV channel over IP? Should a broadband IP TV network be able to expect the same level of bandwidth out of Shaw cable as Canwest? |
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Liberal policy is wrong The policy should say NOT "internet traffic management should not selectively target certain websites" instead, or maybe as well it should say "internet traffic management should not selectively target certain PROTOCOLS" |
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All F.U.D.. All of it. And I'm annoyed. blah blah blah... It's all word play. Open your eyes. Who cares what puff of smoke the Liberals blew. Cuz in the end that's all it was, a smoke screen for summer recess. It's not at all serious and nothing protects the people dishing out 50-100$ per month for a 500kB/s or 16000kB/s service and getting only 30kB/s for their money. Who in their right mind calls 30kB/s high speed? (besides Bell and Rogers) Who in their right mind allows companies to screw-over the population of two provinces by telling them what they can and can't do on the net (via a throttle punishment)? Bell & Rogers (oh and the conservatives & the CRTC). They has been a lot of talk about the Bloc wanting its own CRTC. If they table the right thing I'll vote bloc even if its a separation issue, and I can see them getting some english votes if they do. As far as I can see no party gives a damn about the people paying for this garbage being sold and which the people aren't getting. What type of FAUX economy is that? Who cares how they worded it. All they are doing is showing their colors with their play on words. We all know it needs to be worded tougher and these politicians who proclaim how facebook is dangerous need to all be tossed out (or sent to work in Iran for Iran). Nothing is in the interest of the Canadian people. Time to poop or get off the pot. Nationalize the infrastructure and break up Bell. All Bell does is threaten the gov. "If you allow wholesale to have faster speeds to meet the speeds we sell, then we will stop building structure", Bell & Telus said. Well take them to task on their threat. To hell with them. Stop the anti-competitiveness right now. Let them stop building. Then break them up and lets build it out. Seems to me too many hands are greased with money. Jack Layton, you care about the hard working people putting down their money and not getting what they paid for? You care about the discussions at the dinner table? You care about that one income family paying for something and not getting it? Prove it. Till then everyone is all talk. The one who proves it and stands their ground on behalf of the people will be the winners. /end rant (damn its not even a rant, its true!) Feel free to tell me I'm wrong. |
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hiding behind fancy-schmacy wording "Internet traffic management should not be permitted for anti-competitive behaviour, nor should it target specific websites, users or legitimate business applications..." What's an illegitimate business application? Who gets to decide what's legitimate and illegitimate? And why are only "business application"s considered? So if I, Joe-Internet-user invent a new Internet protocol, am I going to be free prey for throttling until I can somehow make my protocol (i.e. application) "business" and "legitimate"? How about changing the very lawerish-written sentence above to something more simple and fair like: "Internet traffic management should not be permitted in any manner that discriminates against any specific network traffic". |
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RE: hiding behind fancy-schmacy wording Brian, You got it. P2P is a legit application. Period. There are many legit uses for it, and provides for a very low cost alternative to the standard. Please see: http://p2peducation.pbworks.com/ Right now if someone, anyone, uses P2P in anyway Bell and Rogers punishes you. Yet this technology is used around the world with very big investments by the E.U. It competes with Bell and Rogers TV (don't forget about Conference Board of Canada's BS report about how its all bad which was funded by the very same people trying to prevent wholesale internet providers from getting anything better than 5-meg. ie. Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the american lobby interests, Ref: http://www.canada.com/news/Cop...story.html and http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/s...09450.html) Its even used by the movie industry to stream to you. Looks it up, you will find CBS uses it and the others. Its not a matter of "legitimate business". This liberal thing is all talk or they have no clue what they are talking about. What they are saying is P2P can be used for legit businesses only, but if someone at home dares to use P2P that falls outside of a corporation, to heck with you. Only Bell et al. broadcast. Maybe Charlie Angus will want to make his own website, use a content delivery system based on P2P to distribute his political messages and push for his political party. I would love to see the NDP or Liberals use this type of Content Delivery System (P2P) for their party and watch how their political party is tossed into the slow lane by Bell and Rogers. I would laugh. Its discrimination. Its anti-competitive. Its screwing the Canadian people. Its the Conservatives, Bell, and Rogers stealing all of our money. The Liberal blabbering proves they don't have a clue. Or they do and are sucking up to the chamber of commerce and american interests for votes and/or funding. "Iggy" isn't for Canadian people and an open and neutral internet with his "press release" that's good for "business applications" only. "free and open democracy in the 21st century", Says Iggy of the Liberals? Gimme a break. Iggy wants it free and open for american interests and the likes of Bell and Rogers only. Now be a good little consumer and run along. /end rant (but it true!) |
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... Darryl Moore said: The policy should say NOT "internet traffic management should not selectively target certain websites" instead, or maybe as well it should say "internet traffic management should not selectively target certain PROTOCOLS" While I understand the concern, this can't be an absolute. VOIP traffic needs to be targetted in ways that lower packet latency to keep its quality high. If different protocols have different quality requirements, protocol-based management is required. Bittorrent is a valid, useful protocol, but if the quantity of bittorrent traffic is degrading other protocols (e.g. http), I don't have a problem with throttling it as long as throttling is done on a source- and destination-agnostic way. I do agree with the idea that if an ISP or carrier were to use traffic management to push their own offering at the expense of competing offerings, I would find a different ISP or carrier. Disclaimer: I work for Sandvine, maker of DPI equipment. |
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easy to say Phil said: "I do agree with the idea that if an ISP or carrier were to use traffic management to push their own offering at the expense of competing offerings, I would find a different ISP or carrier." -- Easy to say. But not affordable in reality. The ridiculously high termination fee's is a bully clause. The average person can't afford the terminations fee's in the hundreds of dollars from the likes of Bell. Or they don't know how to fight it. Everything is against the average customer and is pro big teleco. But this is another situation i suppose. So just leaving the telco, as you stated, is not an option for some 2 million internet subscribers unless they want huge termination fee's in the hundreds of dollars. |
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VOIP should not be special either Phil Longstaff said: "While I understand the concern, this can't be an absolute. VOIP traffic needs to be targetted in ways that lower packet latency to keep its quality high. If different protocols have different quality requirements, protocol-based management is required." I have to respectfully disagree with this. If the carriers are allowed to do any sort of traffic management like this, they will invariably abuse this power as they have already demonstrated. The management of what data is given priority on a network MUST be done by the parties at each end of the communication. NOT THE CARRIER. Quality issues on the carrier network are generally a symptom of the carrier overselling the bandwidth. The solution to that is not to impose limits on specific protocols for customers, (That will only encourage them to continue to oversell, and reduce performance) but to either increase bandwidth or change the terms of sale. The carriers can reduce available bandwidth to all customers, make bandwidth available to customers be time weighted, or charge more directly for volume of data crossing the network. These last two options give customers quality and financial incentive of their own to manage their network usage, and that really is all that should be needed. |
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Chinese walls between carriers and service providers Darryl has raised a very good point. The biggest problem here is conflicting interests. The edges of the cloud needs to be separated, legally and operationally, from the fabric within the cloud. Either you are a carrier, who knows how to manage the cumulative data passing through your routers, or you're a service provider, selling a reputable service to your customers (B2B & B2C) for which you have guarantees of service from the carriers. Traffic management systems are capable of keeping these two types of business separate; they should be separate in financial and legal terms as well. |
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End-points can only have limited control Darryl Moore said: "I have to respectfully disagree with this. If the carriers are allowed to do any sort of traffic management like this, they will invariably abuse this power as they have already demonstrated. The management of what data is given priority on a network MUST be done by the parties at each end of the communication. NOT THE CARRIER." I haven't looked at it in detail, but it might work to have the endpoints specify certain criteria on how the network should handle packets (e.g. latency). However, certain decisions and choices do need to be done by the network, though maybe those decisions could be influenced by the endpoints. If the network has a VOIP packet and an e-mail packet to send me, I want it to send the VOIP packet first. The same is true internally in the network when they have packets to forward. Also, (using a cable network as the example), if I am using bittorrent and you (my neighbour) are using VOIP, how would we as the clients at the end of a common cable connection, control the combined data? Given the latency requirements, it would be better for overall subscriber quality for your VOIP packet to have priority over my bittorrent packet. "Quality issues on the carrier network are generally a symptom of the carrier overselling the bandwidth. The solution to that is not to impose limits on specific protocols for customers, (That will only encourage them to continue to oversell, and reduce performance) but to either increase bandwidth or change the terms of sale." Back in the old days, there were time-division multiplexing (TDM) and frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) used to carry multiple signals across 1 connection. TDM will give you the *possibility* of higher bandwidth, but FDM will give you a *guarantee* of lower bandwidth. I think it's the same now. Since more and more protocols are coming on-line and using more and more bandwidth, if you want a guaranteed rate, you need dedicated equipment. However, overselling the bandwidth using TDM provides each subscriber with the possibility of higher data rates since it is probable that at any given time, not all subscribers will be blasting data. However, those who are should be able to take advantage of available total bandwidth but should not be able to starve those whose bandwidth and quality requirements are different. I'm not, in any way, arguing that network/service providers are doing everything they can to provide optimal value to their customers. I think I am arguing that there are some constraints on the service they can offer. |
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... Am i correct in assuming that this bill has a much tougher chance of passing now that the liberals have stated that they are against it? Doesn't a minority government need the support of the other parties? |
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Re: Endpoints... Phil. VOIP could use IPv6, which contains Quality of Service capabilities. In essence, this would allow a VOIP call to request the necessary bandwidth for the call. However, this would mean that the networks would need to be upgraded to handle it (note that most flavours of Unix, including Linux, as well as Vista can do this already... I don't know about Mac OS-X). Let's not forget, in all of this, that there are two endpoints; the source end and the delivery end. Both are of finite bandwidth; generally with Bit Torrent, the limiting factor is the size of the pipe delivering the data to the destination (assuming that there is multiple sources for the data stream). If the destination has a 256 kbps downlink, then that will be the maximum that can be pushed down that link (I realize that in some networks that is not exactly true). |
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