Archive for April, 2007

Accelerated deregulation and the MoI

p> Less than a week ago today, the Standing Committee on Industry, Science, and Technology issued a report. The report was the result of a significant study of deregulation in Canada. Presumably upset with the Minister of Industry cherry picking from their previous recommendation reports, this time the committee was […]

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April 5, 2007 Comments are Disabled Neutrality

Canada Announces Free Access to Digital Mapping Data

This morning the Canadian government announced that it is providing free online access to digital mapping data.  Starting on April 1, 2007, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) began making its electronic topographic mapping data available to all users free of charge over the Internet. Notes Minister Gary Lunn, "Not only will […]

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April 5, 2007 1 comment News

The Unintended Consequences of Rogers’ Packet Shaping

A day after the government confirmed its telephone deregulation plan over the objection of a Parliamentary committee and moved forward on plans to create a new, independent telecommunications consumer agency, it is worth pointing to a necessary complaint once that agency is operational (and to the CRTC in the meantime).  For the past 18 months, it has been open secret that Rogers engages in packet shaping, conduct that limits the amount of available bandwidth for certain services such as peer-to-peer file sharing applications.  Rogers denied the practice at first, but effectively acknowledged it in late 2005.  Net neutrality advocates regularly point to traffic shaping as a concern since they fear that Rogers could limit bandwidth to competing content or services.  In response to the packet shaping approach, many file sharing applications now employ encryption to make it difficult to detect the contents of data packets.  This has led to a technical "cat and mouse" game, with Rogers now one of the only ISPs in the world to simply degrade encrypted traffic.

This raises many issues but I would like to focus on just two in this posting.  First, not only is BitTorrent legal in Canada, but a growing percentage of the file swapping on BitTorrent clients is authorized.  This includes a substantial amount of open source software development, independent films, and other large files.  By reducing the bandwidth available for this application, Rogers is impairing the ability for Canadian artists to distribute their work and hampering the development of open source software in Canada.  Moreover, this could lead to a situation where Rogers' own content is unfairly advantaged over competing content.

If that was not bad enough, there is now speculation at my own university that the packet shaping is making it very difficult for University of Ottawa users to use email applications from home.  

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April 5, 2007 132 comments News

Oda Announces Funding for Nettwerk

Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda has announced new financial support for Nettwerk, the leading Canadian indie label that has publicly fought against the use of DRM and the RIAA's litigation strategy.

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April 4, 2007 2 comments News

Thinking Outside the Canadian Copyright Box

The Hill Times this week features my special opinion piece on copyright issues (Hill Times version (sub req), homepage version). The column calls attention to Bruce Lehman's recent acknowledgement that "our Clinton administration policies didn't work out very well." Lehman followed the criticism of U.S. policy by issuing a challenge to Canada, urging policy makers and political leaders to think outside the box on future reform.  Lehman argued that Canada was well-positioned to experiment with new approaches consistent with international copyright law and I add that there are some obvious differences between Canada and the U.S. including our trade differences (copyright exporter vs. importer) and the success of the Canadian music market (faster digital download sales growth, more online music sellers on a per capita basis).

Given the Canadian marketplace realities and the Lehman recommendation to chart our own course on copyright, how might Industry Minister Maxime Bernier and Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda respond?  I point to three possibilities.

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April 4, 2007 2 comments Columns