p2pnet - rss feed: Is C-552 Net Neutrality bill a waste of time?
p2pnet news | Freedom:- Yesterday, NDP digital culture spokesman tabled his C-552 Net Neutrality bill.
“This is a private member’s bill and they rarely go anywhere,” says well-known copyright lawyer Howard Knopf in Excess Copyright, going on >>>
I have immense respect for Charlie Angus, but this bill as quoted - presumably accurately by Jon Newton - won’t likely do much to stop the crude throttling that is now so apparent, irritating and damaging - even for unquestionably legitimate and authorized activity now.
There is an exception that would allow for a network operator to:
(g) Prevent any violation of federal or provincial law.
That’s a potentially wide open invitation to the ISPs to crudely throttle .torrent and .mp3 files on the basis that they may be in violation of copyright law. Naturally, some will be and some won’t be. But it would arguably be a good enough excuse for the big ISPs.
And, of course, the ISPs could always throttle away as they do now by relying [on] the main exception, which would allow them to:
(a) Manage the flow of network traffic in a reasonable manner in order to relieve congestion;
If there really is congestion now, which is far from clear, is there not an onus on the ISPs to provide more bandwidth and higher speeds, such as we see in other countries that have actual competition and don’t condone a duopoly?
I saw that and wondered about it as well, but I’d rather see Angus’ bill as a positive step which can be followed up powerfully if Canadians continue to show their anger, as they’ve been doing.
Here’s the full text as I received it and manually keyed it in yesterday (in other words, any mistakes, typos, are mine) >>>
1. Telecommunications Act is amended by adding the following after section 36:
36.1 (1) Network operators shall not engage in network management practices that favour degrade or prioritise any content, application or service is transmitted over a broadband network based on its source, ownership or destination.
(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;
(b) Provide a reasonable security protection for a user’s computer or the network;
(c) Give priority to emergency communications;
(d) Offer directly to each user service at different prices based on defined levels of bandwidth or the actual quantity of data flow over at the user’s connection;
(e) Offer directly to each user consumer protection services, including parental controls for indecency or unwanted content, software for the prevention of unsolicited commercial electronic messages, or other similar capabilities, provided that the user is given clear and accurate advance notice of their ability to refuse was subsequently disable each consumer protection service;
(f) Handle breaches of the terms of service, provided the terms of service are not inconsistent with subsection (1); and
(g) Prevent any violation of federal or provincial law.
(3) Network operators shall not prevent or obstruct a user from attaching any device to their network, provided the device does not physically damage the network or substantially degrade the use of the network by other subscribers.
(4) Network operators shall make available to each user information about the users access to the Internet, including the speed, limitations, and network management practices of the user’s broadband service at any given time.
(5) For the purposes of this section, “network operator” means any person who operates or provides access to telecommunications services.
Public outrage over the ‘Screw You’ attitudes of Bell Canada and the other big ISPs is, if anything, becoming more intense and IMHO, it’d be a mistake for industry minister Jim Prentice and the government to ignore people-to-people power as it can be manifested online in Facebook, MySpace, blogs, and so on, and offline, as in the rally.
Jon Newton - p2pnet
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UPDATE >>>
“The bill is hardly the ‘regulate the Internet’ approach anti-net neutrality advocates would suggest,” opines Ottawa law professor Michael Geist, “but rather is a measured response that deserves broad support.”
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UPDATE 2 >>>
“It’s a start!” - says TekSavvvy CEO Rocky, one of the rally’s principal organisers. “Something is better than doing nothing right now. Hopefully the others in the Hill will follow the lead!”
(Pic from xsicdn’s Flickr photo-montage.)
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May 29th, 2008 at 8:40 am
and as the above person in the article notes, this bill would not stop the throttling , instead woudl enshrine the ability of them to do it into law, which is exactly what I NOR ANYONE IN CANADA wants.
Look south of the border about the stories that they are getting like what 10000-15000 kilobit speeds when we are getting 250Kbit, this is a crime and we shoudl take away some of the rights these corporate greedy mongers are doing.
my version of the law would state that if you are ANY type of ISP you must invest in expanding your networks ( certain percentage of profits ) and ONLY sell accounts you can offer. To those that had 5 megabit unlimited on bell we should be compensated for a whole year a internet costs for the harrassment, the lies, the defrauding of termination of the contracts and then trying to charge 100$ to me for them breaking a contract.
Also it would make early termination fees illegal outright. If they have as i suspect been breaking contracts for a while they have tons a canadians money they should not and thus they should not be allowed to make such contractual offers.
Bell should immediately forced to double the network bandwidth and stop the proposed throttling.
Sympatico should be sold off in region parts and rogers control on regions should also be diminished. IF they can’t play nice at the big level we need to bring them all down to size.
Perhaps a new law on monopolistic sectors of the economy might also address these issues. The third parties should be given a better break so they can save cash to build up networks in there primary city of origin, and then potentially also branch out.
Competition will bread the issue away.