p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Social media represent an ecosystem in their own right, said Steve Anderson, national co-ordinator of the Campaign for Democratic Media and co-founder of the SaveOurNet.ca coalition, in p2pnet yesterday.

But will they defend themselves when the open internet, the very well-spring of their existence, is threatened? – he wondered.

“With the launch of Bell’s unthrottled video store that competes with independent content using P2P applications, we already have a de facto tiered Internet in many markets,” he said among other things. Work with Bell, “you can get on the fast unthrottled lane, use independent peer-to-peer applications and deal with a slow lane with unreliable service.

“Perhaps more frightening, Internet throttling is not only limiting media choice, it is also scaring away innovation.”

But, “While we all await the CRTC’s decision on Bell Canada’s right to throttle third party ISPs, I’ve thought of a very creative way to prevent Bell’s throttling, says a p2pnet Reader’s Write, going on »»»

The world’s industrial countries are finally waking up to the impact of global warming and how we are overloading the planet’s ability to process this overload of CO2 emissions.

Well Bell Canada is saying only a handful of people are using up 95% of its capacity (that’s too unbelievable to be true) via bit torrent usage, if that’s the case then Bell should be able to easily monitor the heavy users and throttle them but only slightly. However, Bell isn’t targeting a small minority of heavy users, I only use bit torrent occasionally and I’m throttled over 90%! Right now as I speak, I’m only getting 25 kB/s as my download speed but at peak times I’ll average 400 kB/s download (I have high-speed DSL)!

I don’t keep my computer on continually but I’m forced to run my computer more hours, use more electricity, my hydro bills end up being more and I’m putting out more CO2 emissions by my unnecessary use of running my computer!

Bell Canada rather than just increasing its cabling capacity, which in fact as a sole monopoly of DSL lines should be mandated via its CRTC license to increase its Internet capacity to meet the need of Canadians; Bell is just trying to restrict usage! That’s like the province of Ontario being negligent to expanding the highway capacity so rather than build more highways and expand the lane capacity of the current highway system the Ontario government would severely restrict the capacity of the highways during peak hours–that’s not a solution.

Just trying to restrict access to highways doesn’t solve the problem, it just piles onto the misery of the problems of traffic flow! Similarly, Bell Canada is just trying to hide under the covers rather than trying to increase its capacity to meet the ever increasing demand for the Internet by Canadians. Hiding under the covers isn’t going to solve the ever expanding demand of Internet users!

So my creative challenge is that in this era of carbon emission awareness by the public and the possibility of the federal government adding a carbon tax to consumers’ usage of greenhouse polluting energy; Bell’s throttling is forcing all Internet users into being energy hogs! The green movement is based on trying to accomplish the same tasks with less energy or should I say by using less carbon polluting energy sources. But I, as an electricity consumer only have one alternative, to use electricity that’s connected to the ‘grid’, these days it’s only the very few that have technology to maintain their home ‘off the grid’.

Thus, when Bell throttles the average consumer such as myself, I’m forced to leave on my computer 3, 4 or even 5 times as long as I would if I wasn’t throttled in order to retrieve the same data from the Internet. So now if you multiply myself by the total amount of Canadians that are throttled by Bell Canada and if you then add up the enormous amount of extra kilowatt hours we are all forced to use because of Bell’s throttling–well that’s a hell of alot of unnecessary carbon loading to the planet!

So Bell’s throttling in the age of global warming awareness no longer just becomes a CRTC business decision but this now becomes an environmental decision! As a result, I believe Canadians can use legal environmental challenges against Bell’s decision to throttle! Throttling a few heavy users is one thing but Bell throttling every average Internet user such as myself is directly causing more greenhouse emissions to be dumped into the environment, thus Bell is guilty of advancing global warming! If anything, Bell should increase its Internet capacity and the speed users can access the Internet so as to allow Canadians to use the Internet faster and unplug their computers quicker! This could even become a slogan in the future, fast Internet: get on–get off and unplug!

What do you think?

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p2pnet – Can Canada’s social media defend themselves?, November 18, 2008
Internet throttling – p2pnet traffic shaping digest, April 19, 2008

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 10:01 am and is filed under Freedom, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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