p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- “The time has come for net neutrality, both as an economic and a social policy issue, to be examined by the Canadian government,” posts Daphne Guerrero on the privacy commissioner of Canada’s official blog, going on, “And we look forward to being a part of that discussion.”

The CRTC recently,  “rendered its decision on ISP’s traffic shaping practices,” she points out, going on it denied the Canadian Internet Service Providers’ (CAIP) request that Bell Canada, which provides wholesale ADSL services to smaller ISPs across the country, cease the traffic-shaping practices it has adopted for its wholesale customers.

The CRTC also, “recognized that traffic-shaping ‘raises a number of questions’ for both end-users and ISPs and has decided to hold a public hearing next July to consider them”.

The commissioner’s office will be following the promised public hearing closely, says Guerrero,” and, “here’s why” »»»

Internet traffic management requires the use of can use deep packet inspection (DPI) technology – technology that can ‘read’ packets of information flowing through the Internet. In this case, packets are being read to identify specific Internet activities – like the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications. That same technology can be used to read a whole lot more about what you do on the Internet: what you’re watching, downloading or reading, who you’re talking to, what you’re saying, as well as where you are and who you are.

As we’ve mentioned on this blog, our office is already looking into a complaint about DPI and we expect to have a decision soon.

She quotes CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein as saying, “Based on the evidence before us, we found that the measures employed by Bell Canada to manage its network were not discriminatory. Bell Canada applied the same traffic-shaping practices to wholesale customers as it did to its own retail customers.”

The CRTC also, “recognized that traffic-shaping ‘raises a number of questions’ for both end-users and ISPs and has decided to hold a public hearing next July to consider them.”

It’ll be interesting to see what privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart (right) has to say about DPI, which is being used not only by Bell Canada and Comcast, its opposite number in the US, but also by shady advertising companies to mine and resell confidential user data.

Unlike some heads of important Canadian bureaucracies, Stoddart has never worked for Bell Canada and her findings, whatever they may be, will be free from the taint of possible conflicts of interest.

(Cheers, Luvie)

JN

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 10:47 am and is filed under P2P, Politics. 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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