1: The well known one: Comcast blocking bittorent traffic by sending a RST with the customer’s IP address being spoofed.

2: A smaller telco who provides DSL service was caught red handed blocking Vontage VoIP traffic and was fined by the FCC and ordered to stop blocking the traffic. This one isn’t as well known.

3: A few years ago, Yahoo.com in the US (Not Yahoo in France), was accused, tried, convicted, and fined by the French government for propagating German Nazi memorabilia on their auctions. Since Yahoo.COM is for US customers and is wholly operated inside the borders of the US, such things are protected speech under the first amendment, or so a federal judge ruled. The effect of this? The French court ruling was ruled as unenforceable in the US.

4. There was a similar incident a few years back with the Dow Jones news service in Australia. Not sure what was about or what the outcome of it was.

And some of the lame brained things with Canada:

1. To appoint the Governor General of Canada (through whom the PM technically exercises most of his/her powers, some of which are listed below);

Vice PM or vice president? Not sure what that position is.

2. To appoint Senators to the Canadian Senate;

Our senators are elected by popular vote within each state.

3. To appoint Supreme Court justices and other federal justices;

We have that too, but they are also subject to congressional approval.

4. To appoint all members of the Cabinet;

Same as #3.

5. To appoint the entire board of the Bank of Canada;

Same as #3, but we call it the treasury.

6. To appoint the heads of the military, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and other government agencies;

Same as #3.

7. To appoint CEO’s and Chairs of crown corporations such as CBC;

There are no state owned businesses in the US. They are called government contractors. That is withstanding the issues with the meltdown of GM, Crysler, and AIG.

8. To dissolve Parliament and choose the time of the next federal election (within a 5 year limit);

Cannot be done in the US. You can remove a member of a public office by impeachment, and there are very strict procedures to do so.

9. To run for re-election indefinitely (no term limits);

2 terms for president.

10. To remove Members of Parliament (MPs) from the ruling party’s caucus;

Nope.

11. To deny any MP the right to participate in parliamentary debate or run for re-election;

Nope.

12. To dismiss individuals or groups of representatives from serving in Parliament;

Nope. See #8.

13. To ratify treaties; and

Only congress can ratify treaties.

14. To declare war.

Only congress can declare war, or they can authorize the president to do so.

Although we do have the DMCA, but that’s because we were obligated to do so because of a treaty that we signed…The Berne Convention I think.

Cheers.

Maelstorm said:
“PS: Jon, you have my permission to use this post as you see fit.”

have you seen the Bell Canada/media/music cartel sites that say (in the terms/conditions) that if you post here you automatically grant exclusive rights to said company in perpetuity?

Do you like asking or giving your permission?

Google doesn’t.
Bell Canada doesn’t
Media doesn’t
MPAA/RIAA/Music doesn’t.

You lost your rights the minute you got on the net.

Now you lost your rights the minute you bought IP-TV, Cable-TV, or a cell phone. (read the terms).

Rights? Privacy? For your eyes only? Permission?

WTF kind of words are those in this day and age?

Get off the crack.

ty.

With digital cable, the cable company can “read” the box and see what channel it’s on. Not only that, they can also see what buttons you are hitting on the remote in real-time. How do I know this? I had a problem with the cable and the support tech on the other end of the call went inside the box and could see exactly what I was doing in regards to what buttons I was pressing on the remote.

The telephone company version of this is that the SERVER sends the feed to you over a VDSL line. The set-top box sends the request to the VDSL modem (If it’s not integrated) and the modem sends it to the network which eventually ends up at the telco’s servers. Every modem has a unique ID and a unique SSL certificate to authenticate it to the server. Since the server does the authentication, it knows which box made which requests, and what streams are being sent to which boxes.

With this, they can gather enough data for a “targeted” solution. A tomahawk cruise missile coming to a living room near you.

PS: Jon, you have my permission to use this post as you see fit.