Traffic throttling wars: 800 file with CRTC
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- CAIP and J.F. Mezei of Vaxination have made submissions to the CRTC more or less stating it erred in the original “throttling case” that’s allowed Bell Canada to continue throttling its customers, wholesale competition included.
As I write this, the CRTC has put up filings in support of CAIP and Vaxination from hundreds of people and from Distributel (a telecommunications wholesaler), the Campaign for Democratic Media via CIPPIC, Union des Consommateurs, and the Canadian Film and Television Production Association.
Of note is the Union des Consommateurs stating, “charter rights” are being dismissed and the throttle is a violation of the “freedom of expression of the Canadian people” (The Union des Consommateurs filing in in French. Pass it through your favorite online translator (ie. google or babble-fish).
Also of note, and a surprise, is the filing from the Canadian Film and Television Production Association stating:
a) Bell’s throttling of GAS results in an undue disadvantage to P2P content and application providers;
b) Bell’s throttling of GAS results in an undue disadvantage to Internet end-users who choose to access legal P2P content on the Internet; and
c) Bell’s throttling of GAS is otherwise contrary to section 36 of the Act.
Bell Canada has filed as well and has more or less stated that in its humble opinion, the CRTC made no error in law and the throttling will continue.
No take-backs.
They gave us the ball and now it’s ours. Or their filing is a(nother) stall tactic.
The two petitioners (Vaxination and CAIP) now have until July 2 to file their final replies (separately).
If you have comments for or against the throttling, perhaps siding with CAIP’s view, perhaps siding with the Canadian Film and Production Association, perhaps siding with the Union des Consommateurs, now would be the time to either post your comments here, or in this topic on DSLreports (where the filing have been upload for all to see):
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22465187-Status-of-2008108-Throttling-Review-and-Vary~start=15
People will take note of your comments and they could be used in closing statement.
Armchair lawyers, people for freedom of speech and expression, people who are being throttled, this all applies to you.
Did the CRTC make an error in law? Are you being oppressed? Or is your method of communication suppressed?
Let your voice be heard in one of these open forums and help build the closing statements.
As I was trying to understand all this I contacted J.F. Mezei of Vaxination to see if he could shed any light on the matter. Here’s his reply »»»
On May 20th, two “review and vary” applications were filed, seeking to have the CRTC overturn its 2008-108 decision which granted Bell Canada carte blanche to throttle its competitors. On May 29th, the CRTC announced that the R&V process would go ahead, and that both applications would be considered in one combined proceeding. The files remain separate, but references to each other are available at the top:
Vaxination: http://crtc.gc.ca/partvii/eng/2009/8662/v42_200907826.htm
CAIP et al: http://crtc.gc.ca/partvii/eng/2009/8662/p8_200907727.htmThis past Monday, June 22nd, was the deadline for comments for this procedure. Roughly 800 comments from the public have already been entered into the file, as well as comments from the following organisations:
- Distributel
- Bell Canada
- Campaign for Democratic Media via CIPPIC
- Union des Consommateurs
- Canadian Film and Television Production Association
They are not yet all posted on the CRTC web site, but I posted a copy as they arrived on a DSLR forum:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22465187-Status-of-2008108-Throttling-Review-and-Vary~start=15
The 2 petitioners (Vaxination and CAIP’s group) now have until July 2nd to file their final replies (separately) to the received comments.
I am not sure what to make of the Bell Canada submission. Perhaps Bell’s lawyers had scheduling conflicts with their golf course reservations and couldn’t spend too much time on this issue. Perhaps they realised that the CRTC decision was so full of serious errors that it was pointless to defend it. Or perhaps there is one sentence in the Bell submission which is key and will force the CRTC to confirm that 2008-108 will remain unchanged. We have just over a week to analyse it and submit our final replies. Your comments on this issue will be read.
And one must not forget that starting July 6th, there will be the Public Hearings in Ottawa/Hull on the more general throttling issue at hand (A net neutrality hearing). This will be interesting because the 2 petitioners will have a chance to separately address the CRTC Commissioners during those oral hearings and we might be able to slip some further arguments in.
One thing is certain, after having spent so much time on this issue, I am more convinced than ever that throttling certain applications is highly discriminatory and throttling in general is bad for innovation. Not only does it allow telcos to quash emerging technologies, but it also allows them to advertise any modem speed they want without having to actually deliver that bandwidth to customers. If they can’t throttle, then they have to upgrade their networks to deliver what they sell, and in doing so, will enable more new uses of the internet.
Jean-François Mezei
Definitely stay tuned.
Ottawa Gal – p2pnet
[Ottawa Gal is a long-time p2pnet reader and comment poster who’d rather be anonymous. She says she works in the University, likes her cat, reality TV, and Doctor McDreamy. Her favourite web sites are the Michael Geist blog and p2pnet.net. 'Privacy on the net is also important to me,' she says. 'I need a tinfoil hat 
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June, 2009
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June 24th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I’m amazed the Canadian Film and Television Production Association submitted what they did. I’m left almost speechless on that.
The Union is right, it is a form of expression and speech which is being tossed away, in addition to everything else.
+1
I’m going to have to read all of this.
I can only hope the CRTC eyes have been opened by recent world events.
June 25th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Unfortunately, while I agree that p2p throttling is undue discrimination and obviously counter to section 36 of the Act,
after reading the union’s arguments, I must disagree on the freedom of speech issue. I do not believe freedom of speech covers distribution or publication in a particular format, which is more what is at stake here. Filtering or censoring content at the distribution level and publication level is certainly a charter issue, but I see nothing in their arguments that would show that slowing access to content is covered under the charter. Having poor cell phone coverage in your area I don’t think violates your freedom of speech rights, and neither do I think throttling certain types of internet traffic connections does.
I would like to hear arguments to change my mind though.
Good arguments out there for why this is a freedom of speech issue?
June 25th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
One point of view that you can argue is that P2P has forced p2p users (legitimate or not) to adopt secretive obfuscation methods in order to get around packet shaping technologies. Specific examples of this you can see with end-to-end transport encryption implemented in Bittorrent and eMule clients. If you’re a dsl user where both you and your provider support it MLPP. A third example is the use of SSH for things like Usenet/Newsgroup Access (though not directly p2p related is still an example of this growing secretive environment), SSH Tunneling, and VPN access one such upstart founded by the same admins that brought us ThePirateBay. So from there you can draw the point that throttling from a freedom-of-speech perspective, hampers freedom of speech and expression since you’re forcing the users
June 26th, 2009 at 2:01 am
Why are you surprised about what the CFTPA said? They said exactly the same thing on April 20 in their submission to the Internet traffic management proceeding.
July 14th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Ich bin zwar nicht ganz ihrer Meinnung zum Thema de forum dslr aber weiter so.p2pnet news » Blog Archive » Traffic throttling wars: 800 file with CRTC