‘No more Tim Horton’s’
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Australian economist and p2pnet contributor Tom Koltai launched a steamy online debate over whether such a thing as net neutrality is even possible, let alone desirable.
In fact, he said recently, there’s no such thing but, he told p2pnet reader Robert in a comment post to a follow-up story, “Although we dont have a CRTC in Oz, you speak a language that I am familiar with.”
Tom went on »»»
I think what you are saying is that the Government make up the rules to suit the outcome.
And what I’m saying is that the posters in this forum have already made known that they dont want to play by the governments rules.
In Oz, we organise ourselves to play by our own rules.
We organise petitions, we flood facsimile machines and we pay for advertising on commercial TV … so that everyone knows our point of view.
P2PNet is wonderful forum and is one of many, but the reality is that only a very small percentage of the Canadian population will read these comments and further even less will be motivated to get off their backsides.
The Government, the Bells and the Broadcasting interests exagerate, misrepresent and on occassion mislead and deceive – mainly by spreading FUD amongst the population.
Internet users need to do the same in reverse.
- Tom FUD1 = Television Advertising is a brainwashing of viewers. P2P allows users to watch content without brainwashing.
- Tom FUD2 = Television News influences the voters, not always in the best interests of the candidate. Recent elections in South Korea and Iran have demonstrated that the Internet is capable of generating crowd sentiment in favour of honest politicians. Future Elections will no doubt be decided on the Inrternet and not by Broadcast interests.
- Tom FUD3 = Continued attempts at filtering/throttling against the desires of the users will result in pirate ISP’s springing up all over Canada utlilising ISM radio spectrum bandwith to achieve a network totally outside the reach or control of the Government. The resulting loss of revenues to the Bells will severly impact taxation receipts by the Government.
But I also believe that self-regulation needs to be mooted somehere. An organisation of users, that can act as one. The concept of a an ISP or P2P Union springs to mind.
I think the guys at Saveournet.ca are doing a brilliant job. I urge every reader who has not already done so sign their petition —-
http://www.neutrality.ca/index.php?option=com_performs&formid=1&Itemid=3
They have 12,000 signatures. This tells me Canadians aren’t really interested.
Hey – Canadians – there’s 30 million of you.
Earlier this year when Australians signed the petition against the Internet Filter, we had 100,000 signatures in just a few weeks and there’s only 20 million of us.
For a chuckle – checkout the video on the bottom left of http://www.getup.org.au/
Where am I going with this?
Well, I guess, if the CRTC approve DPI in Canada it will be a green light to every other Commonwealth country to follow suit. I would be pleased if DPI wasnt just rubber stamped.
Although I also believe that there needs to be an education process like:
- Our water is precious – conserve it.
- Electricity causes CO2 emissions – switch it off when not in the room.
- Flat out Torrent is killing the net, slow it down and enjoy a higher average throughput per month.
Possibly the CRTC could agree to look into educational programs instead of rubber stamping DPI.
No-one has really offered them any alternatives. Education and self regulation is an alternative but Canadians need to suggest it – not some guy from Oz.
“We all know that the Wizard of Oz is just a short little grumpy man behind the curtain with a big loud speaker system,” Tom adds.
Says Robert by way of a response, in part »»»
Basically, we’re not France. We don’t get upset at much. No one gives a shit about the abuse of rights in the name of the Olympics in Vancouver. Just take a read as to what the Police are saying over there. Yeah “we’ll move the homeless out of the way for their own protection”
Riiiiiight!
Anyway, much like the US it is difficult to educate the populous on how they can help themselves. It’s like cattle standing there outside the slaughterhouse, none of them have a clue that they could stampede through the gates and make a run for it. They even hear the slaughtered screams inside and they just sit there.
That’s us, sadly.
That’s the general population of North Americans.
Now change it and say “no more supersize” or “no more fast food” and you’ll see an uproar.
Change that to “no more Tim Horton’s” and you’ll have a full scale riot!
Stay tuned.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
no such thing – ‘There’s no such thing as net neutrality’, July 1, 2009
follow-up story – ‘Canadian surfers don’t know physics’, July 8, 2009
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July 9th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
I’ll take some Tidbits and an IceCap please…..oh wait…………
July 9th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
“No-one has really offered them any alternatives…”
That’s, of course, if you ignore the countless times “upgrading the network” has been mentioned.
(Funny, that one’s even in the Bell/CRTC deregulation agreement when the infrastructure was released to Bell.)
July 9th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Mmm, Tim Hortons. Ok, back on track. After seeing the turnout for our last election here in Canada, are we really all that surprised by the lack of signatures? When you consider how Generation X are the ones in control right now for the most part it’s not hard to see why that is. The way we expected things to be and the way they actually turned out were very different. Maintaining any semblance of hope simply became too difficult I think. As a result you see more and more giving up and not caring anymore. Just trying to make ends meet is what consumes most folks priorities these days.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
@DA, The committee has been asked to “rule” on a point of order.
Whilst they can “recommend” that carriers/IAP’s increase their network pipe sizes – that is not in question before the commission.
They need alternatives to” We Have to have DPI or we will go Broke”.
i.e.: “By increasing our bandwidth and NOT prioritising it for the customers that pay us the most – we will loose our good customers”.
I am suggesting that argument woulld be self-regulation brought about by an educational campaign.
This has legs as it would be smiled upon from on high.
Additional add spend, something positive they can be seen to be doing, and;
Not having to make an unpopular ruling.
Michael Geist states that today will be the day the CTRC should recognise their previous mistakes.
Having read what is available of the transcripts, I conclude that there might be a glimmer of understanding by the commissioners, but whether that translates to a reversal of a previous decision remains to be seen.
@IratePirate
That situation is pretty ubiquitous globally unfortunately.
The premise that Politicians arnt worth our attention, is deeply ingrained in the X-ers and Y’s.
I wonder what would happen if a Poli came out in favour of P2P as a Technology for relieving the congestion on the networks. (Based on mandatory peering between all IAP’s and servers (seeders/ed2k) at each ISP switch.)
If it would ever happen, I think that poli’s numbers would start to appreciate rather rapidly. But Politicians outside of Germany , Sweden and France havent yet seen the benefit of aligning themselves with a whole generation of entertainment consumers.
They will.