Still time to Speak Out on Copyright!
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- The government has just announced that there is a 48 hour extension on submissions to the copyright consultation.
While the discussion forum has closed, Canadians now have until Tuesday night to submit their views on copyright.
If you missed last night’s deadline, there is still time to craft your own submission, use a form letter, or send out a quick email. There were many new submissions of note posted online over the weekend. They include:
- Laura Murray
- Sam Trosow
- CIPPIC
- Privacy submission
- Appropriation Art
- Parker Donham on crown copyright
- Laurel Russwurm with a writer’s perspective
- isoHunt
An op-ed in The Mark from Queen’s University Principal and Vice-Chancellor Daniel Woolf is also a must-read. Woolf focuses on four key issues:
1. Digital locks, though they may be used to stop piracy, must not impede users` rights.
2. Fair dealing ought to be clarified and amplified.
3. Specialized exceptions ought to be used sparingly because they likely wouldn`t be able to keep up with technological change or accommodate a range of reasonable educational practices.
4. Licensing mechanisms must not be seen as a substitute for users` rights.
The absence of an educational exemption for the Internet – as advocated by the AUCC – suggests that more of the educational community is (rightly) shifting toward fair dealing and DRM as the critical issues.
Michael Geist – Michael Geist’s Blog
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist @ uottawa dot ca]
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
September, 2009
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[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist @ uottawa dot ca]
September 15th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
People power is literally useless in our era of corporate greed, their willingness to bribe politicians and unethical politicians willing to work for those who slip them money under the table! I’m a Canadian and unfortunately I have a realistic outlook on life now, we are no longer immune to this corrupt corporate culture and the equally repugnant class of politicians that are more than eager to be a whore, prostitute themselves out in order to serve their corporate pimps! In Washington, the stats are there’s 3 lobbyists for every one federal politician!
That’s why I’ve become very cynical, how can people power ever even match the influence (i.e. money) of the corporate lobbyists? I’ve come to believe that some decision makers at the CRTC were bought off by Bell Canada regarding the issue of Bell’s practice of throttling third party ISP’s who are renters of Bell’s phone lines. The decision makers at CRTC went against all logic and even based a ruling that goes against contract law.
Take me for instance, I’m one of those people who are with a third party ISP that rents out part of Bell’s transmission system. I have a contract with my ISP for Internet service and I pay them directly, Bell Canada is not even a mentioned party in my contract. It is my ISP that has a contract with Bell, now I’m against throttling but legally Bell has a contract with my ISP. It’s up to Bell to put it in writing how much bandwidth space it will allot my ISP and Bell can write up the contract any way it wishes. But what is illegal is for Bell to jump over their contract with my ISP and then directly communicate with the customers of my ISP! Furthermore, it’s up to Bell to deal with my ISP based on the terms of their contract, if my ISP is using too much bandwidth (according to Bell…if those terms are explicitly written in the contract) then it’s up to Bell to reduce my ISP’s entire bandwidth (My ISP’s entire range of IP addresses) at specific peak times. However, what is illegal is for Bell to identify all customers of my ISP and individually throttle them directly! This is illegal because by contract law, all customers of third party ISP’s are legally privileged clients, Bell may not contact these people without the expressed legal consent of these third party ISP’s.
Let me put it another way, just because Bell rents out some of their bandwidth to third party ISP’s, that does not give them the legal right to identify nor solicit business from the clients of these ISP’s. So legally Bell should not know who any of the clients are of my ISP but if Bell were to go into the records of my ISP, find all the clients and then directly market its Internet service to the customers of my ISP, this would be illegal! Furthermore, if Bell were to break into my ISP’s files, identify all of its client, market high-speed Internet at a cheaper rate and steal most of my ISP’s customers then my ISP could sue Bell!
It’s no different regarding Bell throttling all third party clients because Bell’s only legal course of action is to throttle the specific range of IP addresses of those third party ISP’s who are using too much bandwidth (according to Bell…if it’s in writing). However, what Bell is doing is illegal! Just because Bell can identify all Internet traffic on it’s fiber optic system, they don’t have the legal right to do so! The reason being, the specific ranges of IP addresses that belong to third party ISP’s are the legal customers of those ISP’s! Bell can’t legally identity and interfere with the traffic flow of specific ranges of IP addresses that aren’t their customers! Bell can only legally slow down the entire range of IP addresses of third party ISP’s if and only if this is stipulated in a written contract between Bell and these third party ISP’s. But what Bell is saying, we’re just slowing down traffic on our system at certain peak times when we identify specific IP addresses are using too much bandwidth. But that’s illegal!
Bell does have the ability to identify all Internet traffic on it’s system however, they don’t have the legal right to specifically identify, contact, solicit business nor deliberately interfere with the legally privileged clients of these third party ISP’s! Bell has every right to legally identify all the Internet traffic of its Bell Sympatico customers and Bell can also traffic manage (i.e. throttle) it’s own clients. But when the CRTC decision came down stating that Bell has the right to manage the flow of it’s Internet traffic, it was at this point I knew for sure some people at the CRTC were paid off by Bell! Because the CRTC’s decision did not differentiate between Bell’s right to manage Internet traffic flow of its own Sympatico customer and Bell’s right to directly manage the flow of the customers of third party ISP’s.
It’s no different than if Bell identified all the clients of every third party ISP that rents bandwidth from Bell and Bell directly contacted these customers in order to offer them a better price with Sympatico. Now let’s say that 75% of all clients from these third party ISP’s switch over to Bell for Internet service and these third party ISP’s complained to the CRTC. If the CRTC ruled in favour of Bell, saying that Bell did nothing wrong in identifying all the people using its fiber optic system and Bell just offered them a cheaper price—well, all hell would have broken loose! People all across Canada would have said that something stinks to high hell at the CRTC and somebody must have been bought off at the CRTC!
And that’s why I say that my example in the above paragraph is no different regarding the CRTC’s decision that allowed Bell to manage the traffic flow of its network without differentiating between Bell’s own customers and the customers of the third party ISP’s that rent out bandwidth from Bell. I believe that some person(s) at the CRTC were influenced by Bell (via cash payments under the table) that allowed Bell to illegally identify the privileged clients of the third party ISP’s and directly slowed down the Internet speed of specific IP addresses that were non-Sympatico customers. As I say this is an illegal act, I for one am not a Sympatico Internet customer, I don’t have an Internet access contract with Bell but Bell illegally jumped over my ISP, specifically identified my IP address and slowed down my connection! For any decision maker at the CRTC to say this is legal, they need to be immediately be suspended and an investigation needs to be launched, including looking into these peoples’ personal finances!
Personally, I think until all corporate lobbying is outlawed and severe ant-corruption laws are on the books for politicians taking any sort of money for influence peddling, it’s ridiculous to begin laying out the rules for the Internet! Because if influence peddling through corporate lobbyists isn’t tackled first then you’re going to end up with the basis of corrupt Internet legal system that just favours corporate rights over citizens’ rights of informational access.