Back in July, there were interesting reports coming out of Vancouver Canada where a price war was raging. Some suggested the Shaw move to charge a mere $9.95 per month for high speed internet, phone and TV was little more than an attempt to destroy a local fibre ISP. From the report at the time:

Canadian cable operator Shaw has dropped a bit of a pricing bomb on consumers and competitors in Vancouver. The operator is offering some unheard of deals, including 15Mbps service with a 100GB cap for $9.95 ($9.13 US), 200 channels of TV service (with 25 high-definition channels) for $9.95, or digital phone service with free installation, also for $9.95 a month. The catch? You have to live in an area served by Novus Entertainment, a Canadian fiber to the home operator that’s currently wiring Vancouver apartment buildings.

Novus offers symmetrical 10Mbps service for $37.50 a month (110GB cap), 30/10 Mbps service for $89.95 (200GB cap), or 50/10Mbps service for $179.95 (360GB cap). Given Novus’s small size of just 9,000 subscribers, Shaw can essentially give service away in Novus markets and just eat the losses.

Unfortunately, if you’re a Shaw customer in any other area, such amazing deals aren’t available to you. In fact, in some instances, you’re paying nearly $150 per month more.

At the time, Novus was unsurprisingly upset over this and launched a campaign saying that Shaw users from across the country should be allowed the same deal of ten bucks a month. It ultimately sparked a lawsuit in the B.C. Supreme Court as well as a complaint in the Competition Bureau.

Shaw had even sent “street teams” to the residents asking if they were Novus customers, and if they were, tell them about the Shaw deal.

The CBC is now reporting that Shaw has responded to the accusations of anti-competitive practises and sued Novus for defamation.

Calgary-based Shaw, which has more than two million customers, mostly in Western Canada, has fired back by filing a defamation lawsuit against Novus in B.C. Supreme Court.

Shaw president Peter Bissonnette said Novus is spreading misinformation. The offer isn’t just targeted at Novus customers but residents of West Vancouver in general, which is a “highly competitive” market.

“They’ve publicly stated in the past that they’re going to become the bane of the life of Shaw,” Bissonnette said. “True to their word, they’ve embarked on this defamation campaign.”

It’s clearly a sort of David and Goliath sort of situation. Shaw is one of the three large ISPs stretched across Canada while Novus is a smaller Vancouver based company. Already, North American markets have been notorious for monopoly-like problems in the ISP industry. Many Canadians were reminded of this problem when an OECD report ranked Canada as having the 3rd worst cellphone rates in the world only outranked by Spain (2) and the United States (1). Some have argued that Canada’s landmass is the biggest problem for these prices, but given that the United States has a smaller landmass and a higher population density and still outranked Canada, that left that particular argument in limbo.

It’ll be interesting if the OECD report plays any roll in this latest price war, but either way, it’s already gotten ugly between the two companies.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

There’s an interesting story on the New York Times recently about stream piracy which is where someone manages to get a stream from a major sports event pirated online live for free. The strange part is the fact that they practically tell you exactly how to get a pirated stream while some involved in the business end of sports talk about it being a threat.

In short, many major sports organizations are talking about how stream piracy is currently embryonic and not a major threat yet, but could be in the future. The story goes on to say how intellectual property officials complain how tvants.com is one of the biggest websites to get such feeds. The question is, if there were those that are worried about this sort of thing, why tell people on one of the largest news outlets in the entire United States where to get the pirated streams in the first place? No doubt there are alternatives out there as well to the site.

The good news in all of this is the fact that if stream piracy sharply rises, we have the very people who are most likely wanting to stop it to thank because they instructed everyone in the first place.

Sports, when it comes to p2p, has generally gotten off easy with only highlights off of sports broadcasters highlight reels appearing on video sites like YouTube. Still, the sports industry has capitalized off of the fact that the business is run off of the live broadcasting instead of something that has a set length and is quite viewable over and over again. Once a game ends, it’s over. Pirated live streaming could very well change a lot of this. Not everything can be received through a generic BitTorrent site.

Note to MLB officials – if you don’t want someone getting your games for free, don’t leave instructions with your plea.

Many would argue that the internet has been one of mans greatest inventions, in part, because it gives citizens new-found freedoms and a medium for expression that can be experienced by many people around the world without having to spend billions of dollars to do so. It was all fun and games until legacy businesses and governments from around the world entered the picture.

Since then, major corporate entities and governments have been grappling with many questions surrounding the internet including the question about how one controls the internet. Since there is no real central hub for the internet unless one counts the internet backbones as the internet’s central office (which is still arguably a flawed argument to make in the first place), the idea of controlling the internet had major difficulties making the transition from sounding good on paper to putting it into actual practise.

Recently, there have been a set of cases highlighting a new movement by various governments around the world to legally consider the internet as a “broadcaster” While it has been a rather subtle movement in many cases, the movement does have serious implications.

Recent Cases

Australia

One of the better known cases in recent memory is happening in Australia. Just ask digital rights advocates that reside in that country what has been protested recently. Essentially speaking, the Australian government wants to censor pornography and anything they deem “inappropriate” on the internet. From a Digital Liberty Coalition press release (PDF):

“The problem is not with the concept of protecting children, in fact Senator Conroy has been adamant at dismissing all criticisms of his filter by alluding that the critic clearly has a stash of child porn hidden away,” says Jasmine, one of the national organizers from DLC, “but in the fact it is mandatory, restricts adults to material only suitable for MA15 audiences, and filters out political communication of whatever is deemed ‘hate’ literature by the government in power at the time. There are no checks or balances in place in the legislation to prevent future abuses of this filter to infringe more on the human rights of all Australians.”

Restricting the internet to an MA 15+ medium is very similar to laws surrounding what can be aired on television – MA 15+ is the highest ranking broadcasting can go before it is unlawful to air it.

France

France just recently made a move to put a tax on the internet so that ISPs are forced to contribute just under 1% of all profits to a public television fund. Many are calling the move unconstitutional.

Why Governments Could Have Gotten the Idea that the Internet is a Broadcaster

Calling the internet a broadcaster can easily highlight again why the government has only the foggiest idea of what the internet is even to this day, but there are ways one can draw similarities between a broadcaster and the internet.

One of the major developments that was a part of the network neutrality debate was that ISPs were pushing for IPTV – a way to stream television shows from the ISP to the user for a fee. This was also one of the things that caused major PR damage because while the ISPs were promising to stream live TV over the internet to ISP customers, the ISPs were also saying that bandwidth is severely limited in spite of evidence that proved otherwise. This sparked the criticism that ISPs wanted to turn the internet into either another cable network or a phone package much like other services they offered. It wouldn’t be a surprise if governments actually took the idea and flew with it into pushing new legislation that ISPs wouldn’t like.

Another way to look at the internet may be to just look at YouTube. Many people consider YouTube as a great way for users to create user-generated video’s – streaming the results to the users. Broadcasters also stream content to users – they frequently create the content that is also streamed to the end-user.

Why the Internet is not a Broadcaster

In the many ways that the internet is a broadcaster, there are at least as many, if not, more ways in which the internet is not a broadcaster.

One way in which the internet is most commonly used is e-mail. Users send messages back and forth in the same way people send letters back and forth in the postal service (though some governments are legislating the ability to pry open letters unlike the mail system) The postal service is a far cry from what a broadcaster does.

Another commonly used way the internet is used is to play video games online (like MMORPG’s, first person shooters, casino’s like Full Tilt and the billions of Flash games posted on online gaming websites) often against each other for enhanced playability. The internet can be used as a virtual arcade enjoyed by billions around the world.

It’s hard to talk about the many uses of the internet and not include online chat which has been a staple of the internet since pretty much the beginning. In many ways, the online chatrooms (like IRC) and forums (like ZeroPaid’s vBulletine) can be likened to a phone conference that major businesses have more than likely used on a fairly regular basis. Many of these mediums for communications have been used time and time again like a help desk for various problems like computer related problems (and, by extension, through Google – ‘got a problem? Ask Google’). Again, almost nothing related to a broadcaster.

What about online shopping? One of the most common uses of the internet is internet shopping which even the copyright industry uses to make their billions. If there’s anything that can be credited for having the worlds largest supermarket/garage sale, it would be the internet.

While the copyright industry has no problem labelling the internet as a medium for piracy, the internet is also an anti-piracy mechanism quietly used by the copyright industry. Just ask anyone who has ever had to install and validate software like Windows XP. Similarly, one can say that the internet is an operating system if concepts like cloud computing ever takes off. Additionally, it can be considered an extra hard drive with the advent of online storage.

The internet is also frequently credited for being a source of online information. Wikipedia is the prime example on how the internet is basically an online encyclopedia and source of information. Is a broadcaster like a dusty series of books? That would be extremely hard to argue.

Try getting away with describing the internet like an virtual jukebox or radio station. Online websites like Soundclick and Newgrounds Audio portal for examples provides a massive legal means to listen to music for free through streaming or downloading. Of course, there are millions of others like Last.FM, Jamendo and WinAmp stations, but you get the idea. Like a broadcaster? So close, yet so far.

One can write an entire book on how the internet is not like a broadcaster, so the above should suffice.

Why it’s bad for governments to consider the internet as a broadcaster

Aside from being technologically inaccurate, it is also a politically dangerous way of thinking as well.

It’s bad for politics

The very people thinking of legislating in this manner will find that it’s bad for the political system. In the United States, the last election proved to be one of the most popular. The biggest reason was the fact that political parties were using the internet to spread their message in unprecedented ways. Voter turnout was practically record breaking. Considering the internet as little more than a broadcaster and legislating accordingly would have major negative consequences for all political parties in question.

It’s bad for business

Since we’ve seen some of the ways governments are legislating while looking at the internet as a broadcaster (like blocking anything considered ‘indecent’ or ‘inappropriate’ (Australia) or (as seen in France) tacking on extra taxes), ISPs will be forced to pass these ideas onto customers like through removing access to online content due to political pressure or moving the extra fees onto customers. If the prices rise for lesser content, fewer people will be interested in getting an internet connection. This means less revenue for major ISPs around the world. Less revenue also means less money going into various economies (weakening them) – something world-wide governments should be thinking is the last thing they want to do in the first place.

It’s bad for society

Never has the human race been able to communicate over such wide distances with such ease. This has allowed for an explosion of human knowledge to the point where the real question is, how does one organize all this information? If governments start censoring or taxing the internet, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that this will be a major set-back for the progress of society when that information starts disappearing from their computer screens.

Conclusion

In short, the internet does not need more enemies (The RIAA is still doing a stellar job at filling that role in) and in all practical purposes, the governments in the world should abandon the idea before they cause major harm to what has been, by and large, one of the best inventions humanity has, to date, ever had.

French media website 01net is reporting (Google translation) that the French government has passed a first reading on legislation that would put a tax on the internet. The news follows France doing everything in their power to install a ‘three strike’ law on file-sharers which has sparked major opposition all across Europe.

The report describes the new tax where 0.9% of all the profits made by French ISPs would contribute to a public broadcasting fund. It makes it look like the legislation would indirectly make the internet another broadcaster. Many players involved with the internet in France are arguing that the tax is unconstitutional. Digital Renaissance says that the government shouldn’t consider taxing the internet because the internet creates jobs and, therefor, must be stimulated rather than taxed.

French politician Frédéric Lefebvre defended the tax saying that all broadcasters must contribute to public funding. He also argues that arms traffickers, thieves drug dealers and pimps have found refuge on the internet. He also adds that “psychopaths, rapists, racists and thieves have made their nests [on the internet]”

There is little doubt that ISPs in France will fight this or face the very real possibility of being forced to pass the extra tax onto their customers – a move that wouldn’t bode well for digital France which aims to, among other things, enable all French citizens to have access to the internet. It’s worth noting that this is just the first reading that passed and there is plenty of time still to fight this.

The Associated Press is reporting that multimedia giant from Italy ‘Mediaset’ is suing YouTube. Add that to a long list of international content outlets trying to find a get rich quick scheme.

From the AP:

Mediaset, the media empire founded by Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, said Wednesday it was seeking at least 500 million euros ($779 million) in damages against Google Inc.’s YouTube service for allegedly misusing video produced by Mediaset.

In a lawsuit filed with Rome civil court, Mediaset said it had identified on YouTube at least 4,643 video clips of Mediaset-owned material that was available on June 10 alone after being posted “without obtaining rights.”

Those clips totaled 325 hours of broadcasts from Mediaset’s three private television stations, the Italian company said.

This obviously raises the age-old question ever since ThePirateBay started receiving lawsuits of ‘does the lawsuit have jurisdiction?’ YouTube isn’t located in Italy, should it be sued in a Roman court?

Earlier this year, French Broadcaster TF1 sued YouTube for 100 million. This latest lawsuit seems to show that YouTube is one of the broadcasters favorite scapegoat in copyright litigation. Exactly how this lawsuit can be successful is anyones guess.

Stories about the DRM embedded in Windows Vista has been a hot button topic for some. Those wary of the new operating system say that the DRM in Windows Vista would force users to forfeit control over the operating system. Others who embraced Windows Vista say that the worries are overblown and nothing short of fear mongering and unsubstantiated. For those who were wary of the latest version of Windows have just got one very solid example of embedded DRM forcing users to forfeit control for copyright holders.

The EFF has been following reports about NBC enacting the broadcast flag. What NBC reportedly has been doing is using the broadcast flag to prevent users from recording over-the-air TV shows for later viewing.

It turns out that when a user uses Windows Vista to record certain NBC shows, they’ll get a message that states that recording of the show has been prohibited. To prove the point, someone took a screenshot of what happens when one tries to user their PVR to record the shows.

Essentially, a broadcast flag is a bit that comes at the beginning of a digital TV show (typically High Definition shows) If, say, the bit was a one, then that bit tells a PVR that this show has been flagged and the PVR stops people from recording a show. If the bit is a zero, then there is no broadcast flag put in place and the PVR is allowed to record the show.

The EFF is particularly interested in this. They commented with the following:

The ability to flag broadcast content was created by the ATSC standard which governs digital TV broadcasts in the United States. By itself the broadcast flag cannot restrict use of broadcast content. Instead, its force comes from a tech mandate law – an FCC regulation – which required manufacturers of DTV-receiving devices to detect and respond to “switched on” broadcast flags. EFF and others opposed the use of the broadcast flag and fought successfully to have the FCC regulation overturned by the courts. We did that because it handed control over your hardware to a remote authority, limited your right to your fair use of media, and would have made illegal open source products like MythTV. As a result of that victory, manufacturers are not legally required to force their devices to detect and respond to the flag.

It would now appear that Microsoft has voluntarily chosen to obey such content restrictions in Vista, despite the successful work of thousands of users to defend Microsoft’s right to innovate and our right to fair use. Justin was attempting to record the program on Windows Vista Ultimate using Silicon Dust’s HDHomeRun external tuner, which decodes the digital TV signal, and sends it over Ethernet to many types of digital TV receivers, such as MythTV or EyeTV. As Silicon Dust says on its website, their decoder merely passes on the datastream, and does not interpret data like the broadcast flag field itself, so we know that it is Windows alone that has declared that this program should not be recorded.

To be perfectly clear: Microsoft is under no legal obligation to look for and respond in any particular way when it sees the broadcast flag being sent by NBC’s digital stations. Any DTV-receiving software technology or device – like MythTV – is free to take the same stream from HDHomeRun and ignore a broadcast flag transmitted with it. In other words Microsoft did not have to build its PC to look for and refuse to record a program which has its flag turned on.

EFF notes that consumers fought the FCC so that alternatives like MythTV could exist legally in the United States. Had this not happened, then very likely, the FCC would force companies who create devices and programs to record TV shows to obey the broadcast flag. It was decided that the FCC was outside it’s jurisdiction when it tried to force companies and open source developers to build electronic devices and programs in only certain ways. After the FCC lost in court, the content industry lobbied heavily to get the broadcast flag into the government, but a coalition to counter the lobbying was successful.

So why, after all that work, does Microsoft’s software appear to honor content restriction? It’s hard to say. Was it a content licensing requirement? Microsoft didn’t have to do so if it just wanted its devices to decode and display over-the-air digital NBC broadcasts — just as you don’t need to sign a contract in order to decode and display the signals sent over the public airwaves into your living room. American consumers can choose what to do with their digital broadcast TV, just as they have been able with analog broadcast TV.

Since this all seems to be a voluntary type of control, there’s definitely good reason to use alternatives should Microsoft be going ahead with enacting certain controls over what people can do with the operating system. There’s no word yet on whether or not this was actually accidental on Microsoft’s part.

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The reports surfaced on Reuters and moved to other major outlets like The Hollywood Reporter and Variety.

The initial reports say that TF1 is Frances largest private broadcaster. The 100 million euro suit is the equivalent of about $155 million USD. Variety notes that this is the same broadcaster that is currently suing another major video sharing site ‘DailyMotion’.

Said the reports, the lawsuit was filed in California, but will be heard by a French court.

It may lead one to wonder if there are similarities between the lawsuit by TF1 against YouTube and the lawsuit against ThePirateBay from Holleywood. Clearly, there are geographical barriers, legally speaking, to overcome. In the US, there is the digital Millennium Copyright act which has allowed YouTube to operate in the first place. Essentially speaking, if you find your work on YouTube and like it removed, you go through YouTubes process of getting a take-down notice. If anything else, some have criticized for making it too easy to take a video down.

The reports also rightfully note that Viacom is currently attempting to sue YouTube for $1 billion USD.

Hat tip: BNA Internet Law News via Michael Geist

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It’s amazing how far one posting can go. The intensity of the debate quickly increased when someone mentioned that Teksavvy, an internet company who disagrees with throttling, was not engaged in throttling.

Shortly after, the CBC, one of Canada’s biggest broadcasters that is subsidized by the taxpayer, released Canada’s Great Prime Minister on BitTorrent. It was at that point that users experienced throttling while downloading the TV show and reported the throttling on DSLReports. The question was, how can a user experience throttling on an ISP that has a policy against throttling?

The answer, it turned out, was simple. Bell Canada, an ISP already known to throttle BitTorrent traffic admitted that they started throttling their wholesalers as well. From there, a firestorm of debate erupted over their throttling practices. The debate spread to other sites like Digital Copyright Canada over anti-competitive practices among other things.

So while the people behind the scenes of the CBC were noting how successful the experiment of putting a prime time show on BitTorrent was, users were noting how legitimate businesses can be negatively affected by the throttling practices. CBC isn’t the only one being affected by the throttling practices, a small company called Glance Networks reported how throttling in the United States have negatively impacted his legitimate online business.

Meanwhile, the story about users being throttled while downloading the show made it all the way to the CBC. The CBC even reported on the Bell controversy as well.

As the debate spread, a FaceBook group called Stop Bell From Throttling DSL Resellers was started to stop Bell from throttling their wholesalers. More users jumped on board writing letters to the CRTC and the Competition Bureau of Canada complaining about these anti-competitive practices.

Now, more recently, the Council of Canadians is demanding that Bell cease these practices and heading up an additional letter writing campaign. The campaign made it onto the front page of CIPPIC.

While a can of worms seems to have already been opened up already, the debate went from fairly heated to a hot button topic when the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) jumped into the debates.

“The National Union has become increasingly concerned about the issue of network neutrality and Canada’s lack of action to protect consumers and producers of Internet
material,” NUPGE president James Clancy says in a letter to CRTC chairman Konrad W. Von Finckenstein.

“This past week it was reported that Bell Canada, without advance warning of its intention, will be “throttling” Internet access for Sympatico users who utilize file sharing software during peak hours. Bell’s reluctant admission of its plans follows Rogers’ equally hesitant partial disclosure that it is traffic shaping.”

“I would point out that the file sharing software,” the letter states, “for example BitTorrent, is legal and there are many legitimate uses for it. Indeed, this past week the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announced it was making episodes of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister, free and without restriction, for download using BitTorrent. This means that those Canadians, who are Bell or Rogers Internet service subscribers, wishing to download this show from their public broadcaster will be hampered in their efforts.”

The initiative made headline news on the CBC as well.

There is currently no word on how the CRTC will respond to this, not to mention the Competition Bureau of Canada. In the mean time, the debate now is like night and day compared to the beginning of the month where people like Michael Geist worried about how the debate was barely recognized despite high profile cases occurring.

Rogers and Bell may have a tough road ahead of them should the CRTC and the Competition Bureau of Canada decides to act. Just recently, under pressure from the FCC in the United States, Comcast partially caved to demands over their traffic shaping practices and said that they would, at least, back off their practices to lighter users. Unfortunately, Comcast and BitTorrent Inc. working together is a harmony doubted doubted by some.
“We are pleased that Chairman Martin, Commissioner Tate and others recognize that protecting valuable copyrighted works is central to any discussion about network congestion.” Mitch Bainwol of the RIAA said, “We look forward to working together with the FCC and private parties such as Comcast and BitTorrent to ensure that the theft of music and movies is addressed as part of conversations to make networks more efficient.”

The MPAA also issued a press release on the matter:

”The agreement between BitTorrent and Comcast is exactly the kind of industry cooperation that is urgently needed to address the problem of online piracy. Movie and music theft on digital networks creates network congestion and impedes efforts by network operators, technology companies and content providers to deliver new, legal entertainment choices to consumers.

“The MPAA has worked closely with technology companies and Internet service providers for some time on a range of issues in which we have a shared interest, particularly focusing on the fight to eliminate online copyright theft. By continuing to work together toward solutions we can help ensure the further growth of a legitimate digital consumer content marketplace.”

It is likely that there will be major players in Canada trying to turn the debate around into a “fight piracy” debate as opposed to how traffic shaping is hampering online business as well as stemming business innovation as seen by the CBC when they released their television show on BitTorrent since it is exactly the kind of thing that is going on in the United States. Fortunately, Canadian have a lot more to work with in preventing the debate from going into the state the debate in the United States have right now.

Either way, it seems that the combination of the CBC releasing their TV show and Bell throttling their users created the perfect conditions for a network neutrality debate to be sparked this time around.

Update: Rumours are now circulating that someone from Bell is calling reporters Lemmings in response to the network neutrality debate.

Charlie Angus, a member of the NDP who is sitting in the House of Commons issued a press release on the situation.

“Jim Prentice cannot turn a blind eye while the telecommunication companies decide which lanes of digital traffic will be deliberately filled with potholes. These actions have serious implications for Canada’s innovation agenda. Protecting net neutrality is a fundamental cornerstone in encouraging the development of a true knowledge economy.”

The move by Bell is being blamed for interfering with CBC’s attempts to use the innovative Bit Torrent (P2P) distribution of its show Canada’s Next Prime Minister.

“Who made Bell the owner of the Internet? Why should Bell be allowed to interfere with innovative new methods of distribution for television? Why should it be squeezing you off the bandwidth if you are downloading Google Maps, watching You Tube or using P2P to transmit high levels of data for your business?”

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It may seem like a bit of nostalgia for some. In 2006 in the US, there was a bill that could have changed the internet to have so-called ‘fast-lanes’ and ’slow-lanes’. The questions lawmakers were tackling was whether telecommunication companies had the right to prioritize traffic. Google, at the time, was called a “freeloader” and some Internet Service Provider companies wanted to charge websites a fee to have their traffic prioritized. The claim was that as traffic on the internet increased, so would the stress on the general network.

File-sharing wasn’t spared from the debate either. Networks, namely BitTorrent, were blamed for a large amount of stress on ISP networks. BitTorrent tried to implement the Cache Discovery Protocol which would allow popular kinds of traffic to be cached, thus reducing network stress.

More predominantly, many ISPs chose to simply block or shape the traffic instead. This sparked outrage by content creators, among many others and intensified the network neutrality debate.

Apparently, the BBC liked the idea of caching traffic and proposed a caching system to reduce the network load for ISPs for their iPlayer. Some have suggested that the BBC pay for the additional traffic load.

There was a further suggestion that fiber optics be laid in through existing infrastructure like sewers. Some say it’s an interesting possible solution.

Via NewTeeVee.

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) President Glenn O’Farrell wrote an op-ed in the Hill Times (Paywall) stating that the radio broadcasters is on the “breaking point”, saying that tariff’s could grow to $200 million a year if DMCA-like copyright laws were tabled.

Michael Geist highlighted the following:

If a new fee proposed by the record labels is approved, additional payments from Canadian broadcasters to the labels – many based outside Canada – are expected to total approximately $50 million per year. In claiming this fee, these labels are looking to take advantage of a provision in Canada’s Copyright Act to compensate themselves for losses they say they have incurred via Internet downloading. Rather than adapting their business models to the opportunities presented by evolving digital media, the labels are engaging in what is essentially an abuse of the principles of the Copyright Act.

“With the powerful Canadian broadcasting community speaking out against Prentice’s plans,” Geist says, “the list of opponents and concerned parties gets longer every week as it now includes consumers, education groups, retailers such as Best Buy, telecommunications companies such as Telus, musician groups, artists groups, privacy groups, and more than 40,000 Canadians on the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group.”

An interesting conversation also ensued:

“If they really want to put the kibosh on illegal filesharing, they ought to make it impractical for residential internet access subscribers to run any sort of service of any kind on their computers by blocking absolutely *all* incoming connection requests,” an anonymous commenter suggests, “as well as any incoming UDP packets that weren’t responses to a previous outgoing request.”

“Blocking filesharing is a silly, prohibition-esque approach that will royally screw legitimate filesharers and simply cause the black market to find an alternate means.” Trails, another commenter said. The user added, “Your claim that it will not affect 80% of users is not valid; the home user’s internet connection is used for increasingly advanced and diverse purposes. Blocking all incoming connection requests? Your view of internet usage is overly-simplistic to say the least if you think this is will affect only 20% of users. What if I wanted to host a game of Half Life? Or a person starting up a home business wanted to host a net meeting?”

“How much data is too much data? At what point do your bandwidth needs and patterns clearly identify you as a miscreant?” user Patrick asks, “What if you have six machines lending processor time to legitimate efforts like SETI signals analysis? Or what if you post your own, popular works online for public download? What if you are legitimately sharing large files (research doc’s, etc.)? Should these people be punished by such a short-sighted plan?”

“Please note that while this was a lecture focusing on policy making in the context of climate change, that 5 of the 8 questions focused on copyright.” Russell McOrmond noted, “Politicians and heads of lobby groups (industry associations, unions, etc) really need to modernize their thinking in these areas, or they will be “voted out” of whatever type of office or executive positions they hold.”