Net Neutrality is a big deal for anyone who values free speech. Obama is on side and gets it.
Access fees and messing around with bandwidth and quality are not to be allowed in a free and democratic society.
Big service providers who want to make the Internet more like television are shaping or throttling. That is selling you a certain bandwidth service but they provide different download and upload speed. This is breach of contract and private sector infringements on my free speech rights. They have no business doing that at all.
CRTC is dealing with the shaping and throttling issues in a complaint against Bell but they are all doing it. A decision was expected in October but it is delayed "due to the complexity of the issues." What complexity? Give me the bandwidth I contracted for total and get out of the way of an open access Internet.
It is not television and it is not the telephone business regardless of how much the old-style thinking of the service providers try and convince themselves of those delusions. The Internet is about connectivity and content and freedom of speech and assembly.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama discusses net neutrality on MTV
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Ken: you and Barack have it exactly right - and I would love to see what the Harper Government's feelings are regarding Net Neutrality, and more importantly, it's attitude about that Bell/Rogers traffic shaping issue that is currently at the CRTC.
ReplyDeleteThat discussion at the CRTC can be found here:
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2008/8622/c51_200805153.htm
and Michael Geist and others are very actively promoting the equal access position very forcefully here:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2787/125/
and here:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080403-canadians-debating-net-neutrality-in-wake-of-bell-throttling.html