I realized, thanks to Amber Macarthur’s recent piece and various related issues around open access on various internet platforms, that Net Neutrality as an issue appears profoundly silent on the Canadian scene.
Sure Mark Evans blogged about it a year ago, and of course Michael Geist and Rob Hyndman have been all over it. But what about the thousands of bloggers who benefit from the free, open and un-throttled internet we’ve become accustomed to? Where are all the YouTube fans in every office in the country?
Net Neutrality is not an obscure telecom policy issue for CRTC-watchers and hardcore policy geeks. It is fundamental to the shape of the future of human culture. You may not have an opinion yet, or you may be confused by it, but silence is no longer cool when the cultural, economic and political implications are this large.
We need to express ourselves in order to engage in the conversation; we need conversation to engage in co-creation – the social construction of the world we live in.
So I’m starting to ping people for a blog-swarm: Jevon MacDonald, Will Pate, David Crow, Tom Purves, Sandy Kemsley, Rohan Jayasekera, Sean Howard, Ryan Coleman and Ryan Feeley. Posts tagged “netneutrality” and “canada” will appear here.
Technorati Tags: Canada, netneutrality
Ahem.
LOL. Of course, Rob, how could I be so remiss?! I’ve edited the original post to give you the cred you deserve.
Hehehe
[...] Mark Kuznicki wrote a pretty thoughtful post on Net Neutrality in Canada, a topic I don’t quite know much about but have been learning about slowly over the past few days. And since his post was spurred by a recent segment Amber Mac did on CityNews, and because I’m a huge fan of Amber’s, here’s her segment. It’s a good primer as to why net neutrality is important. [...]
Wholesale “Net Neutrality” could threaten what we know and love about the Internet. I’m all for legislation requiring that common carriers be truly “common”, in particular that they not be permitted to discriminate between their own value-added services (such as VoIP) and other companies’ (such as Vonage). But providing equal access for BitTorrent traffic could be ruinous for all of us, perhaps even worse than what spam has done to email. BitTorrent traffic, most of which is illegal, may already represent a majority of Internet traffic (actual stats seem hard to come by). Legislated prevention of traffic shaping would force ISPs to give torrents the same priority as other traffic.
“Commons” need to be protected from abuse or you get “the tragedy of the commons”.
Net neutrality is also grassroots media issue…
The examples of overzealous Canadian Telcos that have tried to shut down free speech are important to document, and to bring peopleÂ’s attention to. For me, this is the heart of the issue: an independent, grassroots, media is a critical part of a funct…
It’s unfortunate that the regulatory body that was enacted to protect Canadians and the Canadian marketplace is stocked with Commissioners that are essentially representatives of the telecommunications industry. I find the idea of increasing the role of the Canadian government in my life repugnant. It makes sense to enact laws that will protect our freedom of choice, our freedom of information, and the limit of the power and control of telecom oligopoly on Canadian consumers.
Fight for Internet Freedom!
[...] Thanks to Mark for getting this blogswarm going. Net Neutrality is a crucial problem because of this simple fact. The only providers offering you connectivity to the network (your cable co, telco and mobile co) are the exact same companies with the most to lose by giving you equal access to services on those networks. [...]
(I’m resubmitting this comment as it apparently disappeared while awaiting moderation.)
Like David, I too “find the idea of increasing the role of the Canadian government in my life repugnant”. That’s why I don’t want it to pass any laws telling those who run the Internet (e.g. ISPs) how they should do it. This is a situation where I fear that the “cure” may be much worse than the “disease”.
Fight for Internet Freedom!
[...] Over the next while you’re going to hear me, and other bloggers in Canada banging the drum of this issue loudly. We will not roll over while major corporations ruin take the most democratizing, the biggest channel of personal expression and the most powerful enabler of innovation in human history. We cannot count on these major corporations to keep the citizens interests above their own quest for profit. Enron, Worldcom and actions of these very companies in Canada (I will be talking about them soon) have shown us that we must hold their feet to the fire. [...]
[...] couple of weeks ago, Mark tagged me to get involved in the net neutrality debate online. I added a link to neutrality.ca to my sidebar [...]
Take away the porn!…
Take away my WHAT!!?? I’ve been tagged. Net Neutrality in Canada is an issue. One that has been quiet for too long. Mark asks… [W]hat about the thousands of bloggers who benefit from the free, open and un-throttled internet we’ve become accust…
[...] Remarkk! » Blog-Swarming Net Neutrality (tags: canada internet politics) [...]
Right On! This is an issue that effects us all in the digital age no matter what part of the world you live in. It’s important that we act so that we don’t have our freedom compromised.
Check out more conversations on Net Neutrality here: http://web.illish.us