Canada's internet future at stake in Monday election The future of the Internet is at stake in Monday's Canadian election. Candidates representing all major political parties have declared themselves "pro-internet Candidates" by pledging support for an open internet on the grassroots website Openmedia. Only one candidate among the dominant Conservative party has signed. Other …
Harper gets beaten like an ugly, red headed step child.
I am really hoping it ends up being a Liberal/NDP coalition.
I refuse to buy the "NDP will bankrupt us all!" bullshit that is being thrown around by the conservatives.
If we get rid of the tax cuts to corporate and rich bastards, we'll be flush with cash again.
As I agree with you, this is not the case, they want like 3-5 dollars per Gb (Shaw, Telus, Bell and Rogers pay 1-3 cents per Gb...they need to make huge profit).
The TV is crap so they need to make their money somehow...they all know since this country is build from people from all over the world, Skype is the way to communicate, no profit in phone business so internet is the way to make the money for them...and the options in this country are not that huge (not where I live anyway).
Any default, like abstaining or spoiling a ballot, helps keep the current crooks in power.
When all the choices are bad (and in Canada's election, yes, they are all bad), just hold your nose and vote for whichever of the out-of-power crooks has the best chance of turfing out the in-power crooks.
The resulting shakeup slows down the crooks: it takes the new ones a while to get their snouts into the trough, and we briefly have slightly better government.
Canada's current crooks are really unhappy with not having a majority. Minority government makes it so much harder to get all the way into the trough.
Then a quick summary :-).
Using one ISP (R***** C****), their lowest Bandwidth cap is C$27.99 per month. For this you get a cap of 2Gb, and additional usage charge of C$5.00 per GB. Their highest capacity package is C$99.99 permonth. Cap is 15GB, additional usage charge is C$0.50 per GB. (yes, the speeds of the lines vary as well - the top speed is 'up to 50 Mbps up' and 'up to 2Mbps down').
The UBB issue wasn't directly with those charges.
There are other companies (for instance, T**S*vvy) who have not got their own infrastructure. They buy capacity on the major ISPs. Then they resell service.
To date these companies have offered unlimited, non-capped services. No monthly over-use charge. Yes, in general their top speeds are much slower than the big providers.
However, the big providers were able to convince the regulating commission (CRTC) that they should be able to charge the smaller companies buying infrastucture capacity the Usage Based Billing rather than flat fees. As a result, the smaller companies would not be able to offer non-capped services. In addition, the big ISPs are also content providers. Services such as Movies on Demand. Their provisioning of those services, whether to a computer or to a TV, are not generally charged as part of the service provisioning cap. However, the same service from someone like NetFlix is charged to the cap.
The arguments are extensive on both sides. However, that is (if my senile dementia allows) I think a reasonable summary.
"The Conservatives support stronger copyright laws and are opposed to fair-use format shifting."
It's the old "you have rights but exercising them is illegal if somebody tries to stop you" law (see DMCA for an infamous example). The fact that such a roundabout approach has to be taken to this shows not only that the law is a bad one but that its proponents know that. Who would accept the simple suggestion in plain English that their right to transfer their stuff from one medium or device to another is to be abolished?
The problem is that current bandwidth cap are 1: Artificial 2: Crap.
They are artificial because the only reason they exist is to boost profit for the very few big ISPs. All the smaller ones realise it's better to sale capacity you have and give unlimited download.
While they are now technically available, services like netflix are useless in Canada right now, because watching 2 or 3 movie in the month, plus checking el'reg once a day will eat your entire bandwidth cap.
Someone actually made the check not too long ago ( I can't refind the article, sue me). Take a truck full of tapes and PAY to have it drive across to the US, download stuff, then come back here. You end up paying 20% less for the data by truck then you would over the wire.
If that doesn't show you how stupid broadband prices are here, I don't know what will.
...spent a BILLION dollars on the G8 meeting. A billion with a B. Completely unnecessary. Anyone else could have had a much nicer meeting for maybe $10 million, perhaps $50 million. I wonder why anyone would be so foolish as to worry about other left-of-center parties when the Conservatives have so clearly demonstrated that they can burn cash better than anyone.
Not to mention the widespread violation of civil rights that occurred during the same G8/G20 event. Of course some anarchist were causing trouble, but that's their adopted role. It's expected. They should certainly be arrested and run through the legal system (criminal and civil). What's not expected and not acceptable is for Canadian police to remove their badges (as happened), don their Nazi jackboots (as happened), and stomp on the heads of peaceful citizens (as happened). What's not acceptable is for the Chief of Police to lie to Canadians about false laws (as happened). What's not acceptable is for these more-significant law breakers to get away with these crimes (as is happening). These folks are far more of a risk to freedom-appreciating Canadians than a bunch of idiot anarchists breaking windows. Perhaps if the idiot police had spent less time violating the civil rights of thousands of peaceful protestors they might have had more time to chase-down the actual vandals.
Harper and his morally self-contradictory ilk have done a great deal of harm to Canada. I hope that he's out on his ear. Not that the Liberals have a better alternative.
... that in the threads above there seems to be a lot of worrying about bandwidth caps and costs per GB without any mention at all of the real huge AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGHHH!!!!! issue - deep packet inspection? If that goes through, Canadians have no internet privacy at all, and government can snoop on anyone's internet traffic without needing a warrant / judicial oversight.
Of course it will start out with a lot of safeguards and proclamations of OF COURSE it won't be abused. And in a couple of years every Tom Dick and Harry on a local council will be able to access it
This article should have been posted way earlier, then on the eve on Election Day.
April 11: Canadian conservatives promise "big brother laws" – At least they are honest". - TechEye
April 13: Harper’s promise: a warrantless online surveillance state - Why ‘lawful access’ legislation is on its way and why that should worry you - Macleans
or in 2009 from The Register:
"Canadian bill forces personal data from ISPs sans warrant"
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