I know I posted this earlier but I just now got around to posting it on YouTube and thought I’d stick it back up here again:

Cheers

The buzz phrase Web 2.0 has become a tired axiom in the attempts of the geek community to redefine itself after the first internet bubble burst. The term bubble itself has become an over-tired expression of unbridled human greed and folly. Most everyone now agrees that Web 2.0 is not much more than a marketing slogan, albeit one which embraces the disruptive forces stemming from the collision of business, media and searching abilities on the web.

So what the fuck is Web 3.0?

Welcome to the next level.

David Bayer has posted a good aggregation of the myriad views of just what Web 3.0 is or could be on his Gimme The Scoop blog. The best part of his post was this nifty little video crafted by Mike Wesch, a Digital Ethnographer, which rapidly scans through the early stages of our ability to use the net to communicate and then posits what I believe to be an inevitable consequence of the path we are following:

We are the web.

We are the machine.

I like that.

It is reminiscent of Kevin Kelly’s talk at TED, where he asked the question: “What Does Technlogy Want?”:

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The future will be better tomorrow.
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Meanwhile, in the United States of America, the troglodytes of power are busy in their caves happily crafting a new set of stone tools.

Cheers.

P.S. I’m sticking this last video in here not because it’s relevant but just because it’s neat.

I had the pleasure of working alongside Michael Moschen in 1985 during the production of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth - he was the guy who so deftly handled the crystal balls for David Bowie.

Moschen gave a talk and performance at TED back in 2002 and they just posted it yesterday. He is more than a juggler - Moschen is a dancer who interacts with physical objects - and his art always leaves me gaping in wonderment.

Enjoy.

Things are about to get busy for me.

According to my Horoscope - which, I assure you, I never consult:

The time is ripe for you to dissect less
and build more.

I had, of course, already arrived at that conclusion myself and was in no need of any arbiter of the passage of stars to tell me this was so. Regardless, there it is and here I am and what am I to do about it?
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I will do my best not to neglect these pages, however, I shan’t be as vociferous as I usually am in keeping you up to date on all the shenanigans of corporate weasels and governmental fucktards who seek to enlave you and your culture for their blind personal gain. I’ve provided you with enough links and incentive to pursue them for yourselves to remain informed - at least for the time being.
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Perhaps in a little while I’ll re-open the Forum pages of this site so as to give you all a place to rant and shout without my constant presence.
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I will also be somewhat retrograde in my ablity to provide you with the latest flakey and trippy musings on our future as human beings whilst we so rapidly approach this odd and energizing convergence of technology, cultural transformation and expanding consciousness. I know, I know - it all sounds so much like a bad acid trip on a ’60’s ashram - but remember that despite the corruption and war of those times they still had good music, love was free and the acid was only 25¢ a hit.
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Looking back upon the words I have just written I find myself channeling, albeit and admittedly somewhat clumsily, the verbal stylings of one Mr. Stephen Fry. That should come as no surprise to a few of you who know his works have lately been at the forefront of my alleged mind.
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But I digress.
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Things are about to get busy. I’m going to be embarking on several different projects in the hopes that at least one of them actually succeeds in paying my a decent wage - or, in lieu of cash payment, at least free beer. Rest assurred I am not neglecting you. You are, as the song so simply states: “Always on my mind.” Poor dears.
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In the meantime - here’s a neat video for you:



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Thanks for that, Jerry.
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Cheers.
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P.S. I apologize for the profusion of periods - “.” - in the above post. I’m having some difficulty with my formatting and keep getting all the paragraphs bunched up together. Since I’m in a rush today I decided to just say Fuck it. and throw in a bunch of periods which does the trick but looks rather spotty. Not to worry - I’ll figure out.

You should just go read Michael Geist’s blog on a regular basis - but in case you don’t: here’s a quick run down on what he’s been posting lately:

IP Caucus Rolls Out Welcome Mat for the U.S.

Sources indicate that the Parliamentary IP Caucus, co-chaired by Liberal MP Dan McTeague and Conservative Gord Brown, plan to roll out the welcome mat for the U.S. next Wednesday. The meeting includes a presentation from four representatives from the U.S. Embassy along with a pair of speakers from the Entertainment Software Association. To date, the IP Caucus has never invited representatives from the education or consumer communities to present.

Dan McTeague can act like a such a turd at times, can’t he? Canadian IP policy? Whoops! Better check with the Americans first. Suckass toady weasel shitefarts.

The Conservative Policy on Treaty Ratification in Action

As Industry Minister Jim Prentice prepared to introduce copyright legislation earlier this year, the Conservatives unveiled a new policy that committed to a 21 day House of Commons review period of any treaty prior to the introduction of any ratifying legislation. I argued that this would seemingly apply to the WIPO Internet treaties and that the government was committed to conducting a review before tabling copyright legislation.

The Conservatives have still not tabled the WIPO Internet treaties, yet it has just completed the first treaty review process.

If they don’t table the WIPO Internet treaties it means they are loath eto discuss them publicly - which means they are bad for Canada. Keep watching for this one and be prepared to holler at your member of parliament to ensure the Harper government keeps its promise. They are just the sort of slimey two-faced arse lickers we have to keep an eye on.

And finally, this:

Canada’s Wireless Crisis

This week I delivered the opening speech at the annual Spectrum 20/20 conference that focused on the state of Canadian wireless marketplace. As the title of this blog posts suggest, I believe that Canadian wireless is in a state of crisis, with limited competition and high data prices. The talk and slides have been posted to Blip.tv and are embedded below.

Do yourselves a favour - call your cell phone company and ask them for a lower rate. If they refuse or obfuscate, rattle off some of what you’ve learned from Geist’s talk and ask them why Canadian wireless service - more to the point their wireless service - sucks so much and costs so much. Then ask them for a lower rate again. If they still won’t give it to you - ask for their name so you can include it in your letter to the CRTC.

Let me know what happens.

Me? Of course I’ll be getting an iPhone. A hacked iPhone. I am not going to give one red cent to Rogers. Fuck ‘em.

Cheers.

As reported on TorrentFreak, there is a new and easy on-line test for you to test your ISP to see if it engages in the practice of throttling your Bit Torrent traffic.

The test is provided by The Max Plank Institute For Software Systems.

Major ISPs like ComCast, Bell Canada and Rogers have been lying less than forthcoming about their practices of managing internet traffic.

As these ISPs continue to expand their efforts to control the content flowing through their internet the need for transparency also grows.

Since our elected officials are failing us in managing the gatekeepers of the net itself it’s a good thing to see the development of independent testing and verification systems which can serve this purpose.

Certain ISPs have been shown to rate limit or block BitTorrent traffic sent by their customers. While there are multiple reports of this on the web, only a few ISPs have admitted that they manipulate BitTorrent traffic. And, to date, it is hard for users without networking expertise to gain evidence about the behavior of their ISP.

This test suite creates a BitTorrent-like transfer between your machine and our server, and determines whether or not your ISP is limiting such traffic. This is a first step towards making traffic manipulation by ISPs more transparent to their customers.

The test is easy - it only takes about 7 minutes to run. All you need to do is just click on the >>Start Testing<< button at the bottom of the page.

Since this hit the intertubes the site has been slow due to massive traffic of others trying to run their own tests - so you may need to wait a while before jumping over there and giving it a shot - but do give it a try.

I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who does the test and finding out what results they get for their ISP’s.

Cheers.

UPDATE: If you to these pages on the Max Plank Institute site you can see a world map showing the results so far of their testing. The offending ISPs are marked in red - you’ll notice the bulk of them are in North America. That would be the same part of the world where broadband sucks, terms like high speed internet are lies and the irrational fears of piracy are encouraged as the means to gain further control and ownership of cultural and information content. In short: our asshole ISPs suck balls.

Gizmodo proclaims today is the 30th Birthday of SPAM - not the tasty yummy delicious canned luncheon meat - the commercial electronic shite which clutters our online lives.

Thirty years ago, on this day, you came into the world as a little misguided e-mail sent by an equipment engineer over Arpanet to promote a new line of computers. You were quickly shot down by other Arpanet users who called it an “insult… to have an obvious commercial message sent out over a research network.” Yet, at some point in time, people stopped protesting you loudly enough.

In tribute - what else?

Cheers.

I’ve been reading about Cause Caller on various BoingBoing posts but haven’t dug deeper into the story to see what it could do - until today. It’s freakin’ awesome!Talk about the emerging power of social media via the internet.

What is Cause Caller?

It’s a web-based VoIP application combined with a wiki of causes and contacts - allowing users to create their own phone bank to reach out en mass to our elected representatives and give voice to our concerns. How cool is that?

You can learn more about it here and you can see it in action on this video.

Cheers.

I found this snorkingly funny episode of Republican Space Rangers through a Twitter post from Wil Wheaton.

Think I’m gonna go rip me the head off a chicken now.

Cheers.

It’s not big huge Earth shattering news, and certainly came as no surprise to creator Jill Gollick, when Facebook deleted the profiles of her characters from her online social media saga “Story2Oh!” - what was most disappointing was how it all transpired.

Facebook just deleted the profiles for Ali Barrett, Simon Beals, Devon Ross and Jory Goudge. Coincidentally these are all of the characters I mentioned during last night’s CaseCamp presentation. Apparently some of the people who got friended by Ali and Simon were very offended and blew the whistle on the project.

It’s sad because it was fun having them on Facebook and using Facebook for storytelling way back in January was a really effective way to communicate with the audience. But even by early March when we ran the second experiment, Facebook was already too crowded an environment and we did very little storytelling in that venue.

It seems to me that early this year, Facebook took a strong cultural shift. Instead of being an underground play space it turned into a business must-have. People are serious about and on Facebook.

I made a rather large boo-boo in not taking this cultural shift into account. Some of the attendees had gotten friendship requests from Simon and Ali and were upset to learn that imaginary people were rubbing shoulders with them. I did apologize to them, from stage and again in person — rather profusely in fact. But too little too late apparently.

The outpouring of support for Jill and her project has been sweet to see and read. While no one disputes Facebook’s TOS and inherent right to remove the fictional profiles there has been a very visceral reaction against the vocal opponents of fictional narrative within social media who were also attending CaseCamp.

Some samples from the Story2Oh!’s comments:

And if the people who raised an uproar at Casecamp worked for me - I would have fired them for being near-sighted sticks in the mud.

What you’ve created is a tremendous opportunity - and if those F*cks can’t see that then they need to be thinned from the herd.

and

Now it comes out that the woman with the biggest bee in her bonnet? A marketer. Are you kidding me? Someone who spends their lives trying to figure out new and interesting ways to get us to want to buy shit we probably don’t need.

and

But what’s really heinous is the idea that people who attended a conference in “new” media were so closed-minded and somehow offended (though I really don’t see how they could be. You would think they would want to learn how it was done) that they decided to “tell on” Jill and her storytelling team instead of simply ending the “friendship.”

Those folks will never think to the future. Those folks will never be able to innovate, adapt or overcome. Those folks hold the rest of us back. They are a sign of the “grim meathook future” (look it up) that awaits us if we keep doing things the same old way we always have instead of getting down to the business of learning and growing up.

And let’s be real - no page on FB represents “reality.” Every page is crafted, sanding off all the blemishes and warts and presenting the best possible “you” there is.

That’s just a sampling and by no means among the more vitriolic expressions of support for Jill - and, to be fair, there were opposing perspectives posted as well but moat of those were equally sympathetic. The true outrage seems to be how CaseCamp became a focus for using social media as a marketing tool - and how any use of creative expression within Facebook or other social media outlets should be subjugated to the needs of business in reaching people.

Excuse me whilst I blow the bad smell of marketing from out of my nose.

There - that’s better.

What a bunch of fucktards to think that Facebook or MySpace or any other site is the exlcusive domain of marketing. But, of course, that’s just my opinion.

Check out Eden Spodek’s One Degree post for more angles on it all - the initial post is a tad self-serving, the comments are more interesting.

CaseCamp has obviously stumbled big time by showing just how behind the times and limited in their imagination they are in their attempts to partner marketing money with creative minds. They are as dull little children in the corner of the schoolyard whom no one wants to play with anymore because they just smell too awful.

On her Running With My Eyes Closed blog, Jill wrote:

I never wrote anything for television that raised this kind of passion.

On Blue Murder, Cal Coons and I wrote a two-parter about a string of abortion doctor murders. that came down hard on the pro-lifers. Blue had an audience in the million range back then and the thing still airs. Nary a hate mail.

When I was on Metropia, which admittedly had a far smaller audience, we used 50 euphemisms for cunnilingus. Even the broadcaster didn’t blink.

But put a character on Facebook and send out an offer of friendship to people?! That created a furor.

To be fair, it wasn’t just any people Ali and Simon friended. They friended the entire writing community and a lot more strangers without consequence. It was when they friended new-media-marketing-guru-types that the controversy started.

One of the most offended, Eden Spodek, states her case in this post on one of her blogs, One Degree.

I know lots of people are afraid of making friends on the web. But the internet through the world wide community of writers connected, communicated and become more cohesive, especially during the WGA strike. It is an atmosphere of creative support. Through this blog I have built friendships with some fantastic writers around the world. Their generousity amazes me.

The social networking gurus and evangelists? Not so much.

Worth considering if you’re thinking of creating for the digital space.

Well said.

For me the best thing to come out of this whole clusterfuck is the number of people who used the word: Fucktard. Good for you, Denis McGrath!

I could go on forever abut this but, frankly, I have more creative things to attend to - like telling stories. Let me just fill up a bit more space with one of the comments I posted out there in the tubes:

“Social Media” includes every possible way human beings interact. We are not mere pawns - consumers - dully waiting to be told or sold what to do and buy. We converse. We share. We share our ideas, our views, our songs, our poetry and our art. We engage with others in gossip, political discourse and shameless marketing punditry.

Social media is where we gather to tell each other the stories of our selves. We have done this for millennia - around the fire, in the marketplace, in the school yard, around the water cooler, or whilst lying on a hill together beneath the stars.

We tell the stories of ourselves. We tell the stories of each other. We create ourselves and we create new worlds. We tell stories.

Creating characters and scenarios in social media is not a crime - it is not an aberration - it is not deceitful. To lie to gain power or money - to lie to deceive, manipulate and abuse - these are acts of deceit which must not be tolerated. To create, to craft, to entertain, to enlighten, illuminate and engage - these are not lies - these are stories - they are songs and dances crafted with words and images, sights and sounds, characters which generate empathy and bring out the best of ourselves. That this happens in a social forum, instead of in the lonely dark of a room with a TV screen, should be deemed a good thing and encouraged.

To “rat out” someone who makes this effort - as if they were committing some crime - is pathetic and small minded. Because someone creates something that is “not real” doesn’t mean it has no value or no purpose. That fiction can draw together people in their real lives is something to be valued far more than the so-called “reality” of plain talk, sales and marketing.

Interactive screenwriting - social media theatre - should be encouraged. Toss a few coins at the busker, if you will, or walk past and ignore them whilst hearing their songs. But don’t push them off the streets and claim the path as yours alone.

Shame on anyone who tries to silence the telling of our stories. No doubt you shall find yourselves as cretinous characters in a tale yet to come - and deservedly so.

I had a dear friend who once told me: We are the stories we tell of ourselves and each other. Her words meant a lot to me then - as they do now.

Keep writing yourselves.

The future will be better tomorrow.

Cheers.

Disclosure: I’ve known Jill for years and have had the pleasure of working with her on Canadian Sesame Street and through her continuing involvement in the Writer’s Guild of Canada. I think she’s very smart.

I didn’t blog the other day to mark the passing of Albert Hoffman, the inventor/discoverer of LSD - although I did mark “Bicycle Day” (April 19) in my own way.

It would be remiss of me not to post something about Hoffman and his contribution to our world - there is so much to be said but, frankly, I’m still coming down from the last trip. So, instead, I’ll just post this snippet of a documentary made about U.K. military tests with LSD.

I’m particularly fond of the line: ” - and the efficiency of the rocket launching team was also very impaired”. Holy crap.

Cheers.

I found this via a post by Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing. Michael Geist rebuts the U.S. Copyright Lobby that is attempting to misinform Canadians and bully members of parliament into passing DMCA style copyright legislation in Canada.

Geist takes apart the lies and myths and lays out the truth in a very concise and informative power-point talk. If anyone ever had questions about what all the fuss over Canadian copyright reform is for - here are the answers:

Cheers.

Jonathan Rintels has written an article in the Huffington Post which is entitled: Big Media Continues to Fight Against Net Neutrality that is worth taking note of:

The goal of Big Media and the ISPs is nothing less than to turn today’s wide open Internet into a closed system more akin to cable television. The likely result: as we’ve documented in cable, independent and diverse voices and their content will be inexorably marginalized or silenced.

I’ve been ranting about this for some time now and my lungs are getting tired with shouting about it. It’s doubtful the larger mainstream news media will give this any attention since they are owned by the same media giants colluding with the ISPs so stifling Net Neutrality is perceived as being in their best interest and besides, they are too busy ignoring the story of how they’ve been shilling for the Pentagon.

The short-sighted pricks who are seeking to own and control the internet will, ultimately, doom themselves to cultural and fiscal irrelevance as the rest of the world dances past them (at higher bandwidths speeds too, thank you very much) with the unfortunate consequence of rendering the rest of us poor lackeys in North America as a bunch of ignorant peons incapable of voicing dissent, art or innovation.

Rintels points to a report from the Independent Film and Television Alliance (IFTA>:

That openness [of the Internet] is threatened by the power of a small number of broadband providers to discriminate unilaterally against some categories of users or types of traffic or to accord preferential treatment to certain content providers over others, all under the ambiguous claim of “network management.” While these providers may have some legitimate issues related to the technical management of their networks, there have already been cases of different treatment of users and it is clear that there must be transparency, equal treatment and an avenue of redress when the providers’ private decisions trespass fair rights of others and the public interest. Thus, the issue is not whether government should regulate the Internet, but whether there will be effective oversight to prevent a handful of corporate giants from imposing their own version of private regulation to the public’s detriment.

This is a big fight that is going to affect how all of us are going to be able to communicate, thrive and survive in the coming decades. But we’re not hearing about it in the mainstream media because they’re part of the problem. Which only serves to emphasize how desperately important this issue is.

You are what you eat. They’re feeding us shit.

No thanks.

Cheers.

P. S. Apropos of the shamefully under-reported Pentagon propaganda scandal, here’s a great song posted on the Huff Post by Max & The Marginalized. Enjoy. Get angry. Do something.

Let’s all wear funny hats and celebrate - the world is going Copyright Crazy!

First off the mark is Cory Doctorow and his post over on BoingBoing on how the U.S. driven copyright lobby in Canada is now charging around the public square like a frothing rabid dog:

The lobby for US-style copyrights in Canada has gone into overdrive, recruiting a powerful Member of Parliament and turning public forums on copyright into one-sided love-fests for restrictive copyright regimes that criminalize everyday Canadians.

Dan McTeague is the Liberal MP from Pickering-Scarborough East, and he’s set to become the successor to Sam Bulte, the MP who lost her job for funding her campaign to get elected and appointed Heritage Minister by lining her pockets with massive donations from the very industries she would have ended up regulating. Reliable sources tell me that he’s the guy who pushed for Canada signing onto the WIPO copyright treaty in its anti-counterfeiting report last year, and that any time anyone in committee mentions fair dealing and user rights, he has a complete melt-down and shouts them down.

Doctorow went on to say:

The supposedly non-partisan Public Policy Forum is holding a major, one-sided IP symposium on Monday. Invited are the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, former head of the Canadian Motion Picture Industry Association, and other big-stick-swingers for American-style copyright disasters. But when copyright lobbyists discovered that noted copyright scholar Howard Knopf would appear on just one of the panels, they went berserk and pushed successfully to have Knopf removed, ensuring that dissenting voices would be minimized on the day.

Seems like we must all be striking a nerve if these assholes are flailing about in such an overly aggressive and demented manner. If we can keep up - or ramp up - the pressure on the politicians and the awareness of the public, we might just be able to tip them completely over the edge — and that’s when we get to watch their heads explode!

Wheeee!

Meanwhile, Business Week posted a lengthy article on Tanya Andersen’s legal fight with the RIAA. Ms. Andersen was successful in getting the RIAA suit aginst her, charging her with copyright theft, thrown out of court - but she’s gone further than most of the other victims of the RIAA goon tactics: she’s taking them to court under the Racketeering and Conspiracy laws.

After being sued by the music industry for stealing songs and winning the case’s dismissal, Andersen is now taking the record industry to court. Her case is aimed at exposing investigative practices that are controversial and may be illegal, according to the lawsuit. One company hired by the record industry, she claims, snoops through people’s computers, uncovering private files and photos, even though it has no legal right to do so. A different industry-backed company uses tactics similar to those of debt collectors, pressuring people to pay thousands of dollars in settlements even before any wrongdoing is proven. In Andersen’s case, the industry’s Settlement Support Center said that unless she paid $4,000 to $5,000 immediately, it would “ruin her financially,” the suit alleges.

Andersen is going after the recording industry under conspiracy laws. She argues the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry’s trade group, and its affiliates worked together on a broad campaign to intimidate people into making financial payoffs. The defendants “secretly met and conspired” to develop a “litigation enterprise” with the ultimate goal of preserving the major record companies’ control over the music business. Andersen is requesting class action status for her case, seeking at least $5 million in compensation for the class.

Whether its the industry itself, like EMI losing its marbles - or the representatives of the industry, like the RIAA and Media Sentry acting like gangsters on steroids and the CRIA acting like a pathetic lap dog - or corrupted political figures like Bulte, McTeague and a chorus of others here in Canada, sucking up to power brokers from the U.S. media lobby regardless of the destructive influence their actions have over the lives and businesses of Canadian citziens — it’s all just such a load of crazy assholery that it leaves my head spinning like a frog in a blender.

We’ve seen some very good action come from the likes of Michael Geist keeping people aware of the reality of Canada’s copyright laws and helping to organize Facebook groups and other events to build public awareness and response to the chicanery, lies and bullshit of the industry lobby and their kiss ass parliamentary cohorts. Parliamentary critics like Charlie Angus (NDP), interviewed here for P2PNet post, are also doing outstanding work to keep these issues at the forefront in public debate.

I’d like to see some of this shit come down on Dan McTeague now. He was also responsible for going behind the back of his own government and meeting with officials in the U.S. embassy in an effort to subvert the (then Liberal - his own) government from enacting legislation that would have reformed the cannabis laws in this country. Regardless of your stand on the use of cannabis we’re talking about our country, our laws and our political representatives meeting with a foreign power to subvert due parliamentary process. McTeague takes prominent positions publicly to guild his image as a warrior on behalf of the people but the reality behind the scenes is one of constant subversion of the will of the people, self-serving toadying to powerful corporate interests and working to benefit foreign governments to the detriment of our own society. Down right shameful.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - the issues of Copyright and Net Neutrality are Free Speech Issues. Content companies - telcos and cable - corrupt government officials - are fucking with our most basic rights to freedom of speech. They are doing it for greed - greed for money and greed for power. They lie, cheat, steal, intimidate, corrupt, imprison - using the power and resources of our own government institutions against us. They are a bunch of dangerous, short-sighted greedy arse crack-snacking nickel-licking fucking cocktard weasels.

And I’ll be damned if they get to tell me - or any one else - what we can say, when we can say it, who we can say it to and by what means.

That’s what this is all about - and that it it has even managed to get this far down the road to hell is stunning. There is a lot wrong with the world. If we are to have any hope of fixing all that is broken in it, we need the power to talk to each other.

That’s it.

Enjoy your weekend.

On Monday - come out swingin’.

Cheers.

Michael Geist reports on the response from the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) to the submission from Bell to the CRTC regarding Bell’s active throttling of bandwidth and P2P traffic.

Bell claimed in its submission to the CRTC that their traffic blocking actions were necessary, justified and oh-by-the-way it’s really none of your business so leave us the fuck alone.

Arrogant pricks.

The CAIP has responded in a kick-ass manner by saying:

It is also clear from Bell’s Answer that it fundamentally misunderstands (or has consciously misrepresented) several key facts and issues that are of direct relevance to the issues under consideration in this proceeding, including, most significantly, the nature of the local access and transport service that Bell provides to its wholesale customers, the extent to which its DPI “traffic shaping” technology interferes with both the content and privacy of end-user communications, and the tremendous impact that its traffic shaping practices have had - and are continuing to have - on competitors, their end-users customers and providers of new media content that make use of P2P applications to deliver content to their on-line users, listeners and viewers.

The CAIP doesn’t stop with just that though - as Geist points out they successfully dismantled each of Bell’s claims and added new information for the CRTC to consider:

There is also uncontradicted evidence . . . that strongly suggests that the reasons behind Bell’s decision to throttle its competitors’ GAS traffic have little to do with Bell’s unsubstantiated claims of “network congestion” and more to do with a desire to lessen competition in retail telecommunications markets. There are far too many “coincidences” between the timing of the initiation of Bell’s throttling practices and the timing of a number of other events in order to conclude otherwise.

They also pointed out that Bell’s throttling activities have done more than affect P2P traffic - also screwing up and slowing down virtual private networks and VoIP services. Bell’s decision to alter and slowdown traffic affects the content within that traffic and therefore becomes a violation of Section 36 of the Telecommunications Act which states that a carrier “shall not control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of telecommunications carried by it for the public.”.

It is ludicrous for Bell to suggest that the only way that content can be controlled or its meaning or purpose influenced is if it is blocked outright. Section 36 of the Act clearly contemplates instances where the meaning or purpose of a communication is being controlled or influenced while in transit from the content sender to the content receiver.

Bell’s throttling of GAS customer traffic degrades communications between users to the point where the intended meaning and purpose of these communications is fundamentally altered. This conduct, like the privacy concerns discussed above, also gives rise to a serious issue that Bell has violated its duty under section 36 of the Act.

Good for the CAIP and thanks to Prof. Geist for posting this.

The CRTC will now consider the submissions and responses from Bell, the CAIP, other interested parties and the public before making a decision. Let’ just hope they don’t fuck it up.

Cheers.

Ars Technica reports on the recent filing by Wireless Nomad to the CRTC calling for it to force Bell from using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to throttle P2P traffic.

Bell has been using such traffic shaping techniques on its own network since last year, but in March 2008, it expanded its filtering to encompass resellers of its Internet service—even when those resellers explicitly offered neutral connections to subscribers.

The tactic has infuriated the community of small ISPs in Canada, most of which depend upon line-sharing provisions to stay in business. Bell’s action has removed one of the key ways in which the ISPs can differentiate themselves from Bell’s own service (price is the other big one). When news of the move leaked out, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers filed a complaint with the CRTC, Canada’s telecoms regulator, asking that Bell be forced to remove the filters from its wholesale service.

The CRTC has agreed that “an expedited process is appropriate” for handling the request, and final comments on the matter are due in the next few days; a preliminary decision should be forthcoming soon. Between this decision and the pending FCC decision in the Comcast case, North America should get a good deal more clarity this year about what constitutes reasonable network management.

Bell says it has no choice but to throttle P2P traffic in order to provide better service for all its cutomers, however, as also pointed out in this same Ars Technica article, Om Malik reports that only 20 percent of Internet traffic is from P2P apps. A full 70 percent of traffic during peak periods comes from HTTP, with a huge chunk of that coming from HTTP streaming sites like YouTube.

So is Bell going to start throttling YouTube as well? Or will the CBC have to put their programming on YouTube instead of offering it to Canadians online via BitTorrent? It’s a ridiculous assumption and Bell’s motives are so pathetic and obvious: they don’t have the bandwidth they’re advertising for sale; they have fallen waaay behind on upgrading their infrastructure (unlike other countries around the world who get it); and they are more interested in wringing money out of their antiquated systems than in providing any real innovation or true service to the consumers citizens.

The CRTC needs to fulfill its role as advocate for the citizens of this country and bitch slap these greedy motherfuckers into doing the job they have been lying about and overcharging for throughout this past decade. Force them to behave - because like a greedy bratty kid who lies kicking and screaming in the middle of the grocery store aisle, wailing in a puddle of their own obstinate piss, they will not listen, they will not learn nor will they ever do anything for the benefit of anyone else until they are forced to do so.

Fuckin’ chimps.

Cheers.