Susan Crawford wrote a great post today with respect to Bell Canada’s position that they own the internet and thus get to scour every red cent out of it - even if it means fucking everybody else - drawing very accurate comparisons between Bell Canada’s position today with that of AT&T back in the days before the break-up of the U.S. Bell monopoly:

When MCI cames to AT&T asking for interconnection agreements in major cities so that it can sell private line services, AT&T delays, avoids, and then directly challenges MCI. Coll says deButts “call[ed] for nothing less than a public anointment of Ma Bell’s right to exercise its monopoly in the national interest” in this speech:

The time has come, then, for a moratorium on further experiments in economics, a moratorium sufficient to permit a systematic evaluation not merely of whether competition might be feasible in this or that sector of telecommunications but of the more basic question of the long-term impact on the public.

The news today is from Canada, where Bell Canada has called for a moratorium on the efforts of independent ISPs to compete across its lines.

Even though the CRTC has decided against providing the CAIP with injunctive relief against Bell’s unilateral decision to fuck up DSL wholesalers, there is still good news, as reported in Michael Geist’s blog:

The CRTC this morning issued its promised plan for addressing the substantive issues raised by the CAIP complaint over Bell’s throttling practices. The plan has an aggressive timeline with all submissions in by June 26th and a decision promised within 90 days. Bell and CAIP have been asked to respond to a series of questions, with the CRTC giving Bell two weeks to provide much more detail on its network congestion claims and its network management practices. Interested parties - ie. the public and other businesses - will have the chance to file comments by June 12, 2008. Combined with the new media discussion document slated to be released later today, CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein wasn’t kidding when he told an industry conference in a speech earlier this month that the throttling issue “will have wide-ranging consequences and will lead to a much wider debate. This will undoubtedly occupy much of our time this year.”

It will indeed be a busy summer and not just for the CRTC - Geist also reports on how the Industry Minister Jim Chickenshit Prentice is likely to reintroduce the U.S. sanctioned Harper government’s copyright bill:

My guess is that bill will still mirror the DMCA on the key anti-circumvention provisions but provide Canadians with a few teasers in the hope that they ignore the disasterous pro-DRM provisions. Prentice will magically declare a consensus achieved, though business groups, artists, educators, consumer groups, and thousands of Canadians will be left to wonder why their concerns were ultimately trumped by U.S. pressure and ignored by a Minister who has professed to put consumers first.

In that same post Geist also pointed out the outrageous demand of the Entertainment Software Association to force ISPs to snoop on their customers. Like it’s not bad enough that companies like Phorm and Charter are doing this already to eavesdrop on your online behaviours and sell the data to advertisers who will then take over your browser and insert their own targetted ads in place of the ads on sites you’d rather be supporting. As Lauren Weinstein points out, Rogers has been fucking around with this already - taking over your browser to insert their own targetted messages. I was inundated with a slew of them, informing me that I was about to exceed the amount of bandwidth they deemed necessary for me. Cocksuckers. I’m taking my business to TekSavvy.

But it’s not just the telcos and cable companies that want to control what you can hear, read and see along with how you choose to get your information. Michael Geist points out that the canadian Association of Broadcasters made a submission to the CRTC claiming the use of VCR’s and PVR’s to record shows for later viewing is copyright infringement.
Somebody get these people - and their over-caffeinated lawyers - together in a room and tie their tiny little dicks together. Jesus H. Tap Dancin’ Christ!

There’s just too much to rant and rave about and it’s too good a day outside and I have too much work too do and I’m already sick of my own whining on these pages so I’ll just shut up now. Go out and tell everyone about Net Neutrality and Deep Packet Inspection - get mad and then get active.

And if you can’t do that - then have a beer for me.

Cheers.