These 2 links: Canadaian gov't committee proposes an Internet levy & Shaw lies to customers about filtering P2P protocols get their own post.
In the first link we learn that the morally repugnant Heritage Committee is pushing further ahead with its disturbing agenda. It proposes a levy to be placed on all internet access. The levy here would cover all Internet users, including institutions that have the right to re-use work without permission or payment (like schools and libraries), and it won't confer any substantial rights upon you. I would not mind a reasonable levy (say, $5-10/month) if it allowed me to do what I liked with the material I accessed (remember, although court cases are being appealed, downloading mp3s is currently legal in Canada) but this makes no sense. Who is asking for this? Who does it benefit? What problems is it trying to mitigate? The are all questions with no sensible answers.
In the second link we learn that Shaw Cable Internet recently added routing rules that drop P2P based traffic. When a poster on DSL reports revealed that, customer support denials to the contrary, Shaw was in fact blocking the traffic, Shaw sent a nasty-gram demanding their removal.
Those statements contain information that is proprietary to Shaw and have been disclosed in breach of an employer/employee contractual relationship.
This summary from the BoingBoing entry does a good job:
Here's the facts, then:
1. Shaw is indiscriminately censoring its customers' Internet feeds. It's not blocking infringing files (hell, Shaw can't even know for certain what files are and aren't infringing for each customer), it's blocking protocols, applications used to transmit and receive tens, hundreds of millions of public-domain, copylefted and non-copyrightable works.
2. Shaw is lying about censoring its customers' Internet feeds.
3. Shaw is threatening to sue people who tell the world about its lies.
Now Shaw is offering a private subscriber service. I would say that it has the right to offer its customers whatever it wants. On the other hand, Shaw has been granted a monopoly by the CRTC as far as cable delivery goes. Customers who are dissatisfied are forced to go the DSL route. Why is it that Bell needs to share its network and allow 3rd party reselling of services but cable providers don't? Shaw, Rogers, Cogeco, and Videotron all need to be brought to heel, slapped about a bit and taught the joys of competition. The CRTC needs to be brough to heel, slapped about a bit and told in no uncertain terms that the Heritage Committee are being jerks, intruding on it's turf, and that the future lies in innovation and openness, not in a committee room where politicians belly up to the corporate donation trough and monopolists and luddites set the agenda for our future.
