Charlie Smith discusses the political support for an open Internet

By Charlie Smith

The words Net neutrality do not appear in the campaign platforms of the federal Liberal and Conservative parties. The federal NDP and Greens, on the other hand, Net neutrality in their platforms. The NDP say it’s vital to protecting Canadians’ ability to access the Internet at a flat rate of payment and with transparent rules.

Richard Rosenberg, a UBC professor emeritus of computer science, told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview that there are different views on whether or not Internet service providers should be allowed to limit the number of bits that are moved over a network. Proponents of Net neutrality argue that consumers should determine which content, services, and applications they want to use. They say that telecommunications giants shouldn’t have the right to control which files are sent.

But this is precisely what Bell Canada is doing, spurring a complaint to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in April by the Canadian Association of Internet Providers. “All of this means that certain kinds of downloading will be different than other kinds,” said Rosenberg, who is also president of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association. “So the Net will not be neutral with respect to the bits that are moving on it.”

The issue hasn’t gotten much attention from the mainstream media during the election campaign, but it’s a vitally important topic, according to Steve Anderson, the Vancouver-based national coordinator of the Campaign for Democratic Media. In a phone interview with the Straight, Anderson said that Bell angered some of its customers and third-party ISPs by “throttling” BitTorrent, a technology that efficiently distributes video and other content over the Internet. He said that if the Net were neutral, telecommunications companies wouldn’t be allowed to do this.

“We’ve been calling on the CRTC to look at all of the ISPs and have a public hearing on this issue of Net neutrality,” Anderson said.

He noted that Bell distributes its own video content in competition with the independents who use BitTorrent. The Campaign for Democratic Media, which is a nonprofit media-reform network, filed an intervention with the CRTC in July, arguing that Bell’s throttling of Internet traffic violated the Telecommunications Act.

Read the rest at the :
http://www.straight.com/article-165153/ndp-and-greens-push-open-internet

Down Load the SaveOurNet.ca Fact Vs. Fiction Report:
http://saveournet.ca/sites/openmedia.ca/files/SON_FvF.pdf