Last week I got a notice from my Rogers, my internet service provider, informing me of changes they’re making to “better serve” my online needs. The big change, of course, is putting a cap on my “usage allowance,” which means they can charge me more for my internet use, depending on how much I download. Bell is also limiting the amount of content Sympatico subscribers can download.
This isn’t just a corporate ploy to get people to pay more for their connections – this is part of a disturbing move by ISPs to change the way the internet works. What we have come to know and depend on as a space for the seemingly-free flow of information, connecting people around the world, is beginning to reflect the stronghold media conglomerates have around other means of communication, including newspapers and broadcasting, which means the kind of content we can access online, just like the kind of content we can access from the mainstream media, will be limited.
(Of course, the internet is not a perfect place: access is limited to those who can afford it, and the most highly-trafficked sites are still those owned by bottom-line driven major corporations. Still, the potential the internet holds for democratizing communication is critical).
This latest move is part of the struggle over neutrality, which has become a big issue for media activists in the United States.
Here in Canada, the Campaign for Democratic Media is leading the charge in trying to stop what they call “the throttling of the Internet and the strangling of our choice.” They argue that internet service providers have the potential to fundamentally change how we are able to use the internet if their efforts at limiting downloads aren’t stopped.
As the Campaign writes in a statement:
Using the… ‘traffic shaping’ principle, the companies can steer subscribers to their own content, or content produced by affiliated companies, and away from that offered by competitors — including the public broadcaster. For example, some Internet users who recently tried to download CBC’s The Next Greatest Prime Minister on Bittorrent were told it would take hours to do so.
Apart from public broadcasters, this could one day have serious implications for alternative and independent media, such as this blog you’re reading.
You can get involved in the campaign here or join the Facebook group here. Also, check out this insightful article on the issue.
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four comments
NOW has a good piece on the issue here:
http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story....
Posted by Nicole
April 4, 2008, 10:35 AM
Sadly, the question ultimately is: who pays? People who talk about net neutrality tend to be against the idea of the most bandwidth-munching sites - YouTube, Google et al - having to pay for delivery improvements. It's got to be either them, the ISPs or the taxpayer, and if it's the ISPs or the taxpayer, it's us down on the ground who really foot the bill.
Posted by Thene
April 4, 2008, 12:13 PM
I think we need to be careful when discussing this as it seems like the issue of speed at which data can be accessed is being lumped in with whether or not data can be accessed. The former being something that ISP's commonly make modifications to and the latter being a whole other matter entirely.
The traffic shaping that Bell and Rogers are now doing is not uncommon. Rogers has actually been doing this for a long time. The nature of cable internet is that the bandwidth you have coming into your home is shared amongst those in your area. It's easier with this technology to see the effects of those who 'hog' bandwidth. DSL works differently however Bell traffic shapes anyway since the farther you are from the CO (where your connection aggregates with other DSL circuits in your area) the more unstable your connection generally is. In other words selling a 3MB internet connection to someone a half block away from the CO will work differently than someone on the periphery. The ISP will throttle that persons connection to ensure it's as stable as their contract guarantees.
Bandwidth caps have also been previously used by Rogers and Bell. In fact, again, Rogers have always had them they just haven't charged for going over, which I believe is changing now. The cap is 65 Gigs or so. Thats the same as downloading about 70 movies per month or 10,000 songs. That's a limitation most people won't get close to and it specifically targets those who torrent night and day. Bell's throttling only affects torrent traffic and is in effect between 6pm and 2am only.
All of this was somewhat expected to those who follow tech news as ISP's across europe (including all of France and Germany) have been doing this for some time. It was only a matter of time before larger ISP's here began dealing with the torrent phenomenon.
I do side with you in that i have concerns about ISP's changing their policies in order to control traffic however I think were a far ways away from any kind of traffic blocking. No one does that for a variety of reasons. The large ISP's in the states (AT&T;, Cingular, Sprint etc) have wanted to take that route for a while now but guess who countered them.. Microsoft and Facebook and Google.. oh my! That's a fight the largest ISP's in the world won't win.
Posted by kiff
April 4, 2008, 3:24 PM
People who talk about net neutrality tend to be against the idea of the most bandwidth-munching sites - YouTube, Google et al - having to pay for delivery improvements.
But this argument has, in a sense, always been true. A few years ago it wasn't Bittorrent downloads and YouTube, but streaming internet radio and Napster. Or sites like Apple offering free downloads of movie trailers. Or news sites now offering streaming video reports about everything under the sun. There has always been pressure on ISPs to increase bandwidth because there will always be services that could use it—witness the rise of sites like Veoh and stage6.divx.com (recently killed due to copyright policing concerns that are besides the point of this argument), both of which demonstrated a strong desire for high-quality streaming video content beyond what YouTube offers.
There's a major difference between bandwidth caps, which treat all traffic as the same but simply limit how much you can download, and certain types of bandwidth throttling, which treat some traffic differently. This is the heart of the net neutrality issue: should ISPs be allowed to give some traffic priority over others, and if so, should they be allowed to decide what gets priority based not just on the protocol used (as with torrent throttling) but on the content of the traffic? In other words, should a site like CNN be allowed to pay ISPs to ensure its traffic gets through, possibly at the cost of ensuring reliable service to alternative news outlets?
And what hasn't been noted often in these discussions is that a) Rogers has engaged in throttling for quite a while now, to the point where they now throttle all encrypted network traffic, and b) there are legitimate uses for encrypted traffic that are affected as a result. The CBC offering The Next Greatest Prime Minister is one example, but there are others. Both Bittorrent Inc. and the people behind the Azureus client have launched legitimate video download services that use the bittorrent protocol. And while torrents are a major source of encrypted traffic, they're not the only source—virtual private networking, or VPN, is also throttled, and lots of people who rely on VPNs to access work servers from outside the office are feeling the pinch as well.
It's interesting to note that just as Bell announced they were throttling torrent traffic—not just on Sympatico but for any other ISP that utilized its DSL infrastructure—and Rogers announced its new cap structure, Comcast in the United States announced it would stop specifically targeting torrent traffic as a concession to its customer base. Like so many other things having to do with the regulation (or lack thereof) of technology, Canada seems to be running as fast as it can in the wrong direction.
Posted by Wesley
April 4, 2008, 7:14 PM
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