A net-neutrality activist group has uncovered plans for the demise of the free Internet by 2010 in Canada. By 2012, the group says, the trend will be global. Bell Canada and TELUS, Canada's two largest Internet service providers (ISPs), will begin charging per-site fees on most Internet sites, reports reliable sources within TELUS [2012 also coincides with the planned full launching of the so-called "North American Union"].
"It's beyond censorship: it is killing the biggest "ecosystem" of free expression and freedom of speech that has ever existed," I Power spokesperson Reese Leysen said.
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/07/22/02495.html
Stumble It!
Not really convinced by the blog articles on this so far. Apparently we won't have to wait long to see if this Time article materializes, though.
So, what will convincing you take?
That Rogers takes webpages, intercepts and changes them?
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000337.html
That British Telecom has also done this:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/05/148234
That Bell Canada goes a step further, and actually analyzes the data (all data, not just web pages) sent between two parties, and changes it:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... itics.html
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2916/125/
That Bell, Shaw, Telus and Rogers all throttle network traffic in some manner - unless it's to their own servers?
http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/56419
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/n ... f2&k=66930
And my personal favourite:
http://money.canoe.ca/News/Sectors/Medi ... 46-cp.html
Internet providers in Canada and the US took government and post dot-boom money meant for network and infrastructure upgrades, and piddled it away on CEO bonuses. Now they are whining they don't have the capacity to handle traffic. Soon, it will be a pay as you go style service, and only the big boys will be your choice destinations.
Places like Vive won't be able to compete, and the Internet will go from a place to share information, to one long TV commercial.
I've read all of your linked articles, including the warning about plans for the demise of the free internet, and I wouldn't put it past the ISP's to try it. However, barring legislation that makes the free internet illegal, this won't work. The minute that something like this is tried, I will cancel my account and head down to Futureshop to buy a WiFi base station. Millions will do likewise. Developers (like me) will write new P2P sharing and caching apps and together we will connect each other to the good ol' internet via wireless. It'll be slow, like it was 10 years ago, but it will be free.
But before that happens there will be protests the likes of which neither you nor I have seen in 40 years. 50,000 - 60,000 protested the pricing plan for an iPhone they did not even own. Imagine what will happen when they try to take the internet away.
By the way, there are three by-election races this summer. Two vacant Quebec ridings, Westmount-Ville Marie in Montreal and nearby Saint-Lambert, along with the southwestern Ontario riding of Guelph are up for grabs. Attend the public meetings and ask the candidates where they stand on net neutrality.
I agree, they will try, and they will fail.
The onerous part for me, is the interception, inspection and sometimes storage of what is in my packets. Then modifying and replacing web pages with targeted advertising.
We're going to have to fire up Gopher if we want to keep our conversations to ourselves.
Hey Monty,
I agree, they will try, and they will fail.
The onerous part for me, is the interception, inspection and sometimes storage of what is in my packets. Then modifying and replacing web pages with targeted advertising.
We're going to have to fire up Gopher if we want to keep our conversations to ourselves.
Yes, inspecting my outbound packets ought to be a privacy violation. We should all be using encryption for everything, email, web browsing, torrent downloads. Did you know (I'm sure you did) that google mail reads your email and pushes ads based on your email content? That's creepy. Current technology makes it possible to inspect everyone's outbound data - en masse. WHile your data may be normal enough, it provides the baseline used to identify the non-normal, the dissidents, the trouble-makers... actually, guys like YOU, Doc!
BTW Gopher? You must be REALLY old!!!
Yes, inspecting my outbound packets ought to be a privacy violation. We should all be using encryption for everything, email, web browsing, torrent downloads. Did you know (I'm sure you did) that google mail reads your email and pushes ads based on your email content? That's creepy. Current technology makes it possible to inspect everyone's outbound data - en masse. WHile your data may be normal enough, it provides the baseline used to identify the non-normal, the dissidents, the trouble-makers... actually, guys like YOU, Doc!
BTW Gopher? You must be REALLY old!!!
Yup, which is why I don't use gmail. Text-only email for me. Encrypted only email. I used to keep a copy of my PGP private key that people could use to encrypt email to me in my profile - but no one ever used it.
Yes, you damn whippersnapper - now get off my lawn! hehe. No, I've just been on the internet since the days of Mosaic and the real Netscape. I still know of a few Gopher sites that operate too! There are still dark corners of the internet that people have forgotten about, like the Paris catacombs.