Mediacheck

Who Will Control Our Digital Soul?

Internet battle lines are drawn in Canada. Here's what's at stake.

By Steve Anderson, 15 Jan 2009, TheTyee.ca

Throttling the Internet (net neutrality)

Big firms 'throttling' small independents

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The great value of the open Internet is that it allows us to envision and, in fact, produce a more democratic media system.

But the open Internet is under threat by the very companies that bring it into our homes and workplaces, Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These big telecommunication companies want to become the gatekeepers of the Internet, charging hefty fees to reach large audiences, as they do with other mediums.

Big telecom companies are trying to do away with the governing guidelines of the Internet called "net neutrality" (or "common carriage"). Net neutrality requires that Internet service providers not discriminate -- including speeding up or slowing down web content -- based on its source, ownership or destination. Net neutrality protects our ability to direct our own online activities, and also maintains a level playing field for online innovation and social change.

The activity of limiting or slowing access to specific content and services is referred to as "traffic shaping" or "throttling," and it fundamentally changes how the Internet works. According to Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, ISPs already have a "history of blocking access to contentious content (Telus), limiting bandwidth for alternative content delivery channels (Rogers), and raising the prospect of levying fees for priority content delivery (Bell)."

If we let big ISPs have their way, media producers, online entrepreneurs and social change makers will need to ask Bell, Rogers and other big ISPs for permission and pay large sums of cash to effectively distribute content or innovate.

Revolt of independents, capitulation of CRTC

The importance of net neutrality was made clear when Bell Canada's traffic "throttling" began limiting users' ability to view the CBC's hit show "Canada's Next Great Prime Minister." Some users claimed it took over a day to download the show. In addition to manipulating its own customers' use of the Internet, Bell also "shapes" traffic passing through its network from independent ISPs like Teksavvy Solutions, thereby also limiting one of its few competitors from offering open access to the Internet.

The Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) stood up for independent ISPs by sending a formal request to the CRTC urging them to order Bell to cease and desist from throttling its competitors' Internet service. Unfortunately, on Nov. 20th the CRTC ruled that Bell could continue to throttle independent ISPs who interconnect with its network. The CRTC's ruling in the CAIP proceeding acts to limit competing ISPs from offering differential services, like providing access to the open Internet.

The battle continues. The CRTC recently announced a new public hearing on the wider issue of traffic shaping ("throttling"). Many of the anti-consumer aspects of the Bell/CAIP decision could be reversed if the traffic-shaping hearing comes down in the public's favour.

Canada as backwater of online innovation?

When social entrepreneurs and public interest organizations in Vancouver, the most concentrated media market in North America, aimed to create an innovative online news organization, The Tyee, they didn't have to ask for ISP permission. Likewise, when a new global, independent news organization, Toronto based TheREALnews.com, wanted to experiment with real time online debate formats, they did not need to pay expensive distribution costs; they just began streaming their content. When Rabble.ca wanted to create its own online national TV station, they didn't need to pay exorbitant fees for a TV station, they just innovated using the online tools available.

These projects would not exist if the Internet was not an open medium. What's worse, the next Tyee, TheREALnews, or Rabble.ca won't exist if we don't have an open neutral network. When we lose the open Internet, we lose the freedom to innovate.

I was recently on a panel with representatives from Bell and Telus where both expressed a willingness and interest to provide special access to a new Internet fast lane for media and technology companies that can afford to pay extra fees. This is an astonishing and arrogant admission considering these companies have consistently claimed that they simply manage their networks to provide the best service for their customers.

These ISPs want to open a new revenue stream by providing a two-tiered Internet: a fast lane for those who can pay and a slow lane for those who can't.

New entrepreneurs, online innovators, civil society groups and independent media will likely not have the capital to pay for fast lane access. The end result will be a medium more like TV where you have to pay off telecom gatekeepers just to reach the Canadian people, thereby placing big telecom and their deep pocketed partners (not users) firmly in the driver's seat.

A tax on innovation

The loss of Canadian grown online innovation is not hypothetical -- TheRealNews.com relies heavily on freely available web tools like Skype for their video interviews. Skype, like most innovative tools available on the web, is dependent on a neutral, open Internet. Because Canada's regulators have thus far adopted a do-nothing approach towards big telecom, TheRealNews.com can't be sure if their Skype video problems are caused by big telecom interference or not.

Conversely, the telecom regulator in the U.S. (the FCC) has upheld the principles of net neutrality and president-elect Obama, and the newly elected U.S. congress are now poised to make net neutrality law. So why should TheREALnews stay in Canada where big telecom can throttle access to online services when they can get reliable open access to the Internet in the U.S.? The more often this question is asked, the more Canada becomes the backwater of online innovation. In these tough economic times, we can ill afford such a fate.

The battle lines

To be clear, this is not a battle between big ISPs and CAIP, this is not a battle between ISPs and Google, nor is it just a battle between ISPs and their own customers. This is a battle between a handful of big telecom companies on one side and online innovation, free speech, small business, independent media, artists and civil society on the other -- it's a handful of big telecom companies against the rest of Canada.

In these times of great political, economic, and social instability, we need all the innovation we can find. Now more than ever we need an open medium that can facilitate a wide public discussion on the key issues of our time. The CRTC and parliamentarians can do their part by enacting and enforcing policies that support the open Internet.

The bottom line is that after the dust has settled either big telecom will regulate the Internet, or Internet users will determine their own online activities.

Who will control Canada's digital soul?

More about this issue at: http://saveournet.ca.

Related Tyee stories:

[Tyee]

Steve Anderson is the national coordinator for the Campaign for Democratic Media. He is a contributing author of Censored 2008 and Battleground: The Media and has written for The Tyee, Toronto Star, Epoch Times, Common Ground, Rabble.ca and Adbusters.

Reach him at:
steve@democraticmedia.ca
http://www.facebooksteve.com/
http://www.steveontwitter.com/
http://medialinkscolumn.com

Media Links is a syndicated column supported by CommonGround, The Tyee, Rabble.ca, The Vancouver Observer, and VUE Weekly.

Media Links by Steve Anderson, Common Ground, Rabble.ca, The Tyee, VUE Weekly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License. You must attribute this work to Steve Anderson, Common Ground, Rabble.ca, The Tyee, Vancouver Observer, VUE Weekly (with link).

9 Comments:

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  • Fiat lux

    3 years ago

    The control of information

    The control of information has always been one of the greatest weapons in the hands of dictators, religions and ruling classes. As we can see their control of the printed and electronic media.

    The Net is the first time in history when the unwashed masses can receive and exchange uncensored information within seconds, from all over the world

    The secretly negotiated MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) by the OECD nations was ready to be signed May 1997, but a few months before that a copy was leaked in France and onto the Net. I first read about it in Jan. 1997 on the ecol-econ list of the U of Colorado.

    It showed that the MAI was nothing less than the forcing of corporate dictatorship over the participating countries. The resulting outrage forced the participants to postpone the signing by one year, giving time to the governments, to "sell" the treaty to their people.

    Although the Liberal, PC and Reform Parties were pushing the deal in Canada, it was getting nowhere and the leaks were on the Net within minutes, forcing one of the Canadian negotiators, Sylvia Crystal, to exclaim: "Is there no way to stop these people?"

    Finally, the French government backed out, fearing a revolution and the whole racket collapsed, but now coming back with the attempts to push through the EU Constitution and other so called "free trade agreements", basically all containing the words and intents of the MAI.

    Nevertheless, the MAI was the first internationally negotiated treaty in history, ready for signatures, that has been knocked over by public pressure, made only possible by the Net.

    The powers have not forgotten the lesson and have been working on the crippling of the Net ever since. In the name of "freedom" and "democracy" of course.

    The question is: Will people permit them to take total control, or should we have at least some degree of freedom of speech and information?

    Ed Deak.

  • MichaelT

    3 years ago

    uhhm good article

    but can we toss the garbage about souls? religion is the biggest problem with humanity and yet here it is in my face on a tech article.

    it just reduces your audience to fanatics and turns off regular folks who you see to think you represent

  • snert

    3 years ago

    The RIAA, that's who

    http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/LawPolitics/story?id=6650027&page=1

  • Michael

    3 years ago

    Does the Tyee want its own piece of our digital soul?

    In Steve Anderson's piece, I don't see mention of the proposal to tax ISPs to encourage the creation of more Canadian content, http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/553703. If you are worried about a two-tiered internet, objecting to this CRTC proposal is one way to keep the horses from getting out of the barn. The Tyee's silence on this issue, however, leaves me wondering.

  • ME2

    3 years ago

    Ed Deak

    Thank you for your post Ed. Your info re MAI should be plenty enough to make most people see what's at stake here.

  • Bailey

    3 years ago

    reregulation as a social goal

    Our so called elected representatives deregulated the energy industry at the request of the energy industry, backed up by massive cash contributions.

    The result: the Enron fraud and exposure of the fraudulent nature of the whole relationship.

    They deregulated the financial industry, including abandoning their own sworn duties in the matter, at the request of the financial industry. Backed once again by massive contributions to the 'regulators' or their parties

    The result: the looting and meltdown of the entire global banking and mortgage industries, and the exposure of massive misbehaviour of even major financial institutions.

    They have also deregulated the media and absolved it of it's traditional public duty to serve the public trust without bias, and I do believe media companies and their personnel have been reported to have contributed largely to political campaigns as well.

    The agenda for all these moves must be a pretty much unified one. They all tend to produce the same result: the replacement of national authority, based on territorial interests with corporate interests.

    The end, if it came to be, would be a substitution. Nation states out -- corporate states in. No more civil or human rights, no more public interests, no more possibility for ordinary people to influence power, or even know reliably in whom power actually rests.

    Many of these goals have been provisionally achieved already, and if the same bought off people continue to represent the people's interests, the current hard times will be simply another way to advance the intended change, rather than the object lesson it might be. Which might inspire a positive change, or a strengthening of proper democratic regulatory norms.

    That will mean a certain return to slavery and serfdom, based on skills rather than land, and without the proper responsibility of the master for the welfare of his people that made feudalism such a stable political system in it's earlier incarnation.

  • cw

    3 years ago

    cw

    It's time we all figured out that these companies are not in the business of providing access to the internet but of restricting access to the internet.

    As cartels, they're doomed to fail; the question is "when?"

    I believe it won't be until we can come up with a way to circumvent the bottleneck, either by connecting to a place where access is more openly offered and bringing our own "backbone" from there, or some other method. Suggestions?

    Note: the average connection speed in the US last year was 1.9 megabits/second. In Canada it was less. Where I live, there is only one provider, and speeds usually range in the neighbourhood of 200-500 kilobits per second. The average access speed in Japan last year (not maximum, or urban but countrywide average) was 62 megabits per second. Somehow, somebody is doing the regulating differently over there.

    We need to find out how, and somebody needs to take the initiative, and make that and better happen here. Somebody a lot bigger and more powerful than me, but somebody who can figure out how to do it and make it worth their while.

    That will make the terms shaping or throttling join others like dial-up and 300 baud in the dustbin of history.

  • leedman

    3 years ago

    Good article and Canadians are True North, Strong, and Free

    I've always liked that statement in the national anthem. The True North didn't mean that much to me, and strong didn't always seem to apply, but Free... that word alone means so much to me as a Canadian.

    Hogwash to MichaelT, your reduction of "religion" being the biggest problem with humanity fails to take into account a good number of "religious" practices adopted by businesses and governments throughout history; also as a means to control the buying public.

    Human behaviour is a bastion of freedom that can be easily manipulated through mass media, and one that we'd already lost many a fight. Controlling the Internet paves the way to a brave future of everyday people getting "real" information that paints a more holistic picture of a globalizing humanity; and some of it will be pretty intense and risque.

    Religion, politics, and business have been so tightly enmeshed for centuries, that all the conflict of the crazed middle-east, to name one hot-spot, is ingrained in human psyches that have just as whole-heartedly bought into the bullshit, just like the youth who bought into the boy and girl band flash-pans that have netted entertainment huge bucks. It's all religion.

    Saving the soul plays on the words, but the truth of what it speaks is true enough and people better pay attention to the voices. I just hope the masses who want to be online don't buy so far into the media hype themselves that only sensationalism garners an audience.

    I'd like to see more quality than quantity, but I don't want to be restricted by what big business says that quality should look like. We're watching a revolution underway in media, and many in print are scrambling to find their new "space" in a virtual world.

    Net Neutrality affects their future too.

  • gassyandy

    3 years ago

    CRTC

    The Canadian Radio and Television Commission (corp.)

    This is a real joke right now, 20 years ago the CRTC was a working solution designed to keep the Americans from destroying Canadian Content, then The gov. decided that the CRTC should take responsibility for licensing
    of radio and television spectrum away from the then D.O.T.! this is where all the problems started, The first CRTC screw-up was when the CRTC allocated new FM frequencies for the Greater Vancouver area. does anybody remember our JAZZ station that turned into 24 hour news and is now JACK-FMing off? Well I could give you a long list of CRTC screw ups, (I being a local expert on radio) but I will spare you all of that. I think the time has come that we disband the CRTC and perhaps again separate it's responsibilities to more defined areas of media. we need a separate government agency to be responsible just for digital media and it's delivery. This should never have been given to the CRTC. Lets see if Mr. Harper will get it, and perhaps fix this problem.

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