Will Network Neutrality Survive?

The digital copyright dispute in Canada is really becoming something of an enigma. Ever since Industry Minister Jim Prentice introduced a copyright bill, essentially allowing the discrimination and surveillance of our Internet use, several months ago, public outcry has been intense, but so has Mr. Prentice's determination. Prentice's initial attempt failed, and last week saw 300 people protesting outside of Parliament Hill because of the possible introduction of yet another (revised) bill. Michael Geist just blogged that Prentice's "staff is working overtime to eliminate any negative comments on Wikipedia" pertaining to the introduction of his new copyright bill.

As of yesterday, the Globe and Mail reported that we could see the new bill introduced today but now says that because of various obstacles Prentice and company are being forced to reconsider dropping it altogether until the conservatives reach majority government status. CBC, however, reports that the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) says it was promised the bill would appear before summer break. Now, the bill didn't show up today, but still might before The House of Commons breaks for summer.

We should be glad that the fight for Net Neutrality is growing along many fronts. Just recently, The Union des consommateurs and a MontrealBell customer, Myrna Raphael, have announced that they are taking Bellto court for traffic shaping. Earlier last week, Charlie Angus [to theleft] introduced a private members bill to uphold the principle of NetNeutrality, and guard Internet usage from traffic throttling.

What is this digital copyright bill about? It's a copy of the US' Digital Millinium Copright Act (DMCA), which serves to allow ISPs and media conglomerates to protect their copyrights from abuse happing over the Internet.

What is Net Neutrality? The principle of the neutral treatment of onlinecontent. The Internet differs from (broadcast or satellite) Television,as a medium, in that it offers a space for citizens to share andcompete for resources, information and attention more equally - at least until recently. The fear many of us had way back in the late 90's was that the threat of corporate bottlenecking would happen sooner than it has.

What is traffic shaping? The act of discriminating against certain types of Internet content (usually bit torrent) so as to bottleneck or shape the flow of traffic. Bell argues that its networks can't handle the heavy load of common bittorrent use. They say this is because of the constant uploading that bittorrent requires for sharing files. In order to discriminate they must use a method known as deep packet inspection to look into the stream of content and tell just what type it is. They say that this method is done automatically via spybots or whatever, but this is the first step towards surviellance - what media conglomerates are after. In a perfectly neutral system, upload and download rates would be equally allowed for, and your use of the Internet (as an interactive medium) would be free of any constraint discriminating what type of content you're uploading or downloading. The web offers us the chance to create and share content, not simply passively download - such as the case with satelite TV. This new copyright bill would allow for ISPs to traffic shape, and media conglomerates to discover just who is violating their precious copyrights. It would also probably lead to more of a passive consumer model of Internet use, like we've seen with TV, where the cost of uploading content would steadily rise, allowing ISPs to make profits off of our contribution to the Internet community.

Interestingly though,

the Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright, a group that includes Google, Yahoo, Rogers, Telus, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the Retail Council of Canada, among others, also announced its opposition to a U.S.-style DMCA in February.[CBC.ca]

So not all big companies are for a DMCA in Canadian law.

But that Bell (the largest ISP provider in Canada) and most media conglomerates want to discriminate and survey the content you download or upload implies that they are opposed to network neutrality even though most don't come out saying just that - even though the new CEO of Virgin said just that. Network neutrality is the fundamental democratic principle of the Internet, and if we are to continue to utilize it as a tool for community organizing, creating and sharing content (free of draconian surviellance and discrimination) then we must oppose any attempt a company (like Bell or Rogers) takes to discriminate content (such as in the case of deep packet inspection) as the first step towards eventual surveillance and control of Internet use - our use of the Internet. Such has been the case with broadcast and satellite Television - the great cultural pacifier.