Hi all, just to share with you a situation which is arising in Canada, not sure if this has been done elsewhere in the world, but as we are now distributing music online, this will surely harm Canadian musicians and consumers alike, for my fellow Canadians, there is a petition to be signed… And everyone can all read about it here…
Are any of you non-Canadians facing such regulation out there? Basically they want to meter our usage by the byte and charge like it was your mobile phone - really uncool. We are already paying too much compared to some other countries. We pay heavily for cell service, cable TV, satellite TV, now this?
I am concerned about how this will affect independent musicians, it will cripple the downloading audience considerably.
I don’t generally get political, but I feel this directly relates to many of us here.
Generally in the UK we pay for ISP connection and service monthly, and then depending on the tariff you sign up for whether you have a cap on bandwidth used. At least I think that’s how it works - I have been on the unlimited bandwidth service for years now.
yup, the notice came across my desk the other day. you’re right, we pay handily for services in this country, you can thank alot of that on the pushovers to big business like the crtc. ma bell and shaw don’t like the fact netflix and others are competing for tv eyes and stuff. charging extra for bandwidth is a way to get some of that money back. the many monopolies in this country from beer to tv/cell etc is really getting bad.
this all started innocently many years ago when the object was to offset american content with forced canadian content. personally I believe they just don’t think we’re smart enough to make an informed decision on what we like. typical carpet dwellers that think the world owes them a huge salary and an even bigger expense account.
hope it makes a difference, we just had a big rally here against US steel, the same kind of thing needs to happen with other issues like this so they realize we’re not just bitchin in our soup kitchen.
im also in the uk but signed it as in our day and age where all most every household uses the internet and download usage you should be given a chance to pay monthly subscriptions instead of “pay as you go” style ,thats not on !
Aloha to you too! My life is divided between the greater Toronto area during the week, then home on the weekends, that’s about 50kms or 30 miles east of North Bay. Working on finding a way to stay up there!
That is NOT good. At the moment in America, the only bandwidth restrictions are at the site/feature level (that I know of), but I don’t expect that to hold for long. It’s funny, in America we all bitch about losing our freedom, and the answer that always comes back to us is “just look at how other countries are being restricted!”. But I don’t think any of this matters because it is not a valid excuse any more. We are all losing our freedoms, just differing categories and differing speeds. Lately, it looks to me as if we’re all headed for that same black hole, no matter where we are in the world.
Depressing, I know. I’ll sign that petition as well.
Most ISPs in Canada have a cap on your monthly total downloads, but I never personally get close to the limit… I can live with that sort of regulation as I don’t want my leeching neighbours to suck the life out of the pipe… but this metering thing is the nail in the coffin… Two of the political parties have just spoken up about it and have stated their objections, not sure where that leaves us just yet…
a friend of mine is on bell and his downloads were always capped, I’m with primus and even though they rent the service from bell its never been capped, until now of course.
Ours is capped at 60Gb, and as I occasionally download Linux ISOs or use my AppleTV to rent the odd movie, I think I might have hit 10gb one time. Its never been an issue for me, but if they meter us, no more movies or ISOs unless I really need them. I won’t line their pockets willingly.
Based on what I read when people went crazy here in the US when a few of the Cable companies tried to do the same thing, the caps are targeting a VERY small % of the user base. Unfortunately, instead of being responsible and considerate about it, the cable companies decided to drop the cap down to silly low levels. And, they did not want to offer straight “automatic tier” prices. They wanted to sell the low cap and then have ridiculous up-charges on the overage.
So, they backed off and put in really high caps. The danger being, they will slowly lower them down over the years. And, you will get crazy pricing schemes that are impossible to figure out.
Sure, that would be great if they would set the cap at a reasonable spot and provide a pricing model that made sense. But, instead of just protecting themselves and providing reasonable service to consumers, they decided it was a great opportunity for a money grab.
According to this (see document 4g), Canadian caps are the highest, averaging at nearly 80GB per month, which I guess is why the price per MB after reaching the cap is relatively high.
The thing the FCC (our idiots “protecting” our interests in the states) is trying to make sure is that when they set the cap, that things like “if you stream movies from us, it doesn’t count against the cap” type of shenanigans. With online media driving a lot of money through the tubes of the ISPs, they will try to drive their content down your throat and charge a premium for using someone elses. That fight is coming.
Well, according to the news this morning, the outcry has reached our governing political party, and they all want to download movies too … so the CRTC is being encouraged to explain why they wanted to implement this metering, and it will be legislated down if they don’t revoke the order.
So good news for all Canucks!
They stated there were over 250,000 names on the petitions - thanks everyone for your help!
Yeah, hopefully Harper will overturn the decision simply because of public backlash, but you can’t trust him with these issues, either. His gov’t tried to implement that contentious copyright bill a year or so ago that would allow spying on Canadians through their ISP. Currently, it is illegal for an ISP to give out personal information on a client. Harper tried to do it under pressure from US big media and copyright lobbyists, basically selling out Canada (kind of like how he did so over the Softwood Lumber dispute). The bill fail to pass, but it hasn’t gone away. They’ve been reworking it and will likely re-submit it at some point. They probably just don’t have a chance of its passage while the Cons hold a minority gov’t, as the other parties were extremely against it, as are pretty much all citizens who know if it.
Harper is a US and big business stooge, but he’ll also change his face just to hold on to power. The only way to get his cooperation on these issues is for the public sentiment to reach loud enough volumes that he thinks disobeying would hurt him in an election.
… so the CRTC is being encouraged to explain why they wanted to implement this metering, and it will be legislated down if they don’t revoke the order.