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http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2272/125/
A respectful and well-deserved salute to our northern brothers and sisters. I don't know if the ignorant American masses even know or care about what Net Neutrality is, but if unenforced, would cause some major headaches down the road for the average Joe User, and have massive negative repurcutions for numerous "Ma and Pa" type small businesses.
Edit - I am American, for clarification.
Yeah well they're Canadians. Obviously the only thing that must be done is opposite of what Canadians would do. Obviously. Obviously. Obviously.
Whacker, my friend, I admire your optimism and ability to see the silver lining, but I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you a little bit.
As you note that the article says in two places, most Canadians aren't even aware of the issue, or of what it means, or of its implications.
As the article also says, they are neither aware of the fact that some Canadian ISPs throttle traffic (p2p, for instance - any and all p2p traffic, indiscriminately). Mostly, because it's not advertised - heck, some of the CSR's, when you call them, will swear up and down that they do NOT filter any traffic, even when there's lots of posts all over the net by folks who can see the traffic shaping with their own eyes. I mean, *I* was subscribed to such an ISP - needless to say, I've long switched.
My friend, Canadians, just like all other people, are uninformed. They follow Big Brother and whatever crap on TV just like Americans, Europeans, and everybody else.
Privacy issues, net neutrality, net censorship, IP & copyright - all these things are not seriously covered in the media. If they are, they would appear somewhere between the hockey scores and argument between the city council and the latest demands of the union of garbage pickup folks.
People don't care, they are not even aware they're affected (or they might be affected).
Just like people everywhere else.
There are good folks like Michael Geist who struggle to raise awareness, and fight the good fight, but they are few and far between - just like everywhere else.
Anecdotal evidence, but here it is anyway: I'm doing my phd in computer engineering in a very large Canadian university. It's computer engineering, ok ? It's not even computer science, where there's a lot of folks that just deal with theoretical stuff - it's mostly systems stuff.
The folks around me are as technical and geeky as they get - grad students in computer engineering. The vast majority of them have no idea what net neutrality is about. Keep in mind that these are young people for the most part, and they are very much involved with tech stuff.
I sometimes bring up this kind of topics, and without exception, people don't have a clue what I'm talking about, or why I get so excited. If *these* folks, who are in the best position to understand why such issues are important, because they have the technical knowledge, the background, - if they don't care and don't know and are not interested in these facts, what do you think John Doe on the street will know/care about them ?
How many people do you think read arstechnica ? The ones who do, are already aware of these things. The others have some vague idea about some law called DMCA or DCMA or something like that, that deals with "pirates". Probably in the US. Not sure if in Canada, too, or not. But did you see what the [Toronto Maple] Leafs did last night ?!
The concept of "net neutrality", that all traffic on any Internet connected networks should be treated equally- is idiotic. There, I said it. :sweatdrop:
It's hilarious to see dumb cause-heads like this, who apparently have little more understanding of how the Internet really works than Ted "series of tubes" Stevens.
I was going to try and explain it again, but then I found this write-up that should illustrate pretty clearly how dumb net neutrality is in the form that's being suggested now.
Weird.
I can probably choose from a dozen ISPs here anyway and I don't see why any ISP would want to stop access to certain websites, especially since I wouldn't use that ISP anymore, even if it meant abandoning the web completely. :sweatdrop: