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Passion of the Nerds

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20090610openinternettownhall4.jpg
From left to right: Rocky Gaudrault, Derek Blackadder, Sass, and Raymi.


On Monday night, the Gladstone Hotel held the first of three cross-Canada net neutrality discussions established by SaveOurNet.ca. Speakers included SaveOurNet co-founder Steve Anderson; Rocky Gaudrault, CEO of TekSavvy; Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation; Derek Blackadder, a national representative with CUPE; Raymi Lauren White, of Raymi the Minx; and Sass, of zucket.com. The panel discussed a variety of internet-related topics, including throttling, public infrastructure, and the oligopolies of Bell and Rogers, but most of the debate focused on the movement’s deepest problem: how to sell the concept of net neutrality to average Canadians.


20090610openinternettownhall1.jpg
Digital democracy in action.


The consensus reached was that most Canadians don’t know anything about net neutrality—or if they do, then they don’t think the issue affects them. “People view it as a nerdy thing,” joked Raymi. “The nerds will take care of it; who cares!…Net neutrality needs to be dumbed down and loved up.”
Although the panel stressed the importance of “sexying up” the issue, the audience questions pushed the discussion in a technical direction. “We definitely—myself included—spiralled into this nerd-tastic conversation that would just scare everyone away from this issue,” concluded Mark Surman at the end of the discussion. “As big as the challenge of the duopolies is, if we can’t figure out how to make this a conversation that is about something great and emotional, we are possibly screwed.”

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Mark Surman getting riled up.

Like so many tech events, online social media tools were used in real time to integrate participants and foster discussion. Attendants tweeted, bloggers blogged, and The Real News Network live-streamed the event and even provided an online chat room where participants could submit their questions to the panel’s moderator. But despite the interconnectivity, some participants felt that the discussion was too insular. “I was at another similar event a while back and generally see—I’m sorry to say—the same demographic in this crowd that I saw in the other crowd,” explained an audience member. “So, that tells me that there’s some broadening that has to be done.”
Several attendees, including Jesse Brown, of TVO’s Search Engine, also questioned the movement’s political alliance with the left. “NOW Magazine, Rabble.ca, the absent Mrs. Chow—is it necessarily a good idea to align net neutrality with the far left in Canadian politics?” asked Brown. “I can see it just as easily being a right-wing free market libertarian issue…why don’t we keep net neutrality neutral and put up a big tent, and everybody who cares about it can get under.”
Ultimately, the controversial conversations gave the event energy and purpose. While the meeting didn’t produce a consensus on how to reach Canadians, that really wasn’t the point. The objective was to open the floor and have a frank discussion about issues, and that’s exactly what happened. “The biggest thing right now is to be able to discuss this in an organized fashion,” concluded Gaudrault. “But even more, in a way that actually provokes people to stand up and say, ‘what the hell!’ We all have to realize that this is really important; it’s going to set the foundation for the next hundred years, and if we don’t do it soon it’s going to affect us.”
If you’re interested in listening to the audio from the event, a podcast is available at Rabble.ca.
All photos by Andrew Louis/Torontoist.

Comments

  • http://undefined Astin

    The topic needs to be adjusted for each audience. The computer geeks get it, but the rest of the world doesn’t. I liked Michael Geist’s explanation to the Senate the other day – he used Chapters vs Amazon and Canadian TV network streaming as examples. It seemed to sink in that maybe Canada would be severely hurt by a two-tier Internet because our properties might not be willing to pay the higher fare.
    Appeal to the indies out there by letting them know their songs and movies won’t be watched because they’ll be slow. Appeal to the business people by pointing out their websites won’t be visited because the big store pays for faster access. Appeal to the consumer by pointing out that the higher cost of access will be passed on to them.

  • http://zucket.com sass

    I agree with Astin.

  • http://undefined rek

    Perhaps someone should code an Unneutral Simulator, to demonstrate (or exaggerate, if you really want to sell it) just what a biased net would be like to surf on. YouTube? Sorry, that’s owned by Google, a competitor to Rogers/Yahoo, so you’ll have to wait a bit. Google? But you’re with Bell, who has ties with Microsoft, so you’ll be redirected to Bing.com instead.

  • http://www.RohanJayasekera.com/ Rohan Jayasekera

    “The objective was to open the floor and have a frank discussion about issues, and that’s exactly what happened” is untrue, according to what I’ve heard and read. What about the issue of whether Net Neutrality, as envisioned by the geeks, is a good thing? Where was the “frank discussion” about that?
    It’s not just because of some kind of marketing problem that the geeks aren’t reaching the public. The public does not share the core values of the geeks. While I would hope that the public would agree that preventing the kind of destination shenanigans that tyrannosaurus_rek refers to is important, the geeks are also angry at the throttling of BitTorrent traffic. The public doesn’t care about that, and in fact if most people were aware that illegal traffic (which the vast majority of torrents are) is slowing down the net for everyday public use, I expect that they would be *against* Net Neutrality.
    The geeks are completely out of touch with the broader public, and that’s why they’re not making the progress they think they should be: their values are different from the general public’s. If a broader range of speakers had been invited to this meeting (which was mislabelled as a “Town Hall” even though the only speakers invited were those favouring Net Neutrality), they might have learned that. But as far as I can tell the geeks have their ideology and that’s that. My comment on the Facebook page for the event was deleted by an administrator: contrary opinions are apparently forbidden.
    I’m proud to say that, as a geek myself, I co-founded Sympatico, which we called “the Internet service for all Canadians”, i.e. not just geeks. Before Sympatico, you pretty much had to be a geek to get on the Net (all the ISPs had geeky names like “TekSavvy”, and heaven help you if you wanted to get on the Internet but weren’t tech-savvy), and we thought it was important to change that. My challenge to the geeks is to let go of the throttling issue and instead insist only on neutrality of destination. If you can’t do that, just admit that your interests are not those of the general public. Regardless, stop calling events like this “Town Halls” when they’re actually rallies for Net Neutrality – and neutrality of a particular form, not the kind that I (for instance) favour. Wake up and open yourself up to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the reason you can’t sell the public on your views is that the public doesn’t agree with you. Then ask yourself whose interests you’re working for. If you’re elitist, admit it and stop pretending that you care about unsophisticated users who do things like forward jokes by email.
    The Internet should be for all, not just geeks.

  • http://undefined ron.jace

    Not only geeks use teksavvy. Many average normal people who are sick of you and Bell use it. Bell used to have good service for the time back in 2002 or so but they haven’t really put any money in upgrading or network. In The U.S. verison is laying down fiber to each house. The service is called FiOS. That network can easily handle speed and bandwidth that Bell can’t even come close to. Bell is using lines which were payed for by the tax payers. It’s the tax payers who should be able to control the issue with Net Neutrality. And don’t start with the issue that Canada is a very big country. Many countries around the world have fibber to the home only in big cities. The rural part of the country, only has DSL. In Canada we hardly have fiber.
    People Look at this website and look at what positions Canada is in. Are all the other countries that much better then us? http://www.oecd.org/document/54/0,3343,en_2649_34225_38690102_1_1_1_1,00.html
    Lets not get misinformed.
    People this is what NET NEUTRALITY really is (it’s a simple explication): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jHOn0EW8U
    We need Net Neutrality!

  • http://undefined rek

    The really tech-savvy nerds are bypassing Bell’s throttling with Tomato MLPPP, or turning to Usenet and Megaupload/Rapidshare/etc instead of torrents.

  • http://undefined ron.jace

    True… But bypassing throttling is actually pretty easy. To use MLPPP all you need to do is buy a compatible router and load a new firmware and enable MLPPP. It takes less then 10 minutes. Anyone can do it.

  • http://undefined montauk

    Clearly you have never ever worked in tech support. Real people – presumably included in the “anyone” you referred to – can’t distinguish conceptually between a browser and “the Internet”. Real people will spend days without a connection before a kindly friend or family member advises them to reset their router. Real people need forty-five minutes of technical support to download and use an FTP client; resetting an IP takes five minutes of “i as in icicle, p as in proper, c as in cool…” and don’t even get me started on helping people find functions in the new MS Office. These are not the lowest echelon of computer users, these are the average. Saying “anyone” can bypass throttling with MLPPP in 10 minutes is mad naive.

  • http://undefined rek

    Fortunately my router was already compatible with MLPPP. I would’ve never heard of it if Bell hadn’t decided to punish TekSavvy customers like me for not being Bell customers.

  • http://undefined Sam Davies

    And yet despite being with Teksavvy, you still are a Bell customer. Half of what you pay goes to them anyhow! In other words, they are actually still making money off of their competition in the DSL market!

  • http://www.RohanJayasekera.com/ Rohan Jayasekera

    As Sam Davies points out above, TekSavvy is merely a Bell reseller — yet he still uses the word “competition” to describe them. It’s the lack of a proper competitive market that results in things like the issue of throttling; customers should be able to choose between ISPs who throttle and who don’t. (Me, I’d choose one who throttles, since I don’t want to be slowed down by all those torrents that are clogging the tubes, nor to pay for the network capacity needed to keep them flowing quickly.) As ron.jace says, things like Verizon’s FiOS can help, but he doesn’t mention that FiOS costs US$23 billion to build, and back when the Canadian telephone companies planned to do something similar their budget was C$8 billion. I’ll start to respect TekSavvy if and when it actually invests in putting in its own facilities to connect to customer lines. But that would cost money (nothing in the billions though, since the customer lines for DSL already exist), and someone would have to cover that cost — but no, the Internet is supposed to be “free” according to the geeks. And this is where it *does* get into being a left/right issue: will the solution to the oligopoly be increased competition (the right), or forcing the existing ISPs to provide good service to network abusers (the left)?
    The responses so far to my comment above support my point that the Internet is being hijacked, not by the likes of Bell and Rogers, but by the geeks. Who out there cares about the average user? Even montauk, who *does* understand the average user, gives no sign of that. To the geeks, the Internet is a resource they can use to the max for their own purposes, such as massive file-sharing, and so what if the material’s pirated, because the cool kids see nothing wrong with theft. (I can’t stand the Big Copyright industry either, but instead of stealing their material I support indie artists. If everyone did that, Big Copyright would be dead already, and unable to continue suing 12-year-olds, etc.) As long as the geeks’ cause is piracy, or subsidization of their network usage by the non-geeks, it’s clear that the geeks care about themselves, not the public.

  • http://undefined rek

    Basement dwelling geeks are not the only people using bittorrent, so your argument is shot to hell right there. Pretty much everyone I know uses it, from Linux geeks to my sister, who thought she could copy her Windows programs to her new Mac. I think your idea of who is using the internet for what is pretty dated.

  • http://undefined El Quintron

    First off I’d like to say thank everyone for organizing this event. I’m glad we could get together and discuss what we would like to have happen with the Canadian internet.
    In order to maintain a positive signal to noise ratio, we should perhaps demystify P2P a little.
    Seeing as P2P is not synonymous with file sharing, we should probably let people know which non-file sharing P2P applications they use that are affected by Bell and Roger’s throttling:
    -Skype one of the most widely used internet phone applications is using P2P technology
    -TVUPlayer, which carries a number of North American stations including CBS, Spike TV, and Fox News.
    -Livestation UK P2PTV
    -Steam Gaming applications and updates
    -The sciencenet P2P search engine provides a free and open search engine for scientific knowledge. sciencenet is based on yacy technology. Universities / research institutes can download the free java software and contribute with their own peer(s) to the global network. Liebel-Lab @ Karlsruhe institute of technology KIT.
    -Business: Besides File Sharing, companies are also interested in Distributing Computing, Content Distribution, e-marketplace, Distributed Search engines, Groupware and Office Automation via P2P networks.
    -Miro a video podcatcher, offers the option for content providers to stream via P2P.
    What Bell is trying to do, is keep these user-friendly, non-geek technologies from cannibalizing its business model (Bell Video Store, Express Vu, Bell Fund Bliki)
    I think it would also be wise to note that some commenter have a vested interest in monetizing the internet:
    quote:
    ________________________________________
    Products are wonderful things from the perspective of your wallet, because you get to create something once and then sell it over and over. Internet-based products are especially wonderful because the cost of providing them to additional customers is close to zero.
    ________________________________________
    from:»www.rohanjayasekera.com

  • mikeyteeth

    Hey Torontoist,
    You say the conversation about net neutrality is too insular, but you didn’t make an effort to explain what the issues really are. You mentioned the problems briefly you could’ve taken the first step and included your not-so-tech-savvy readers with one or two sentences in layman’s terms. Otherwise good article.

  • http://undefined rek
  • http://undefined GoogleFreak

    “The responses so far to my comment above support my point that the Internet is being hijacked, not by the likes of Bell and Rogers, but by the geeks. Who out there cares about the average user? Even montauk, who *does* understand the average user, gives no sign of that. To the geeks, the Internet is a resource they can use to the max for their own purposes, such as massive file-sharing, and so what if the material’s pirated, because the cool kids see nothing wrong with theft. (I can’t stand the Big Copyright industry either, but instead of stealing their material I support indie artists. If everyone did that, Big Copyright would be dead already, and unable to continue suing 12-year-olds, etc.) As long as the geeks’ cause is piracy, or subsidization of their network usage by the non-geeks, it’s clear that the geeks care about themselves, not the public.”
    Actually you’re wrong :P
    Many people I know who uses torrents aren’t geeks like you proclaim they are. Any non technical user can easily download torrents, it’s not rocket science. Most torrent users are average everyday people.
    Rohan you do not represent non the geeks, since you are a geek. I am a nongeek and you have no right to speak for me or any of the nongeeks. Smypatico has poor service, simple as that. That’s why company like Teksavvy does well. We don’t get excuses, lies and all that crap that I had to deal with Sympatico.
    Sympatico has the worst tech support I have ever encountered. Even Rogers has much better tech support.
    Most of the torrents users are nongeeks not geeks. In case you have forgotten the courts have already decided filesharing is not illegal.
    “Canada’s debate over file swapping flared last December, when the country’s Copyright Board, which regulates intellectual property issues, ruled that downloading songs from a peer-to-peer network for personal use–but not necessarily uploading–appeared to be legal.
    The regulators cited a long-standing rule in Canada, in which most copying for personal use was allowed. To repay artists and record labels for revenue lost by this activity, the government imposes a fee on blank tapes, CDs and even hard disk-based MP3 players such as Apple Computer’s iPod, and distributes that revenue to copyright holders.”
    http://news.cnet.com/2100-1027_3-5182641.html
    Torrent users are already paying for things they download indirectly. So don’t cry wolf about being illegal. It is legal for the courts.

  • http://undefined torontothegreat

    It’s an interesting issue.
    I do not pirate ANYTHING. I buy software, I buy music and I buy movies and entertainment (amongst books etc).
    I also have web space which I use for transferring these PURCHASED items to and fro for my OWN personal use. I sometimes transfer gigs of data.
    I also use Vonage as a phone provider.
    I am doing everything “correctly”/by the book.
    Yet, I’ve had to call Rogers SEVERAL times to tell them of problems with my connection (super slow speeds, dropped calls on my phone etc). Each and every time they deny that they are throttling it. So I started to wise up and said, “Well you know, I download a LOT of stuff”. Finally tech support said: “Oh, hold on, let me reset that for you” and VOILA, fast speeds, no dropped calls, no problems.
    2 weeks later, I’m calling tech support again.
    wtf is wrong with this picture?

  • http://www.RohanJayasekera.com/ Rohan Jayasekera

    Pretty much everyone *you* know. Sorry, but that’s hardly the average Internet user across Canada.

  • http://www.RohanJayasekera.com/ Rohan Jayasekera

    Since when is “monetizing the Internet” a bad thing? If it weren’t for that, few of us would be able to get on the Internet, because it would still be restricted to educational and research institutions.

  • http://www.RohanJayasekera.com/ Rohan Jayasekera

    I don’t claim to represent the nongeeks. I claim only that the geeks don’t represent the average users.
    The government fee covers things like blank CDs, but not downloading. SOCAN and others want to apply a similar fee to all Internet access (i.e. the ISPs would have to charge their users an extra tax), but unless and until that happens, no, torrent users aren’t “already paying”.

  • El Quintron

    Monetizing the Internet is fine as long as you don’t try and turn the clock back on what’s now free.
    The problem with what you’re proposing, and Bell’s business model is that they would rather keep Canada in the IT dark ages, compared to the rest of the world.
    Nearly all content is delivered via P2P (if you would have bothered reading my response) because it eliminates the need for expensive central servers.
    Your business model is preventing this.

  • http://undefined rek

    Your reading comprehension leaves much to be desired. Pretty much everyone I know is the average internet user in Canada.

  • http://undefined rek

    “I don’t claim to represent the nongeeks. I claim only that the geeks don’t represent the average users.”
    And you defined anyone using bittorrent as a geek, which is self-serving and obviously wrong to everyone here. Bittorrent isn’t a mysterious command-line-only protocol only hackers from the darkest corners of the internet use.
    When the CBC is trying out bittorrent as a distribution method, it’s about as far from the cutting edge of the internet as you can get without using a FidoNet client.

  • http://undefined GoogleFreak

    Rohan thank god you’re not a lawyer you would starve. I guess you don’t understand the current law in Canada. Proud to cofound of a company that has one of the worst tech support in the country and only cares about the bottom line before the customers. Sympatico is known as a rip off company, try to bill extra nothing when it wasn’t suppose to be in the first place. Lies about lies, tech support don’t know what they are doing or saying. I remember going through 4 to 5 people to get the answer I wanted. PATHEIC! :) )

  • http://undefined ugh…

    I think it’s very unfortunate that this issue has become divided by the nerds vs. norms, and geeks vs. non-geeks. For the neutrality of carriage on the internet is not something only for the geeks and the nerds to discuss. It affects free speech, privacy issues, consumer rights, telecom policy, broadcasting policy, business practices, artistic creativity, daily scheduling, and many more other things.
    Titling this article Passion of the Nerds creates a false duality in society. We are all nerds to a certain extent. Being a nerd is simply a specialization of a certain knowledge type (so a sports fan is a nerd, so is a person who knows lots about gossip, and a stock broker, and law for that matter). To use it in a pejorative sense doesn’t help anyone. It is clear that some people have special knowledges about the internet. Don’t you want their help or would you rather alienate them by continuing on bullshit high school social divisions?
    As someone who attended this town hall, I can say that it was rather tame when it came to the use of tech speak, and it could have been way more in depth. The majority of people were being very accessible to the public. Nobody talked about what would happen if the Supreme Court ruled that ISPs could be under the broadcasting act? And the elephant in the room, bittorrent, was not mentioned.
    We need public support for this issue, and we need to speak about it in terms of consequences rather than aspirations. We cannot divide ourselves based on nerd and geek, for this only creates fissures and destroys solidarity. It is a very legally complex issue; there are many laws that affect the use of the internet in Canada. It involves many different players: users, providers, regulators, lawyers, businesses, content providers, pirates, MPs, etc. And of course there is a lot of jargon: ISP, throttling, bittorrents, traffic shaping, etc. There is too much at stake to ignore that the issue is complex and calling it too “nerdy” for it to be the discussed in public.
    Incremental steps are what is needed to progress on this issue. You know what, you may not like it, but you may have to do some light reading to understand the issue. If that makes you a nerd or a geek, and if that’s bad, we’re hopeless.

  • http://www.RohanJayasekera.com/ Rohan Jayasekera

    If the CBC tries something out, that does not mean it’s mainstream, not unless you are of the view that the CBC is incapable of doing anything experimental. You’re quite right though that BitTorrent isn’t some arcane protocol usable only by hackers. If it were, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of BitTorrent traffic, and the carriers wouldn’t feel any need to throttle it. The reality is that there is entirely too much BitTorrent traffic, mostly for pirated movies, and it’s clogging the tubes for everyone else. Those responsible are indeed not geeks particularly, but the geeks are the ones defending them. I would love to see the geeks show more concern about the non-pirates than about the pirates. Then we might make some progress on this issue.

  • http://www.RohanJayasekera.com/ Rohan Jayasekera

    They’re not throttling all P2P traffic; just some of it. Things like BitTorrent and Kazaa are being throttled, but not things like Skype. The vast majority of what’s being throttled is pirated material. It sucks that the network hardware can’t tell the difference between pirated and non-pirated torrents, so that legitimate torrents are being hit as well, but it *can* tell the difference between BitTorrent and Skype.

  • http://www.RohanJayasekera.com/ Rohan Jayasekera

    I know what you meant; I just don’t agree that the people you know are the average user. Most Canadians on the Internet don’t use BitTorrent or Kazaa or similar.

  • http://undefined rek

    “The reality is that there is entirely too much BitTorrent traffic,”
    What is your metric for this? How much is enough?
    “mostly for pirated movies,”
    So what? When did it become Bell’s mandate to enforce copyright for Paramount and 20th Century Fox?
    “and it’s clogging the tubes for everyone else.”
    Bull and shit. Not only were the congestion rates incredibly low and easily correctable with cheap upgrades to DSLAM, once Bell implemented its throttling regimen, congestion increased.
    “Those responsible are indeed not geeks particularly, but the geeks are the ones defending them.”
    Now you’re contradicting your first comment in this thread.
    “I would love to see the geeks show more concern about the non-pirates than about the pirates.”
    The geeks (such as those at Ars Technica, Slashdot, DSLreports, etc) know torrenting is no threat to anyone’s access to the internet and point to Bell’s own numbers to prove it. If “the geeks” should be concerned for the “non-geeks” at all, it should be because they might fall for Bell’s anti-competitive crackpot marketing-driven campaign of misinformation and cripple competition and internet access in Canada more than they already have.

  • http://undefined GoogleFreak

    “They’re not throttling all P2P traffic; just some of it. Things like BitTorrent and Kazaa are being throttled, but not things like Skype. The vast majority of what’s being throttled is pirated material. It sucks that the network hardware can’t tell the difference between pirated and non-pirated torrents, so that legitimate torrents are being hit as well, but it *can* tell the difference between BitTorrent and Skype.”
    I didn’t know linux distros are pirated material. :) )
    Ubuntu is very popular linux distros which many people are introduced to torrents for download. :P
    Now you will claim a newbie to linux is a geek!

  • http://www.RohanJayasekera.com/ Rohan Jayasekera

    If torrents caused no congestion on the network, the carriers wouldn’t see any need to spend money on hardware to do throttling.

  • http://www.RohanJayasekera.com/ Rohan Jayasekera

    That’s why I said that it sucks that non-pirated torrents, such as Linux distros, are being throttled as well.

  • El Quintron

    Bull****, and you know it.
    All p2p is being throttled and the newbies are suffering for it. All or most geeks know how to, and are getting around the throttle.
    Bell is purposely manufacturing a bandwith crisis in order to bring in UBB.
    The geeks are actually on the “ordinary internet user”‘s side on this one.

  • El Quintron

    What proof do you have of this?
    If CBC chose to distribute its TV shows by BitTorrent, BitTorrent is certainly mainstream. If WoW (the world of warcraft for supposedly non-Geeks) chooses to distribute its patches via BT, the BitTorrent is certainly mainstream.
    Me thinks what your doing is trying to increase the noise to signal ratio for Bell.

  • El Quintron

    You know I wish that would be true, In a perfect world carriers would spend money on capacity and fiber rather than DPI boxes and a spin machine such as yourself.

  • http://undefined rek

    I’m not sure if that’s circular logic or just regular old illogic.