Results tagged “bittorrent”

For almost a year and a half now, some of Canada’s major ISPs, including Bell and Rogers, have defended their throttling practices by arguing that excessive BitTorrent traffic is crippling their networks. Open-internet proponents, like Michael Geist, SaveOurNet.ca, and even Google, have questioned the telecoms' motives and asked the CRTC to step in and stop throttling. Geist further argues that throttling, high prices, and slow speeds, are reducing Canada’s competitiveness in the new digital economy. Today, a report released by the OECD on broadband growth and distribution, revealed that Canada’s broadband services are among the slowest and the most expensive in the developed world. In terms of price per megabyte, Canada ranks twenty-eighth overall, just ahead of Mexico and Poland. With the CRTC’s July traffic-management hearings fast approaching, net-neutrality advocates are working overtime to spread awareness of the issues and rally Canadians behind their cause.

For more than a year now, Canadian ISPs, net neutrality advocacy groups, and the CRTC have been battling over the issue of internet traffic management. ISPs, like Bell Canada and Rogers, argue that they need to manage their network traffic in order to stop BitTorrent users from hogging all the bandwidth; net neutrality advocacy groups, on the other side of the issue, believe that the ISPs should treat all internet traffic equally, with the limited exceptions of viruses and spam. Groups like SaveOurNet.ca also argue that Canadian ISPs are inflating the issue in order to gain the leverage necessary to create a lucrative tiered internet service, so that they can charge Canadians more for their access. Finally, somewhere in the middle, the CRTC has been listening to both sides of the argument.

The day after the CBC announced its plans to release the finale of Canada's Next Great Prime Minister through BitTorrent, Bell Canada has moved quietly to throttle its services—including peer-to-peer filesharing—outraging both its customers and wholesale clients.

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist is reporting that the nation's public broadcaster is about to take a hugely progressive step in media distribution. On Monday, the day after Canada's Next Great Prime Minister (the political fantasy reality show filled with keeners and bored ex-prime ministers) airs, the CBC is going to release a high-quality copy of the episode via BitTorrent, without any digital rights management (DRM) protection.