Intellectual Property Law

Net Neutrality Heats Up in Canada

By Cynthia Brumfield

The concept of net neutrality is no longer a distinctly American notion. The idea has crept northward into Canada with a lot of recent activity in the legislative, regulatory and legal realms on the topic.

Among the recent developments, as Mark Evans points out, is a bill introduced last week by MP and former rock musician Charlie Angus that would bar network operators from engaging in any management practices that degrade or otherwise mess with content, applications or services.

On the heels of this move, 300 protestors rallied on Parliament Hill in Ottawa last week following Bell Canada's action in March to extend its traffic shaping efforts from only P2P applications to smaller ISPs which lease capacity from the top telco. The group representing these small providers, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP) complained to the CRTC (Canada's telecom regulatory authority, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission), which issued an emergency order forcing Bell Canada to stop the practice pending an inquiry.

Like U.S. network providers, Bell Canada defends itself saying that traffic congestion threatens the quality of service to hundreds of thousands of users and it must take steps to slow down drains on the network. The telco may face more than just the anger of regulatory authorities, though.

On Friday, a group called L'Union des consommateurs, along with Bell customer Myrna Raphael, filed a class action lawsuit against Bell Canada for its throttling practices. The suit accuses Bell of false advertising when it claims to deliver constant throughput at all hours and further accuses the company of privacy violations because of the deep packet inspection technology it uses in its management techniques.

The suit seeks hefty damages, including 80% of customers' monthly subscription fees, $600 per customer for false advertising and $1,500 per customer for privacy violations.

A Canadian public interest group SaveOurNet has emerged to fight for the cause, much like its U.S. counterpart, Save The Internet.

Full post as published by IP Democracy on June 02, 2008 (boomark / email).