The CRTC hearing into internet traffic management practices was asked a number of times to presume that ISPs would break the law. The independent film producers led off the discussions on Wednesday complaining that throttling of Torrent traffic discriminates against their low-cost content delivery system.
An example was given of an low-budget documentary recorded by an independent and made available by BitTorrent having to compete against a big-budget, high-def production that does a deal with iTunes for distribution. The allegation was that ISPs throttling Torrents are discriminating against the independent producers who couldn’t strike a deal for iTunes distribution.
One of the commenters on the National Post live blog raised an insightful point: are the ISPs discriminating or is it iTunes that is practicing discrimination? The ISPs don’t care if it is a big budget production house (such as the experience of CBC’s Next Great Prime Minister program) or an amateur video of dogs dancing.
The traffic management isn’t discriminating between legal and pirated material.
Where is the discrimination?