Notwithstanding nearly routine comparisons to China’s “Great Firewall”, increasingly we are seeing courts and governments in democracies around the world make determinations that certain content is illegal and orders are being issued to ISPs to block the transmission of the illegal material.
The latest I saw (thanks to a tweet by Barry Sookman) pointed to a court decision out of Italy that orders ISPs to implement blocking of The Pirate Bay catalog of torrents.
I am certain that we will hear about all sorts of collateral damage – innocent websites that get caught in the crossfire. why is this still happening?
We have university research that has been looking at ways to circumvent national firewalls – in effect, developing tools to assist in smuggling illegal bits across borders. For some reason, it seems to be less interesting for academic researchers to work on developing more effective, more efficient, more precise tools to enable enforcement of such judicial orders.
A court in Norway rejected blocking. Courts in two European countries reaching different conclusions on similar issues. I have written a number of times [see search results here] asking about how nations can or should assert sovereignty over the rules governing content on their national networks.
Is there a body of policy and technology research to be developed?
There were a couple of interesting stories last week that I found to be related.
First was a report that said that as many as a third of university students at some Canadian schools are unable to pass an English language proficiency exam. The story suggested the blame is spread between insufficient attention to grammar in the schools, coupled with students migrating their texting and social networking shortcuts into papers.
The second story was documenting a finding by the Pew Research Centre that blogging by teens and young adults has declined over the past 3 years. As any of us with that demographic in the household knows, Facebook has become the medium of expression.
I’m not convinced by the researcher’s explanation:
Teens in the U.S. have been told that putting your personal information out there publicly is a very bad idea — that it’s not safe, that people will come and harm you and your reputation. And I think because Twitter is so often used in a public way, teens, given all those cautions, don’t see the utility of it.
I think this is wishful thinking; there is still way too much personal information being shared on too many sites. [As an aside, I am going to ‘un-follow’ people who insist on tweeting the fact they are at Harveys or the bank or wherever; I just don’t care! Mark Evans also questions the viability of Four Square]
Is the decline in blogging, together with a migration to ‘short update’ tools like Twitter or Facebook, related to the decline in language proficiency?
Loosely associated with these articles was a presentation that I attended yesterday by Robert Watson of Sasktel. Among the takeaway messages I learned that Sasktel is expecting an enormous turnover in employees over the next few years due to retirements. The company has been active in area high schools, helping to increase the future labour pool by stimulating more kids to study relevant fields for future employment with the telco. A few years ago, I wrote about the need for us to inspire an innovation generation and I also wrote optimistically about some programs I have seen that are stimulating the pool of candidates.
Now, we need to make sure that we also find kids who can express themselves without resorting to emoticons for punctuation.
A flood of documents arrived in my email late yesterday, with parties filing their comments in response to the seventh amendment to Telecom Notice of Consultation 2009-261.
The filings should be available on the CRTC website in the next couple days.
In the meantime, here are some highlights.
From TELUS [para. 12]:
While new investment is completely in line with macro-economic policy, unbundling is not. In fact unbundling actually increases the risk of investing in facilities that are required to compete with the market leader in broadband and broadcast distribution. Unbundling is an absurd proposition at best if the goal is to promote competition.
From Bell [para. 19]:
In the end, the trade-off faced by the Commission can be summarized as follows: is it better to mandate access to NGNs and depress investment, in the hope of spurring some hybrid or resale competition in those limited well-served areas where each of cable, ILEC and wireless providers will have built high-speed broadband networks, at the expense of competition in “lost” areas, or is it better to not impose regulatory measures and let ILECs invest as much as market forces allow, in order to provide as many Canadians and communities as possible with the benefits of competition from at least three competing facilities-based networks?
From Rogers and the major cable carriers [para. ES14]
The international evidence points to some risk that wholesale access requirements would have a negative impact on incentives for investment by facilities-based broadband service providers. A review of the literature provides no strong evidence that the benefits would be sufficient to outweigh this risk.
From MTS Allstream [para. E3]:
Based on the U.S. experience, withdrawal of regulated wholesale services is more likely to discourage investment than to stimulate it. In contrast to the existing situation in the U.S., in Europe it is recognized that replication of existing infrastructures is neither practical nor desirable, even in densely populated areas, and that unbundling networks and providing wholesale access is a proven enabler of both competition and investment.
Surprisingly, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers had no comments. Their two page submission consisted of a restatement of the subjects upon which CRTC was seeking comments and a statement that the Competitors “look forward to reviewing the submissions of interested parties.” Considering the association’s declaration of importance of this issue, it is somewhat surprising that there was no substance to its filing, no evidence filed to address the question that seemed to be crying out for input from CAIP et al.
At paragraph 11.B.b, the notice asked for evidence to support or counter:
whether, in the absence of the speed-matching requirement and the mandated provision of the high-speed access services under consideration, there would be competition sufficient to protect the interests of users;
This point seems crucial for the various appeals that were mounted by CAIP over the past year. It seems bizarre that the Competitors wouldn’t put forward evidence to address this point. They need to do more than just look forward to reviewing other submissions. CAIP and the Competitors should have put forward a strong case and prepare to defend it.
Update [February 9, 7:15 am]
Teksavvy filed a complete set of comments, with supplementary expert evidence, including a literature review that could result in the CRTC being the first quasi-judicial body to pronounce upon the Harvard Berkman study that was released last October [see our many posts such as here, here and here, describing critiques of that piece]. Most importantly, there is a paragraph in Teksavvy’s submission that begs the question of why its evidence wasn’t filed by the CAIP coalition.
TSI notes that the competitive sector is not in good health. Evidence of this is demonstrable through the reduction that has occurred in recent years in the number of competitors participating in the regulatory process and the reduced vigour of the participation of those who are left. The result has been that TSI has had to expend considerable resources in order to ensure that competition does not die, and with it, TSI itself. This is a big burden for one competitor to bear, and it is not a burden that can be sustained indefinitely.
Last week, John Ivison wrote an article in the National Post, suggesting that liberalization of foreign ownership rules will be among reforms introduced by the government this spring. It is one of many recommendations that have been suggested by various expert panels, including the Competition Policy Review Panel and the Telecom Policy Review Panel.
Over the weekend, Dave Coles, president of the Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada wrote a letter to the editor to cite the risks of having Canadian infrastructure fall into the hands of Americans – AT&T in particular:
If communications were knocked out by a disaster (such as floods or another ice storm), we might feel less secure with, say, a U.S. company that might focus on getting services for Americans up and running first. Our personal security is also at stake — Canada’s protections for individual privacy are more extensive than elsewhere. The U.S. Patriot Act allows emails and users’ records across the country to be seized on the order of a judge. If AT&T owned and controlled our communications, our privacy laws would be undermined.
Our cultural identity is also at risk –our stories, our music, our own perspective on the news. We live just north of the largest cultural machine in the world. Do we need foreign companies to pipe in yet more U.S. programming?
I think this may be a little bit over the top.
In the executive summary of the Final Report of the Telecom Policy Review Panel, we find a call to open our markets to allow increased foreign investment to increase the competitiveness of the sector and improve productivity.
The Panel concludes that liberalization of the restrictions on foreign investment in Canadian telecommunications common carriers would increase the competitiveness of the telecommunications industry, improve the productivity of Canadian telecommunications markets, and be generally more consistent with Canada’s open trade and investment policies.
Last week also saw a warning from Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of Canada, that every Canadian stands to lose $30,000 in income over the next decade – a figure that amounts to nearly $1-trillion – unless Canada improves its “abysmal” productivity levels. He is quoted saying that the US enjoys lower unit labour costs, which have boosted its competitiveness and should, ultimately, encourage job creation.
Clarity in foreign ownership regulations are essential to the communications industry; liberalizing rules will reduce the cost of capital, facilitating further investment and increasing the competitiveness of the sector.
Looking beyond the fearful concerns raised by the communications union, will existing laws and regulations, buttressed by increased competition, be sufficient to defend consumer and social interests?
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