In a first year Philosophy course, I remember studying logic. As my youngest child is preparing to graduate university next month, you’ll forgive me for reminiscing to my class more than 30 years ago. One of the principles was using an existence proof in order to disprove a tautology.

An example: Your friend claims that all sports cars are red. But then you see a bright yellow Corvette. You must conclude that either a Corvette isn’t a sports car or the statement isn’t true. We’ll leave the debate over cars to another time – I just want you to get the idea.

This week, Michael Geist writes in the Toronto Star that Business in the hotseat over Net censorship.

In reading the article, I sensed an implicit hypothesis that all forms of internet censorship are bad. I disagree and I will use my Philosophy of Logic class to counter the statement.

Subject to appropriate checks and balances, the overwhelming majority of us agree that child exploitation images should be censored by ISPs. And the vast majority of Canadian internet service providers do just that using Cleanfeed.

With China now boasting the largest number of Internet users in the world, the uncomfortable reality is that hundreds of millions of global Internet users face some level of censorship. That leaves governments and business in the hotseat, since routing around today’s Net censorship will require far more than a technological fix.

With Cleanfeed, we can see an existence of a counter-example to the tautology that ‘all network censorship is wrong’. I disagree that there is an “uncomfortable” reality of hundreds of millions of users facing some level of censorship. I have asked before why we believe there should be a digital loophole for illegal content.

Internet censorship, sanctioned – and perhaps even required – by our own national laws, is a reality. Why should we be more uncomfortable with it than with censorship of any other medium? Perhaps Canadians may find greater discomfort that researchers are working to find ways to access illegal content, as described in the Star article or as I described a couple years ago.

We know there is at least one form of content being blocked that our own democratic society deems to be justifiable. Shouldn’t the discussion include examining the criteria for applying limits on content?

Today’s National Post has an editorial about the Ryerson Facebook affair [For background, you can refer to a Toronto Star story, and Michael Geist’s blog].

As the Post title suggests: Ryerson’s ‘Facebook scandal’ isn’t about Facebook, it’s about cheating.

The technological angle is causing everyone to overlook the vastly more meaningful development symbolized by the affair. Apparently, in the year 2008, professors find it necessary to specify that homework problems in an engineering class should be solved by the student, rather than copied from a brighter classmate.

In this case, the prof told students to do their work independently. An internet based study group, is a study group. Sounds to me like a violation of the instructions.

Read the Post editorial. I’m working on another piece for tomorrow about so-called digital loopholes.

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Update [March 18, 8:30 pm]
The National Post is reporting that the student has not been expelled, but has received a zero out of 10 for the portion of the class mark associated with independent assignments. He will also be required to attend a course on academic integrity.

As James Norrie, director of Ryerson’s school of information technology management said “It is incredible to us that our desire to protect academic integrity, even if it occurs in a technology-based setting, would lead some to the conclusion that we are behind the curve.”

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National Post, Facebook, Ryerson, digital loophole

Once again, the CRTC has decided to give an ILEC a “get out of jail free” card for a couple cable cuts that caused an extraordinary hit on their quality of service indicators. In this instance, the CRTC ruled that Sasktel was not responsible for two fibre cuts caused by trucks hitting aerial cables.

On first blush, I was surprised with the decision. I figured that the cables were too low for the truck traffic to get through – in which case, it would be hard to understand how the CRTC concluded that the

failure to meet the competitor Q of S standard was caused in that month by events beyond the reasonable control of the ILEC.

The write-up in the decision didn’t give enough information. However, by going back to the original application, you can see that Sasktel was able to confirm that their cables were at the proper height – at least 15 feet off the ground.

In one case, the fibre was cut by a truck that forgot to lower its boom before exiting the storage yard. In the other case, the city failed to notify Sasktel that there were going to be oversized vehicles passing under an aerial cable.

As a result, TELUS was not entitled compensation from Sasktel for the service degradation.

Should carriers litigate against parties for their negligence in cutting fibre routes?rel=”tag”>Sasktel

As my late afternoon update suggested yesterday, the race is on for wireless spectrum. It looks like most Canadians are going to have a substantial increase in choices when their mobile contracts come up for renewal. A year from now, most Canadians may be able to choose from 2 or 3 new facilities based wireless service providers.

The increased choice isn’t just for Canadians in major cities. In reviewing the applicant list, it appears that in some parts of the country, there could be a variety of specialized regional players.

There seems to be some mis-information and a lot of unknowns surrounding the first round of information released yesterday by Industry Canada in respect of applicants for the AWS auction in May.

I am happy to try to help clarify. First off, I should clarify that bid points are not the same as licenses. Bid points are a kind of proxy for the population covered in a geographic area multiplied by the number of megahertz – the size of the slice of spectrum being auctioned.

There are a total of 292 licenses coming up for auction. Each license covers a different geographic area and slice of spectrum, ranging from whole provinces down to sub-regions. Some of the licenses are for 20 MHz; some for 5 MHz. You can review the full list on Industry Canada’s website.

To bid for 10 MHz in all of the geographic regions of Canada takes 620 points. By the time Industry Canada considers your application complete, you need to have supplied a letter of credit as a deposit to cover the eligibility points you request. For the first 300 points, the deposit required is $40,000 per point. Everything over 300 points needs $140,000 per point.

So, to do some interpretation of the applications, we can see that Rogers wants the flexibility to be able to bid in all 65 MHz that isn’t set-aside for new entrants. That requires 6.5 times 620 bid points for a total of 4030. To determine the deposit required, the first 300 points are $40K ($12M) and the remaining 3730 points are $140K ($522.2M) for a total of $534.2M.

You can see that Telus wants the flexibility to bid on the equivalent of 30 MHz nationwide. Bell’s points equate to 20 MHz nationwide with enough points left over for another 10 MHz covering about half the population.

Looking at the other applicants, Niagara Networks appears to want to bid on everything – all 105 MHz – everywhere. MTS Allstream and Quebecor have enough points to be looking at national plays for all 40 MHz of new entrant spectrum – with a little left over in the case of MTS Allstream.

Although they aren’t the biggest bidder, Sasktel has applied for enough points to handle all the spectrum in Saskatchewan – with 3 points left over. Saskatchewan requires 20 points per 10 MHz slice. Watch for Saskatchewan to be a spoiler for companies looking to acquire a national license.

A colleague reminds me that Wireless Number Portability in Canada celebrates its first birthday today.

March 14, 2007 was the launch of consumers being able to take their number with them if they changed their wireless carrier. In Canada, the systems allow consumers to port numbers between wireless and wireline, increasing consumer choice and facilitating wireless substitution – cutting the cord completely.

As another step toward increased consumer choice, today is also the day that Industry Canada will release the list of applicants to participate in the AWS auction.

Happy birthday to Wireless Number Portability. Consumers can raise a toast to even more choice being on its way.

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Update [March 14, 5:30 pm]
The list of Applicants is now available on the Industry Canada website. There are 30 companies who have applied, ranging from Niagara Networks looking for a whopping 6510 bid points for almost $900M in deposits, down to a few firms looking for only 2 bid points at $80,000. At the end of the month, we’ll see which of these 30 contestants remain in the running. Industry Canada will be reviewing the paperwork and verifying the Letters of Credit to see who gets voted off the island.

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WNP, AWS