What really happened to neutrality.ca?

Kevin McArthur has posted a message on the home of neutrality.ca and kevin-mcarthur.com:

Thank you to all those who have supported our websites. Due to increasing legal concerns resulting from our public participation in the Net Neutrality debate, we have at this time decided to shut down the operation of these sites.

Some are claiming that the telcos shut down the sites. That is some kind of charge. I’d like to see some kind of substantiation or corroboration for that accusation. Can we hear which telco forced the shutdown and how exactly they did that?

On a possibly related note, Michael Geist writes this week about concerns that lawsuits may be putting internet free speech at risk. There is surely a balance to be found, enabling democratized expression of diverse viewpoints while recognizing the need to be accountable for inaccurate or defamatory statements that get broadcast across this medium.

My lawyer friends tell me there is a legal principle in libel law called ‘innocent dissemination’. It applies, for example, to bookstores that don’t know a work contains defamatory material and aren’t negligent in not knowing. The principle says the bookstore is immune until they: a) know; b) are negligent in not knowing; or, c) are put on notice.

It seems to me that our freedom of speech is not without bounds. The question of what constitutes illegal content on the internet and how we should deal with such material will be subjects of a panel discussion on June 11 at The 2007 Canadian Telecom Summit.

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neutrality.ca, Kevin McArthur, Michael Geist, illegal content

In co–operation with the IBM Institute for Business Value, The Economist Intelligence Unit has released its e-readiness rankings for 2007.

Canada, now ranked 13th [from number 9 last year], slipped out of the top 10,

owing to a slightly reduced social and cultural environment score, and a lower rating for government policy and vision than other developed-market peers.

Unfortunately, ranking schema will always be marked by biases created by weightings and priorities assigned by their authors to various criteria. For example, in 2007, this study

eliminated fixed-line phones as an indicator and increased the weight of mobile penetration, as mobile phones are generally cheaper, easier to access and, with text messaging and mobile commerce applications, increasingly powerful digital devices.

At first glance, such a shift may seem innocuous but it is based on European pricing practices and therefore may discriminate against historically low pricing for wireline services in North America. Further, as we have discussed previously, European wireless penetration rates are artificially pumped up by users with multiple SIM cards arbitraging roaming rates or gaming ‘on-net’ calling plans.

There are bright spots for Canada in the report. Thanks to “political stability, a positive foreign investment environment and strong support for private enterprise and competition,” Canada is ranked as the world’s best business environment. In addition, Canada’s legal environment for internet issues is ranked in the top 5. The four factors assessed in this area are:

laws must sufficiently protect consumer rights and intellectual property rights (IPR) offline and online; they must foster the development of digital security enablers such as authentication and certification of online transactions; they must not censor; and, they must allow new businesses to be registered quickly and easily.

It is a new category, called “Government Policy and Vision” that led to Canada falling out of the top 10. The category is actually more of ranking of government leadership – tied to performance and adoption of new technologies by departments other than those we traditionally expect to lead the development of internet and e-commerce policy.

E-ready governments supply their constituents—citizens and organisations—with a clear roadmap for the adoption of technology, and they lead by example in their use of technology to create efficiencies. The Economist Intelligence Unit has created this new category to assess the activities of governments in this area, and their ability to lead their countries towards a digital future. Are governments employing technology to operate and provide public services with less resource investment? Are they spending on ICT to stimulate similar spending in the greater economy? Are “savings” translated into service gains for citizens? Can more people interact with, and receive information from, the government regardless of their own access to technology?

Public Works, CRA, and other agencies will all contribute to improving performance on criteria such as total government spend on ICT as a proportion of GDP; digital development strategy; egovernment strategy; online procurement.

Thanks to a regular reader for pointing me to Om Malik‘s reference to this report.

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e-readiness, Economist, IBM, broadband

The CRTC is going to issue its decision on the 3rd Price Cap period, today at 4pm. There is a ‘lock-up’ being offered to allow people to get an advance look at the Decision. I am not joining the lock-up so you’ll have to wait until later this evening to catch my initial impressions.

Price caps have been in place for the past 10 years and allow incumbents limited pricing flexibility within a ‘basket’ of products. The ceiling or ‘cap’ in changes to the price of the services basket is adjusted each year by a factor of inflation less productivity gains and other adjustments. In the case of many services, the cap should have led to price declines because productivity exceeded inflation.

Over the past 10 years, rather than having prices drop, the CRTC had ordered incumbents to put the excess revenues into a fund known as the deferral account. It is expected that the CRTC will make the deferral account a historical artifact with today’s Price Cap decision.

We’re also going to watch for rulings on rate de-averaging and the duration (eg. 3 years, 5 years?) of this next price cap regime, among other issues.

Watch this space later today for updates.

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Update: [April 30, 4:25 pm]
The Decision is out. Highlights:

• basic residential rates in urban areas are capped at existing levels (a price ceiling);
• basic residential service rates in rural areas are permitted to increase by up to 5% annually;
• local optional service and bundled service rates are no longer subject to pricing constraints;
• telcos are able to de-average rates local residential and optional local services;
• business and other capped service rate increases are limited to the rate of inflation overall and a maximum increase of 10% per year for individual rates;
• pay telephone service rates are permitted to increase to $0.50 per cash call, and $1.00 per non-cash call; and
• rates for public safety and social services (e.g. 9-1-1 service, Message Relay Service) remain frozen.

The Commission’s policy is to move rates closer to costs. The new regime allows telephone companies to raise basic local prices in rural areas by the lesser of the annual rate of inflation or 5 per cent.

Once again on a major decision, Commissioner Langford has dissented from the majority. In his opinion, there are consumers left vulnerable by the new regime. He offers an alternative, which was rejected by his colleagues.

In its quest for administrative efficiency, the majority appears to have abandoned its responsibilities to balance the interests of all stakeholders: customers, competitors and incumbent telephone companies.

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CRTC, price caps, deferral account