This not another “internet tax” hoax. It’s another real internet tax attempt. Even worse is the concept of the CRTC regulating the web and/or internet in Canada. First, read the CRTC’s Public Notice and weep. The deadline for filing comments is July 11.

First let’s remember that the CRTC is really the Commission for Repression and Thought Control. They’ve had their way with cable and satellite TV for years, turning it into a CanCon wasteland. That drove people to grey-market satellites. Grey-market satellites were outlawed, and people turned to the internet. Now the CRTC wants to go after the internet.

Actually, they’ve wanted to go after the internet for years and years. Even a dozen years ago, the chair of the CRTC was saying that Canadians were were watching too much foreign web, and by golly, we’re gonna do something about it. They’ve tried to sneak in and control the internet a couple of times already. The public backlash has been intense. But just like “The Terminator”, they keep coming back.

II. ARE INCENTIVES OR REGULATORY MEASURES REQUIRED FOR THE CREATION AND PROMOTION OF CANADIAN NEW MEDIA BROADCASTING CONTENT?

• Are new or enhanced support mechanisms required for the development and production of Canadian new media broadcasting content? If so, in what form?

• Are new measures needed to ensure that all elements of the new media broadcasting environment contribute to the creation and presentation of Canadian programming?

• Is there a need for measures to enhance the promotion and visibility of Canadian new media broadcasting?

IV. WHAT OTHER BROADCASTING POLICY OBJECTIVES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THE PROCEEDING?

The Act outlines several policy objectives encompassing various cultural, economic, social and technological issues. What other issues and relevant questions regarding new media broadcasting and the achievement of the broadcasting policy objectives of the Act should be explored in the new media

“contribute to the creation and presentation of Canadian programming” is beaureaucratic gobbledegook for yet another tax. This would most likely be on ISPs, which would mean higher monthly fees for you and me.

One assumption in the songwriters’ proposal was that everybody could P2P and download “free music” to their hearts’ content, in return for $5/month. Guess what, P2P is being throttled to death, not only by the cablecos and Sympatico, but also by Bellnexxia against 3rd-party ADSL providers.

Hello;

You’ve probably been getting a lot of abusive responses from people who are pissed off about being accused of crimes they didn’t commit. I will try to keep this email civil, but I do have some rather pointed questions about issues that you’ve been avoiding both in the initial proposal on your webpage, and in Eddie Schwartz’s piece in The National Post. Please note that this email, and any responses to it, will be posted on my blog at http://walterdnes.wordpress.com/

1) How can you justify fining innocent people? You seem to be assuming about P2P that “everybody does it”, so you feel that it’s OK to penalize everybody. Nothing could be further from the truth. As noted by Comcast in The New York Times blog http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/time-warner-download-too-much-and-you-might-pay-30-a-movie/?ref=technology 5% of users are responsible for 50% of Comcast’s internet traffic. That’s probably the extent of of P2P usage. Furthermore, it is physically impossible for anywhere near “everybody” to run P2P at the levels you suggest. I’ll discuss this in more detail in point 3.

Unlike you, I would prefer the legal system, because that way the real music uploaders, the 5%, get fined rather than innocent 3rd parties. While I prefer to keep the contents of my harddrive private, I’m willing to allow my current and previous ISP to tell you how many gigabytes I consume each month. I almost always come in under 4 or 5 gigabytes per month. That includes a few active mailing lists, usenet news, regular reading of some tech and news websites, watching stuff on YouTube, general surfing, sourcecode downloads for security and program updates (I run Gentoo linux), and a subscription to a licenced internet radio service. Not a lot of unaccounted-for bandwidth left over for downloading the latest potty-mouthed-rapper’s and Britney-the-Bimbo’s so-called “music”.

I, and all other non-users of P2P, resent being accused of doing things we don’t do. By the way, I already pay more than $5 a month for internet radio. It uses a helluva lot less bandwidth than P2P, and I don’t have to set up a multi-terrabyte harddrive and spend half my time organizing songs. I plug in, sit back, and listen while doing other stuff on my computer. I don’t want or need P2P, and I don’t have the time to manage a whole bunch of files, let alone constant security patches for a combined client/server that accepts connections from computers anywhere on the internet.

2) Do you realize that your proposal, if accepted, would set an ugly precedent, that would drive the cost of an internet account through the roof? Let me detail this.

a) “Music rights collectives” are like construction unions; there’s a whole bunch of them. In addition to songwriters’ royalties, there are artists’ royalties, reproduction royalties, performance royalties, etc, etc. Have they all signed on as part of your $5/month proposal, or are they sitting in the bushes, waiting for your proposal to be accepted, so that they can come along later, demanding *THEIR* $5/month each?

b) What’s so special about music, versus software, and movies, and TV, etc, etc? If your proposal is accepted, it sets an ugly precedent for every man and his dog to demand their cut from internet users. Off the top of my head, I can think of movies, television, e-book publishers, software publishers, and I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of others. By the time they all get through with their pound of flesh from me, my $29.95/month ADSL account will be in the $100 to $200 per month range. Do you really want to turn the internet into the preserve of the rich?

3) Do you realize that you’re selling a bill of goods to Canadians by telling them they’ll be able to P2P music to their hearts’ delight? As I mentioned earlier, it is physically impossible for more than a small minority of a cable ISP’s customers to run P2P. The neighbourhood sharing of upload bandwidth is the bottleneck. Cable internet piggybacks on top of cable TV. The cable TV system has up to hundreds of individual subscribers hanging off neighbourhood nodes. Nothing short of a multi-billion-dollar rebuild will provide that capacity. Cable ISPs like Rogers respond by…
a) charging extra to customers who exceed their bandwidth caps
b) “traffic shaping”, a euphemism for almost shutting down P2P
c) disconnecting customers outright for excessive bandwidth use

ADSL doesn’t have the particular neighbourhood-sharing bottleneck that cable has. However, even ADSL’s business model is based on only a small portion of users doing heavy P2P. Teksavvy is considered to be “P2P-friendly”, and has a real peg-the-bandwidth-to-the-max-24×7 unlimited account. As P2P refugees swarmed in from Rogers, Teksavvy had to raise their unlimited account monthly price by 33% to pay for the extra bandwidth they used. As more P2P users flock to Teksavvy, watch the unlimited account price go even higher. Sympatico, another well-known ADSL-based ISP, throttles P2P and charges $1.50 for each gigabyte, or portion thereof, in excess of the monthly cap.

And a late-breaking story at http://www.p2pnet.net/story/15361 indicates that Bell is applying throttling *TO ALL ADSL WHOLESALERS AND RESELLERS*. So changing ISP won’t help.

I will summarize the major problems I have with your proposal. Please respond to these points…

1) Why should internet users who do not use P2P pay for those who do?

2) Your proposal, if accepted, will open the floodgates to a whole slew of additional fees.

3) Your offer of not prosecuting P2P users is a hollow promise if their ISP charges extra (*ON TOP OF YOUR LEVY AND ANY LEVIES IN QUESTION 2*), blocks P2P, and/or kicks P2P users off the ISP.

Walter Dnes
2008/03/24

The Songwriters Association of Canada has proposed a $5/month internet tax, on ALL CANADIAN INTERNET ACCOUNTS, to punish the vast majority of innocent Canadians for the actions of a small minority. They don’t give a damn what happens, as long as they collect their pound of flesh. However, I care.

The question arises, what’s so special about SOCAN? Nothing really. Why should they get their pound of flesh from innocent Canadian internet users, while other alleged “internet downloading victims” don’t?

There’s no logical answer to that question. Therefore, If SOCAN gets to collect a tax, why shouldn’t the MPAA (movies), the TV networks, e-book publishers, software publishers, etc, etc? Pretty soon, my $29.95/month ADSL account will be subject to anywhere from $50 to $100 or more, per month, to pay off everybody demanding their cut. Do we really want to turn the internet into the preserve of the filthy rich who can afford such an extravegance?

Two wrongs do not make a right, let alone punishing an innocent 3rd party for someone else’s actions. Yet, the Songwriters Association of Canada seems to think so. As pointed out by the New York Times, major ISPs like Comcast see 50% of their bandwidth use come from only 5% of their customers.

SOCAN proposes to grab $5 per month from ALL CANADIAN INTERNET SUBSCRIBERS, including the innocent 95% who mostly use their accounts to surf the web, and read email, and watch Youtube, etc. Their biggest downloads tend to be legitimate operating system and program security and feature updates. This is not about justice for songwriters, it’s about a bigtime money-grab from innocent law-abiding internet users.Consider what true justice would (or would not) accomplish for the songwriters. Today’s new pop music is mostly potty-mouthed-rappers and Bimbos-like-Britney, and appeals to teens and pre-teens lacking in both

1. musical taste
2. and money to buy music with

Item 1 explains why they gravitate to today’s music, and item 2 explains why they download it for free. Assume that effective DRM and fear of lawsuits combine to halt downloading. Adults grown-up enough to make enough money to have some left over for buying music with won’t buy today’s music, and most musicians will be making non-existant wages, just like before Napster.

That would be the result of true justice. But SOCAN isn’t looking for true justice; they’re looking for money. So they follow tactics used by so many civil-litigation lawyers when the true criminals don’t have money. Namely, find an innocent third-party with deep pockets, and go after their money instead. That’s what the internet tax proposal amounts to.

I’ve noticed a worrying trend in Canada where so-called “free-enterprisers” have stopped trying to sell their “services” to willing customers. Rather than spend money on advertising their product/service, they spend money lobbying government to have their product made mandatory. Why restrict your revenue base to merely those people who want and need your product? It’s so much nicer to also be able to collect money from people who don’t want or need your product. Since the free-loading-enterprisers demand to get paid for an unwanted “service”, they’re like squeegee kids. But the’re actually corporate types who wear fancy suits. Thus, I came up with the SKIPS acronym for “Squeegee Kids In Pinstripe Suits”.

The first group of free-loading-enterprisers I was going to concentrate on were the pay TV channels who managed to get the CRTC to slip them in to “basic cable”. However, when I moved to my new 6th floor condo, and hooked up an indoor antenna to my high-definition TV and scanned for digital channels, my jaw just about hit the floor. I’m in greater Toronto, with a clear view SSE towards the CN tower and Buffalo. I can get a whole bunch of Toronto and Buffalo digital channels, including high definition, for free OTA (Over The Air). So I didn’t bother with cable, and forgot about the mandatory pay TV issue. I may get back to it one of these days.

Of more immediate concern is the proposal by Canadian song writers to tax ALL CANADIAN INTERNET SUBSCRIBERS (including me) to pay for the thievery of a few. The proposal is detailed at the songwriters’ website

As the New York times mentioned in their blog a major ISP like Time-Warner sees over 50% of of its bandwidth usage coming from 5% of their users. So we’re talking about fining/taxing the innocent 95% to pay for the thievery of 5%. In the next few posts, I will outline what’s wrong with this idea.