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Canadian ISPs Limiting Access To CBC Shows

Posted by kdawson on Sat Mar 29, 2008 07:12 PM
from the hey-we-paid-for-that dept.
Censorship The Internet
An anonymous reader sends word that, even as ISP interference with BitTorrent traffic is easing in the US, the issue is heating up in Canada. Major Canadian ISPs are limiting access to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's shows, made available online using BitTorrent. This issue has burst onto the scene due to smaller ISPs, such as Teksavvy, blowing the whistle on the fact that Bell was expanding its traffic-shaping policies to smaller ISPs that rent Bell's network. These events have sparked a formal complaint by the National Union of Public and General Employees, which represents more than 340,000 workers across Canada, to the regulatory body, CRTC, and calls for change in Parliament.
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Submission: ISPs limit access to CBC shows by Anonymous Coward
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  • Oh canada (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oh Canada, our home and native land! When Isp's start throttlin' thee bandwidth, we open up a can!

    Sadly, I'm not Canadian. Why the heck are the Canadians doing the sensible thing? This is going to ruin a whole bunch of Canadian jokes that could have been posted here. Oh well

    I for one Welcome our angry Canadian Overlords.
  • I mean it is in the way that. Limiting access at this level is akin to harming your competition. Not that it wasn't in the Comcast situation, but this is so blatant.

    • Re:This is bigger than comcast (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Goldberg's Pants (139800) on Saturday March 29 2008, @07:39PM (#22908400) Journal
      It seems rather convenient that Bell, who own a shit load of TV stations across the country, happen to be messing with CBC, their competition...

      I can only speak for my ISP in Canada (Shaw). They throttle Bit Torrent on the default ports it would appear, but not on any other ports. (This is based on my own informal speed tests.)

      Nice to see people standing up, but the fact remains that nothing will happen. The CRTC won't do a damn thing. They are the lapdogs of the industry and no more than whores.

      • Re:This is bigger than comcast (Score:5, Informative)

        by MrKevvy (85565) on Saturday March 29 2008, @07:52PM (#22908474)
        re: "I can only speak for my ISP in Canada (Shaw). They throttle Bit Torrent on the default ports it would appear, but not on any other ports."

        I'm with Rogers since they took over @Home's market when it went bust. The throttling is ridiculous but only on the upstream, which now varies between 1-10KBytes/sec. All ports are affected and encryption doesn't help. It did for a short time, but they caught on and started throttling all encrypted traffic which caused work-at-home business users on VPN's to go ballistic.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by shma (863063)
          Actually, I'm with Rogers as well, and where I am (downtown Toronto) I've noticed no problem with encrypted traffic. So it seems that the degree to which they throttle traffic varies from region to region.
          • I'm wondering if it's a regional thing. I've heard folk on Shaw say they're screwed whatever they do. Others there's no problem, even on the default port.

            Upstream throttling is murder if you're on any ratio sites. Yet another reason ratio sites suck. (Though that's a rant for another day.)
            • i'm thinking the same thing.

              i've got people on shaw in the edmonton area getting the shit throttled out of them, people locally who aren't having any throttling (shaw does caps, but they're upfront about it at least). could be because competition for internet service is alive and well in these parts. we've got shaw, sasktel, access, and a bunch of little guys duking it out for all the marketshare they can get, with the 3 big ones also duking it for phone and TV service.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Brickwall (985910)
            I'm a Robbers customer in Richmond Hill, and I notice that there seems to be some kind of monthly limit. At the beginning of the month, downloads run pretty quickly, but by the end of the month, they are crawling.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by billcopc (196330)
          I VPN all the time, I see no speed issues at all. In fact, for a while that's how I did my torrenting... now I just run them on a dedicated server across the pond.

          Ultimately, I think these stupid throttling issues will be short-lived, as they are explicitly targeting one type of activity (p2p) which just so happens to be one of the most popular uses for residential broadband access. That's kind of like McDonalds deciding they will no longer sell any burgers, and go out of their way to harass burger lovers

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by tlhIngan (30335)

        I can only speak for my ISP in Canada (Shaw). They throttle Bit Torrent on the default ports it would appear, but not on any other ports. (This is based on my own informal speed tests.)

        Actually, no. Shaw uses Ellacoya units [www.shaw.ca](warning, PDF) which perform deep packet inspection. These units, which have been recently tested [arstechnica.com] (and Ellacoya is one of the two that had faith in their units), do not care about what port traffic is on. They inspect packets and throttle those like BitTorrent, regardless of what port it'

    • Not to mention blatent wire tapping

  • I forsee the CRTC's response... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Innominandum (453982) on Saturday March 29 2008, @07:25PM (#22908320)
    The CRTC's response will probably be similar to the one I received when I tried to file complaint against the grossly incompetent & abusive TELUS: "The CRTC does not regulate the business practices for Internet Service Providers." The CRTC is absolutely steadfast in their position.

    The only body willing to oversee Internet issues is the CCTS or "Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services." This entity is completely funded by the telecom industry. If you need help, they're utterly useless and will basically tell you to take a hike.

    • Re:I forsee the CRTC's response... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 29 2008, @07:44PM (#22908426)
      I doubt it will be that easy for the CRTC this time. Wholesale [bcenexxia.com] GAS service is covered by a CRTC tariff, tariff 5410 [www.bce.ca]. Nowhere in that tariff does Nexxia have the right to throttle traffic. Nexxia is claiming it is under Section 8 - Restriction on use of service of the general tariff that covers abuse of the phone system causing disruptions in service (specifically section 8.3, check your white pages, "Customers are prohibited from using Bell Canada services or permitting them to be used so as to prevent a fair and proportionate use by others."). That rule is clearly intended to cover only landlines, and even if it did cover anything else, other traffic has been working fine on most all access points where the throttling is occurring, negating the use of this rule.

      Can't wait to see what the lawyers do about this...

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mevets (322601)
      The action should come from customers of Bell-branded services. Bell has become a brand-outsourcing company over the past decade - they sell their name to satellite, internet and wireless companies because it is a known success. The slightest hint that the brand has 'gone south' (oblique reference to southern neighbour) will result in more action than 10 CRTCs, 9-RIAAs a leaping, 8-Royal commisssions .... and a pissed of drunken hoser....

      Kudos to teksavvy; I have been a customer for 5 years, and couldn't

    • Re:I forsee the CRTC's response... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Arctic Dragon (647151) on Saturday March 29 2008, @09:44PM (#22909046)
      I received the exact same response when Rogers tried to screw me over. I receive my phone service from Sprint Canada and my DSL from Storm Internet, a Bell wholesaler. When Rogers bought Sprint, they switched me to Rogers Digital Home Phone, and they assured me that my DSL would not be affected. They lied and my DSL stopped working, so I asked to be reverted to analogue phone service. They flat out refused, saying all they can do for me is switch me to Rogers Highspeed. I argued with them over the phone and by email for over a week, and they kept saying that I can no longer have DSL in my apartment. I complained to the CRTC and got the "we don't regulate ISPs" BS response. I considered complaining to the CCTS, but look at the process involved: ccts-cprst.ca [ccts-cprst.ca]. It can take 60 days for anything to happen!
      I ended up getting my DSL restored by converting to dryloop DSL.

      That was a month ago. Now this week my connection started getting throttled. It's ridiculous and you can't win. If you choose Rogers, you get screwed. Use Bell's service, you get screwed. Switch to a small local ISP, and Bell still manages to find a way to screw you.

  • Just an expansion of an existing program (Score:4, Informative)

    by nilstar (412094) on Saturday March 29 2008, @07:25PM (#22908324) Homepage
    It's not just CBC news, but all bit-torrent that's been throttled by all the Large ISPs in Canada for a while now. The CRTC/Gov forced them to open up access so that smaller ISPs could resell bandwidth. Now, those same ISPs which charge less $$ than the big players, have had their bit-torrent throttled.

    Note: this only affects ISPs which resell bandwidth. Those with their own equipment can still circumvent this.

    • Parent incorrect (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 29 2008, @07:46PM (#22908434)
      >Note: this only affects ISPs which resell bandwidth. Those with their own equipment can still circumvent this.

      Bell is throttling the connection path to the DSLAM. Unless your ISP has a connection directly to your house, you are still affected. Next time read the facts first.

      • Mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)

        by PFAK (524350) *
        The parent is correct. These people are not resellers of bandwidth, they are wholesalers. They have their own infrastructure, except they have to lease the last mile from Bell.

    • Re:Just an expansion of an existing program (Score:5, Informative)

      by LittleStone (18310) on Saturday March 29 2008, @08:00PM (#22908536) Homepage Journal

      Note: this only affects ISPs which resell bandwidth. Those with their own equipment can still circumvent this.
      That's not exactly correct. CRTC forced Bell to open up access to the last mile. Some ISPs (like Teksavvy) have their own network equipments and bandwidth not from Bell, they only rent the last mile from Bell. Bell is actually messing with the data in the last mile.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by InvalidError (771317)

        That's not exactly correct. CRTC forced Bell to open up access to the last mile. Some ISPs (like Teksavvy) have their own network equipments and bandwidth not from Bell, they only rent the last mile from Bell. Bell is actually messing with the data in the last mile.

        Actually, TSI leases a whole lot more than the last mile: all of TSI's core networking equipment and connections to transit providers PoPs for ON/QC are located at 151 Front-Street in Toronto. TSI actually leases everything from the GbE links to 151 Front St from Bell's GAS down to the DSLAM port in the CO or remote and the copper loop from there to the customers.

        TSI does not own anything nor operate any equipment in Quebec - this is why they they are not required to collect the QST.

    • but all bit-torrent that's been throttled by all the Large ISPs in Canada for a while now.
      sasktel isn't (though not sure if they count for you as "large"), aside from some NAT issues with the 2wire gateways. awesome as modems, but utter shit as routers. good thing you can rig the things as bridges.
  • and i never came across an isp who packet shaped their network to make bt dling slow.

    and in that time I've had 4 isps, because of moving...

    really sad to see a legitimate use of bt (other than dling Linux etc) being mangled by bass akwards isps...
    • Most of the big torrent programs have had packet encryption enabled by default for a while now. It's still effective against most of the ISPs. It is entirely possible that you just have not noticed.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by flyonthewall (584734)
        Shapers operate on a white list. Any traffic not recognised is throttled by default.
      • mine doesn't use packet encryption by default, i just took a look to see, although it does by default use a different port than the original bt. I've used azureus for as long as i can remember...

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by __NR_kill (1018116)
      In Europe the BT is shaped too. My ISP - ownership of the largest multinational ISP outside the US - Liberty Global - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Global [wikipedia.org], is shaping the TB traffic during the peak hours, giving just 1000KBytes/s for the torrents, when pure ftp and http downloads get to the full 2400KBytes/s. I suspect that they apply the same policy to all of their customers/isp's.
        • indeed. as one of those canadians, I can assure you I would be thrilled.

          My bell connection is rated for 5mbps, but it gets throttled down to 10-30k/sec during peak hours.
  • A shared best-effort capacity service?
    Or do they pay for a part of a pipe ie
    high quality path-diverse circuit capacity?

  • relevant bit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zogger (617870) on Saturday March 29 2008, @07:31PM (#22908360) Homepage Journal
    .."Experts also say there is plenty of capacity left on the networks -- a fact Bell admits to -- so the traffic-shaping is being done merely to interfere with internet applications the companies see as threats to their own businesses."..and there's the rub. There needs to be a clear business separation between bandwith providers and content providers, then there won't be as much inclination for the bandwith providers to engage in net data bits manipulation mischief.

  • Defeating traffic shaping, at least poltically. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hamster Lover (558288) * on Saturday March 29 2008, @07:36PM (#22908382) Journal
    I was discussing strategies to overcome ISP traffic shaping with a colleague, at least politically or on a public relations level, and it occurred to me that one way to give ISPs a black eye over the issue would be to obfuscate otherwise legitimate traffic as file sharing traffic, such as peer to peer gaming. When such legitimate traffic gets snared in the traffic shaping net, we could point out that it's the evil ISPs that are blocking grandma's card game with her friends.

    Someone with greater expertise in this matter could point out the flaws in my brilliant plan.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Idiomatick (976696)
      You'd have to convince game makers and other legitimate coders to purposely make a program they know wont work in many places. While i'm sure alot of coders are strongly for net-neutrality I think you would be hard pressed to find one that would break their own work for it. Also, most people will assume its your fault that things are going slowly since the rest of the net is working fine. They might leave on the basis that you have shitty service, even though thats not the case. Grandma wouldn't even notice

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Digestromath (1190577)
      Thats like saying: If everyone would just buy a gun and shoot themselves in the foot, we could get some gun control laws passed!

      Nobody would deliberately check the "throttle my bandwidth" option. Thats not to say that the premise is wrong, you just putting the onus on the consumers. Doing so also makes it a commercial issue. That opens it up to government regulation and all the red tape.

      Instead I would propose setting up a website, preferably with either political or religious content using BT to dis

  • They're our shows anyway (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cathoderoytube (1088737) on Saturday March 29 2008, @07:40PM (#22908406)
    Pardon me. But Canadian taxes pay for the bloody CBC and all their programming. Therefore in the broad sense the bloody shows belong to Canadian tax payers. I mean, I don't particularly take pride in claiming ownership of DNTO or Little Mosque on the Prarie... But still.

    • Re:They're our shows anyway (Score:4, Informative)

      by CastrTroy (595695) on Saturday March 29 2008, @10:03PM (#22909146) Homepage
      The CBC actually has a mandate to deliver the shows in the most relevant way for the public to get them. It's the same way a lot of their content is offered on podcast [www.cbc.ca]. It's the way that people want to listen to the radio, so they get it that way. In the same way, people want to be able to download TV shows using bittorrent, so they are trying to see how well it works. Limiting access to the CBC distributed shows is probably illegal in qutie a few ways.
    • I think you make a good point even if its not being taken seriously. Bell is directly blocking our governments news outlet. It would be the same as delivery boys nation wide cutting information about the government out before delivery. It would be shocking and condemned by every level of government. But since people arent all /.ers they don't realize it (yet anyways, i have some faith it'll find its way to parliament). I hope this gets Bell whipped into shape though. I take it as welcome news they are pissi

  • Censorship? How? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nurb432 (527695) on Saturday March 29 2008, @08:21PM (#22908628) Homepage Journal
    How is throttling bandwidth remotely considered censorship? If you still get your data, it wasn't censored. Sure it might be breach of contract, and down right irritating, but its not censorship since no information was actually detained in the process.

    ( of course there is still the problem that a private company cant censor if you go by its true definition, but i wont start that debate up )

    • Re:Censorship? How? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 29 2008, @08:37PM (#22908718)
      And again, as before, I answer:

      You want to watch a live 1 mbit video feed. Your access is 5 mbits, but the throttle makes the maximum usable speed 300kbits.

      The live video feed is effectively censored, since you can't watch it, even though you have a fast enough connection.

      The same way your mail would be "censored" if the post office screwed a 1/8" slot over your mailbox. Anything bigger than that (newspapers) won't go in the box. And no, removing the slot is not possible. And the mailman isn't allowed to open the box to put in the mail. And you aren't allowed to buy a bigger slot, but you are welcome to buy a box the size of your garage if you'd like, but the 1/8" slot will still be installed.
  • by Chris Haddock, their only decent show, I think the Canadian ISPs are doing the citizens a favor by limiting access to the subpar programing that comes out of the CBC. Americanized shows such as 'The Border' or 'MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives' are shows that really make me proud to be a Canadian. *coughs*.
  • The only way for this problem to go away is to come up with technologies and approaches that reduce barriers to entry for being an ISP, or surrogate thereof. If competition was allowed to emerge, or if people figured out how to build their own peer/grid networks (in metro areas), then consumers could make another choice when they're fed up with the draconian practices of the Big Boys(tm). The ONLY reason that ISPs can pull this stuff now is that they have a captive audience.

    The current method of getting b

    • Re:Gotta change the system (Score:5, Informative)

      by taylortbb (759869) * <taylor@byrnes.gmail@com> on Saturday March 29 2008, @11:05PM (#22909390) Homepage
      Actually in this case you're a bit behind, Canada does have a system for letting small independent ISPs setup with low cost exactly so there is competition in the marketplace. The big players are required to wholesale their last mile at government regulated prices. There are independent ISPs that oppose traffic shaping, TekSavvy is one of them, the problem here is that the big players are throttling in the last mile so that independent ISPs have throttling like it or not. TekSavvy plans to fight this one to the end, but right now they're throttled by Bell. What Bell is doing is likely illegal, but they don't give a crap, TekSavvy has been stealing Bell's customers since Bell started throttling their own customers. Bell didn't like that so they decided they would take TekSavvy's competitive advantage away.
      • Yeah, but even if they stop throttling, it doesn't change the fact that Bell's "last kilometer" of infrastructure is sometimes more like the "last 6-7 kilometers" (hey, it's a Canadian article, what's with this "mile" stuff).

        At that distance, there's a pretty heft attenuation of the DSL signal. Bell feels no obligation to fix or upgrade this, so customers who are subscribing to a 5000/1000 down/up package actually end up with less than half that.

        The throttling issue is just one of many related to the leasin

  • About Time This Came Out. . . (Score:4, Informative)

    by clragon (923326) on Saturday March 29 2008, @08:47PM (#22908768)
    While Comcast hogged most of the publicity in the past regarding throttled P2P traffic, almost all Canadian ISPs [azureuswiki.com] limit P2P traffic in one way or another.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by jbpro (1244018)

      ...almost all Canadian ISPs [azureuswiki.com] limit P2P traffic in one way or another.

      Actually ...
      In Canada, since the big guys are forced to lease their lines to smaller ISPs, we have dozens if not hundreds of ISPs in Canada. The smaller ones either A) don't have user bases large enough to make traffic shaping profitable (with the sizable management equipment investment required) OR B) choose not to shape their traffic.

      This is great!

      In the link you posted, Azureuswiki only has 8 ISPs listed for Canada. You seemed to be under the impression that Canada only had 8 ISPs. Sin

    • Re:About Time This Came Out. . . (Score:4, Informative)

      by compro01 (777531) on Saturday March 29 2008, @10:28PM (#22909262)
      that is far from "almost all". competition is generally alive and well, as the CLECs are required to lease out lines.

      http://canadianisp.com/ [canadianisp.com] has a rather extensive listing of the little guys.

  • To quote the article: (Score:4, Informative)

    by Geak (790376) on Saturday March 29 2008, @09:15PM (#22908898)

    Bell spokesman Jason Laszlo on Friday reiterated the company's position --that it was shaping traffic in order to prevent a small portion of bandwidth hogs from slowing speeds down for all customers.

    He said there has been no backlash from customers, despite the incidents of the past week.
    I call bullshit. I used to work for Sympatico's technical support so I KNOW. If a customer complained about traffic shaping, no matter how savvy they are and how much evidence they presented, we would have just told them bit torrent is not supported. Regardless of the fact that the problem has nothing to do with bit torrent, that's where the blame would go. If we escalated something like this we would get written up for it. There is no backlash because management ensures they won't hear any backlash.
  • You know, if more stuff like this happens, I could see a provincial (or even the federal) government start their own crown-company ISP. I mean, there is a large tradition in Canada of creating companies to serve the public instead of regulating private ones, just look at Hydro-Québec, Bell Canada (back in the day), the SAQ and the SAAQ, public health, Petro-Canada, etc.
    • I work for SaskTel, a crown corporation. We offer among other things DSL, IPTV, and telephone services.

  • Avoiding throttling with encryption (Score:3, Informative)

    by gubachwa (716303) on Sunday March 30 2008, @11:03AM (#22912384)
    There have been a number of posts that have mentioned using encryption to get around the problem of ISPs that throttle bittorrent traffic, but no one has posted a HOWTO for the less enlightened on how to actually enable encryption in a bittorrent client. For those interested, here you go: follow this link [torrentfreak.com] for details on how to enable encryption in Azureus, BitComet, and uTorent.

    As has been mentioned, this may or may not improve the download speeds that you experience. But it's worth a try.

    There are plans in the works for developing new protocols [torrentfreak.com] that are even better at bypassing existing throttling techniques.

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