Canadian NDP Leader Praises P2P Communities

newtley writes "The New Democrats' Jack Layton has become the first leader of a major Canadian political party to acknowledge the importance of the Internet during a federal election. He's using YouTube to carry his message specifically to the online community, launching it on P2Pnet. 'We don't want to see hidden fees and gouging and service slow-downs all in the interests of promoting the objectives of certain large corporations,' Layton says." Other party members have also spoken out against increased internet regulation. We've been following the Canadian net neutrality debate for quite some time.

Re:Bravo

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm likely voting NDP not because I want them to form a government, but because I want them to be the opposition.

The opposition is there to hold the government accountable for its actions, and sadly, the Liberals have done a terrible job of that lately.

Mandatory internet filtering (was Re:Wrong Tag)

[Anonymous Coward]

The trap is mandatory internet filtering [www.ndp.ca] (see the last paragraph in section 1):

We will:
[...]
Implement new legislation to require all Canadian Internet Service Providers to prevent the publication or proliferation of child sexual abuse content on the Internet.

Generally, countries implement this by using a blacklist which:

• blocks entire sites (by DNS or IP) rather than just the forbidden content, thereby blocking legitimate content as well
• is secret, and maintained by an unaccountable organisation
• can be abused to block legitimate speech [effi.org]
• is unverifiable: assuming it works perfectly, nobody can access the listed sites to check whether they really contain child pornography
• doesn't work unless you're in a police state: things like international VPNs, proxies, TOR, and private DNS servers can't be blocked in a free country

Re:Wrong Tag

[Have Brain Will Rent]

$11 Billion divided among 1 Million people is more like $11,000 per person.

The example he is using is for the debt created in one province by a provincial political party. The equivalent of the debt of a state in the U.S. - is it really common in the U.S. to see state debt at $11,000/person?

The left of center governments in Canada typically create huge debt while the right of center governments create smaller debt. The previous left of center federal government (known as the "Liberals") ran up a huge debt - they after heavy pressure from international financial entities and from the Canadian people they paid alot of it off. Not by fiscal discipline but rather by raising taxes and off-loading costs to provincial governments - not by cutting program spending. The current federal government (known as the "Conservatives") actually cut spending, lowered taxes to people and business and paid off a significant portion of the national debt.

It's been a similar story at the provincial level.

Populist measures of NDP

[randito]

The NDP is pretty tech savvy usually. They have two other platform points that are interesting, although populist:

1. Ban bank fees for using competing banks ATMs. Canadian banks are much larger than their american counterparts, and are more profitable. The mortgage crisis here has been avoided due to more goverment regulation, and the banks are expected to continue to profit at the expense of poorer people who are hit with elevated service charges. Bank fees on ATMs stiffle competition by encouraging people to stay with the big five banks that have the power to litter every city with thousands of bank machines. In quélbec almost all of the ATMs are in the hands of one credit union in quebec , la caisse populaire desjardins, which has 80% + of the market here.
2. Ban cellphone contracts and cellphone locking and allow users to switch companies while keeping their telephone number. The allowing to switch companies while keeping your number has already been implemented by the canadian govt, but the 3 year cellphone contract remains. The government also auctioned off a large chunk of spectrum, reserving a large percentage for new contenders. We are on the right path, but the contracts are prohibitive to competition.

Disclaimer: I am not an NDP supporter, I am actually a card carrying liberal. I just like these policies.