Quebec ISP To Terminate Subscribers Over Copyright 290
An anonymous reader writes "Quebecor, which owns Quebec's biggest ISP, has thrown in with Hollywood
interests by arguing for the 'graduated response' approach that would kick off subscribers based on three allegations of infringement. The company told Canada's telecom regulator that net neutrality rules are not needed since content blocking has social benefits, including the potential for
a three-strikes-and-you're-out policy."
There is NO "competitive market" in Quebec. (Score:5, Interesting)
Alternatives? Where. Show me. Explain to me.
There is NO alternatives in Quebec.
Show me the "competitve market" in Ontario. Please leave the Rogers/hBell wholesalers and resellers, and show me the competition.
Primus in select area's that is not on Bell equipment? MSNi in Windsor not on Bell equipment?
nexicom in petorborough not on Bell equipment?
This competition is in isolated communities that the masses have no access to. Now explain the competition in Quebec to me please. Where should Videotron users move to again?
Whith whom should they speak to with their wallet?
I will be very surprised if the french language media even picks up on this.
Quebec isn't even aware of the copyright fight that went on. A couple of obscure articles that came out a month AFTER the re-election.
Think they will know about this?
Quebec will push for its own CRTC saying its good for the people, have no coverage, and not tell the people stuff like this will happen. They have been pushing for their own CRTC for years now.
There is close to zero awareness of these things in Quebec french media and french population.
Will Quebecor put out a press release saying what it wants to do in their media? heh
speak with your wallet? Change telco? Let me know when you found an alternative...
Re:There is NO "competitive market" in Quebec. (Score:5, Interesting)
Who modded this troll? Is there Videotron/Québécor agents reading slashdot?!
WTF?! (Score:1, Interesting)
I love how Quebec loves to ignore federal laws/policy then run off on a tangent and make their own.
Re:There is NO "competitive market" in Quebec. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Typical (Score:4, Interesting)
Aside from the language laws (which is a divisive issue itself in Quebec), Quebec has always seemed to be fairly progressive when it comes to personal freedom. I doubt if the average Quebecois agrees with what one of its major corporations would want to do to its citizens. Quebec is far from being anything like the Bible Belt.
Actually it is a good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of the things Quebec disagrees on work out really well. Lots of universities with low tuition, better leave for kids, $7/day day care (I was paying $55/day in Toronto), no fault insurance (way, way, cheaper, and the additional accidents are due to the badly designed highways and more aggressive drivers not to the cheaper insurance)...
Videotron is just making a case for having its cable monopoly broken up.
Re:Old news (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't this already common practice? I know my ISP (COX) warned me that 3 complaints would lead to account termination.
I think it's new and maybe it's becoming common, but right now it's still unusual.
The one thing that bothers me is that it sounds like mere allegations are enough to count towards the "three strikes". I'm hearing about account terminations etc. and I am not hearing much about the burden of proof.
The summary had one thing right though:
I agree that this will have societal benefits. For one, if this becomes a widespread practice we're going to see encrypted or obfuscated torrent protocols in a hurry. This will start an arms race that the ISPs have no hope of winning, which is appropriate because copyright is a legal issue, not a technical issue or a customer service issue that an ISP should be concerned about. That's the best way I know of to start an arms race -- apply the wrong solution and when it fails, try harder and harder instead of recognizing a failed idea and looking for a different solution.
The other societal benefit is that more people are going to start questioning whether draconian copyright enforcement measures are in anyone's best interests. It's like places that have arbitrarily low speed limits; the model depends on the idea that most people get away with it most of the time. If there were a way to perfectly catch and fine 100% of people who exceed the speed limit by even one mile per hour, the result would be a severe public backlash that would cause the speed limit to be raised. Once the public gets tired of the copyright interests' insatiable appetite for increasingly punitive measures, those copyright interests are going to wish like hell that they had quit while they are ahead. They and their products are a mere luxury; we do not need them and as soon as we realize that, it will help to restore the balance of power that is sorely missing.
The general public is exceedingly stupid when it comes to seeing ahead of time that something is headed down the wrong path and is going to be a problem, but once they do, there's not a whole lot that can stop them. This has all the makings of a severe public backlash because what drives the awareness is the Internet and open discussion so the usual mass-media's one-sided approach to everything won't hold this one back.
Re:There is NO "competitive market" in Quebec. (Score:3, Interesting)
Until recently, the best choices where DSL resellers, with a very low price tag and great speed (8mpbs). Sadly, bell got the right to slow down their resellers lines when they detected p2p stuff on it. And if you lived in a good area, the connection quality (uptime) was great too!
Some where offering contract free service, or services without any logging etc...
Nowadays, you need to go live further away and get a DSL or cable service from the community, and if you are sawwy enough you could even become the admin of the network itself..
Re:Do they really want that responsibility? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the scary thing and I don't think most people appreciate it.
It would be better for us to have every last copyright interest and major media corporation go completely out of business and leave us with little or no music and movies, than it would be to compromise sound standards of evidence in an attempt to "help" those industries. Once you go down that path, you open up a whole world of shit that most people don't believe could ever happen here in the USA. That path leads to nothing less than modern, legally-sanctioned witch-hunts where pissing off the wrong monied interest is all it takes to ruin your life even if you have broken no laws. McCarthyism is a pretty close illustration of what can happen, except this one would be for the general public. We're not far from that point right now when you consider how much money and time it would take for you to have any hope of defending yourself against the army of lawyers that a large media corporation could send after you and the number of years that they could tie you up in court.
I sure wish people in general would wake up and realize that we can know with 100% certainty where this path leads without ever having to set foot on it. There are things that simply should not ever be compromised for any reason. Whatever we think we're trying to accomplish is not worth what this will cost.
Re:Do they really want that responsibility? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't believe for a second that they're going to do any more due diligence in verifying the validity of infringement complaints than the record labels do in filing them. Why is it okay to allow this to happen?
I guess I'm in the minority of those who use P2P protocols for legal purposes. Trying to download DVD images (Solaris, various Linux distros, etc) without BitTorrent is terribly painful, and bad for the distributor in terms of bandwidth utilization. I don't give two shits about music downloads, although I have an iTunes account for my wife.
Re:There is NO "competitive market" in Quebec. (Score:3, Interesting)
IANAL, but maybe someone who is might chime in:
Since the "alleging 3rd party" and Quebecor caused damages to you ( loss of internet service ) without showing reasonable proof, I wonder if you could sue them?
Is it possible to get a class action going if they caused large numbers of people to lose internet access?
Re:Typical (Score:3, Interesting)
You're absolutely right on with that comment. Quebec is quite a ways from where I live, but I find myself identifying with Quebecers on a lot of issues, and strangely alienated from a lot of other "left-coasters" who live in the more rural areas of my province.
I'm sure there is the same broad spectrum of people there as in other areas, but in general Quebec strikes me as quite progressive with regard to social issues, while still fiercely libertarian on a personal level.
I doubt this will go very far; Quebecers are not shy about telling someone to fuck off, in any language.
Re:Old news (Score:3, Interesting)
So, no wonder it wants its ISP to lead the march to block P2P and do as much harm as possible to anything that can be used to infringe copyright laws. It is somewhat like have the cop, the judge and the claimer in the same person. In short, a conflict of interests.
Re:There is NO "competitive market" in Quebec. (Score:1, Interesting)
Exactly. I only have 2 choices:
-videotron cable who doesn't mind changing the TOS at will, disregarding any contract terms, whose prices suck, has the lowest caps I've ever seen, and terrible customer support. I can max out my 10mbit line anytime, but now they can cut you anytime (and I'm sure they will)
or
-bell DSL and its resellers, with a 512kbps top speed, *if* the line quality permits, and I'm right in the city! There's not a very big difference in price either.
It keeps getting worse. I don't need 10mbit if I can't download anything (low caps + 3 strike policy), and 512kbps is so slow (going from ~1250KB/s to ~64 tops? ouch!) it might as well be dialup as far as I'm concerned.