Gov't Docs Reveal Canada's Net Neutrality Enforcement Failure

An anonymous reader writes "An investigation into the enforcement of Canada's net neutrality rules reveals that virtually all major Canadian ISPs have been the target of complaints, but there have been few, if any, consequences arising from the complaints process. Michael Geist obtained internal CRTC documents on all net neutrality complaints and found that Rogers was the top target, primarily for throttling access to World of Warcraft. Other notable cases include Bell throttling access to hotfile.com and Barrett Xplore, a satellite Internet provider, rendering VoIP unusable. Despite the revelations, there have no fines, no audits, and the CRTC has even refused to investigate some cases that appear to raise obvious net neutrality concerns."

Re:Who's being paid off?

[Toze]

Money, hell; follow the employers. The CRTC's Vicechairman of Telecom worked for Rogers for 17 years. The Ontario regional commissoner worked for Alliance Atlantis, Atlantic/Nunavut was VP of Access, Quebec spent two decades at CBC, and Manitoba/Sask spent two decades at SaskTel. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/about/commissioners.htm [crtc.gc.ca] Not to say the whole batch of 'em are crooked, but it seems like half the commissioners they've got don't just have industry experience, they worked for the companies they're now in charge of regulating. I don't know about you, but the Rogers group not even being /investigated/ for egregious harm to network access, while the CRTC telecom VP used to work for them, seems mighty suspicious.

Money buys power, again.

[rlglende]

We have more than 100 years of evidence wrt the effectiveness of regulations.

Are there ANY successes? How do these successes compare to the failures, e.g. the 100s of 1000s of people that the FDA's regulations kill every year via inhibiting the development of new drugs and protecting drug manufacturers from competition and the resulting high prices.

Money buys power in all times and places. So far as I can see, the only way to prevent that is to limit the power of the gov to the absolute minimum that is consistent with civilization. We should be experimenting with that lower edge of gov power, as the "sky's the limit" edge we are on has proven a failure in all cases it has been tried in.

They're apparently learning from the USA

[dkleinsc]

It's very simple: Have the laws on the books, but don't enforce them. That way, congressmen / MPs can go back to their district / riding and announce that they've gotten some law passed to deal with a problem, but your pals in industry don't have to actually deal with the law.

There were lots of laws that the SEC and Federal Reserve could have used to squash down much of the real estate bubble. They didn't use them. After the fact, there were people and organizations who had committed criminal fraud, and the "Justice" Department has refused to investigate them. There were laws on the book that the MSHA could have used to prevent the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia. They didn't use them, despite lots of evidence that the owner of the mine routinely violated the law and then bribed the judges in the state to ensure that they were effectively immune from lawsuits. There are laws on the books saying that torturing people is illegal. A few grunts have been prosecuted for it, but those giving the orders have gotten off without even a cursory investigation.

Sad to see Harper go that route though. I thought the Canadians had more resistance to the blending of corporate and government power that's so prevalent in the US.