The British comedy show French & Saunders Live (filmed in the year 2000) had an actual pornado as part of the comedy routine. Good thing Britain isn’t in Connecticut any more. The Julie Amero story has scrolled off the blog, but let’s not forget her.

I like the way you think.

Are they going to “gatekeep” spam, as well…

That I would be willing to pay for.

Cable, there are a few choices. Rogers, Videotron, Cogeco, Shaw. Of course, they’re all regional powers. In fact, Rogers and Shaw did a swap of territories. Real boys club.

For DSL, you have Telus, Bell, Alliant. These are regional powers too. But, in the DSL market, there are a lot of smaller players that resell the big guys network.

So, all the decisions can be made by about 8 CEO’s and everything can be throttled accordingly. And you can’t switch providers. Unless you move Provinces.

Isn’t most high speed Internet access in Canada through cable companies, like here in the US? Telcos are the route for dialups in the US of course, and do provide DSL. However, the US telcos are effectively monopolies in their service areas. How is Canada different?

Dear Minister Bernier

I quote from this article

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/070206/b0206149A.html
> Documents obtained by The Canadian Press indicate that senior >advisers to Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, who has previously >declared a “consumer first” approach, are carefully heeding the >arguments of large telecommunications companies like Videotron >and Telus against so-called Net neutrality legislation

If this is true you will be leading us back to the monopolistic structures of the communications providers of the past. Deregulation was to bring competition and lower prices for consumers and business, to some degree it has. Although it has had more of an effect of building national monopolies as opposed to regional ones. Now there is some competitive technologies being developed on the Internet they want it stopped. The only controls to be placed on access should be on individuals the result of legal action relating to a criminal offense and not by some corporation trying to rebuild their monopoly. To proceed down this road _is_ anticompetitive _will_ stifle innovation. I am not aware of any communications company in financial difficulties, in fact the case seems to be quite the opposite. This is essentially censorship, is that where we want our private corporations? I think not. Their motivation is profit not the good of the country at large and their success does not necessarily equate to good for Canada and Canadians. Markets only have so much capacity. Without creativity and innovation the only way to grow is through “mergers and acquisitions” = monopoly building. Creativity and innovation are expensive, it’s a lot cheaper to M&A and lobby the government for more power. Keep the power in the hands of all Canadians.

Just the our Heritage Minister accepting money for the companies promoting DRM in exchange of favorable legislation.

At least our press is covering this well so far.

But on the Internet, the gatekeeper is…TIME Magazine’s Person of the year 2006, YOU, as in everyone who uses the Internet.

So Canada is trying to make it so you are not the “gatekeeper” but putting a telco as a “gatekeeper.” Kinda sounds like our situation in the United States right now.