Deadline Nears to Speak Out on Net Neutrality

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

William Muriithi wrote:
> JoeHill wrote:
>     http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3669/125/
> 
> Does  this still matter considering the USA government seem to be stuck
> against it? I think  Obama even railed against it in his  inauguration
> speech. This make very unlikely the US ISP are going to be going that
> way. And if that is the case,  can Canadian ISP do it alone?

Yes, it still matters because propagandists working on behalf of the
entrenched monopolies can sell either position, pro or anti U.S. It is a
sad fact that mindless anti-Americanism is an easy sell in this country
so all they would have to do is present it as, "We don't care what those
stupid Americans do. Canadians deserve a made-in-Canada policy." and the
many Canadians who seem to define themselves as "not an American", will
lap it up. They could invoke the name "George Bush" to seal the deal.

Conversely, if the Obama Administration were against net neutrality,
they could present it as, "See? Even The Obama supports our virtuous
position." and those same Canadians would lap that up seeing as The
Obama apparently walks on water.

That is on the propaganda front. On the technical front, nothing stops
Canadian ISPs from doing whatever they want, as they have been, because
there is only the illusion of competition in this country in telecom and
Internet services.

By virtue of their taxpayer-funded monopoly positions, the big ISPs have
very deep pockets to hire lobbyists and buy politicians (Hello, Sarmita
Bulte.) so expecting that they will give up without a fight just because
Obama is for net neutrality, however he defines that, is wishful
thinking. Even with a well-organized resistance to the might of the
monopolists, success is not assured. Many Canadians, if they think about
copyright or net neutrality at all, probably think it's some esoteric
geek issue that doesn't concern them. It's a standard trick in the
propagandists book to drive a wedge between the strongly committed ones
and those who are apathetic and portray the strongly committed ones as
socially irresponsible, nuts, thieves, "bandwidth hogs", or whatever
other negative attribute they can make stick. It's a naturally-occurring
pattern. Lions chasing down a pack of wildebeest in those nature films
most of us have probably seen are instructive. They don't attack the
whole herd. They isolate a few and then kill and eat them.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis
1419-3266 Yonge St.
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

<http://dinamis.com>
+1 416-410-3326
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