Candidates supporting open-Internet by party. Taken from openmedia.ca
In this day in age, I can’t believe that there is a politician stupid enough to support metered Internet billing.
In case you don’t already know, the big Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Canada want to start billing Internet usage by the byte. Anyone with a smart phone is familiar with this system. For anyone who lives on the Internet, as most twenty-somethings and younger tend to do these days, this could easily become prohibitively expensive.
The good folks over at openmedia.ca have been fighting the good fight. I’ve been helping them as much as I can by signing petitions, sending emails to politicians, etc. I’d encourage the reader to do the same. I’m actually really surprised by how big of an impact openmedia.ca has had.
The telecommunications industry in this country is already behind much of the world in terms of the quality of service. I have many friends in Europe who absolutely pity our situation. (Although I’m quick to remind many of them about three-strikes.) Metered billing would be another major step backward from Canada’s already embarrassing position.
I simply can’t begin to comprehend the stupidity. It’s bad for private citizens, especially in the lower and middle class brackets, and it’s also bad for business.
We not only share our lives over the Internet, but also our talents and passions. Show me an independent band that doesn’t have some mp3s (or FLAC, better yet). Emerging authors are self publishing on the Internet. Visual artists (painters, photographers, etc) are selling their prints on the Internet. Limiting ones access to this content not only hurts the artists, but all of us whose lives are improved by it.
As for business, let’s rime off a few: Google, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, Ebay, Facebook, Steam, Indigo, iStockPhoto and maybe several thousand others I’m missing. Not only do companies like these make money by selling physical goods online, but also digital products such as mp3s, movies, digital images and software. All things that will be taxed by the cost of downloading the files. And let’s not forget that we like to look at plenty of high resolution images of products before we buy them.
Well, I guess none of the companies mentioned in the last paragraph are doing enough to fund the Conservatives, because they seem dead set on screwing us all over. I’d love to know how much money they’re selling us out for.
I’m so disappointed with my choices for this election. I’m actually thinking of voting Green party, just to shake things up. I can’t believe how badly our system is broken.
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So Sad. So So Sad. Let’s pray that ignorance doesn’t swallow up the masses because there IS strength in numbers.