I had plenty of other pictures of the busloads of kids walking by, none of whom was watching the rally, BTW.

@H: This seems to be the only issue where libertarians want legislation in the form of forced liberty ;-)

@Devil’s Advocate: I agree. As I said to one second tier ISP, it’s much easier to first say, “Networks should be neutral” and then later tack on “everywhere” to stop rate-shaping on last mile backhaul links. Win the big, obvious fight first. You can’t fight a war on many fronts. The carriers are saying, “these people are thieves.” That’s all they need to do. We need more Made To Stick marketing and less issues to win this one.

The city where I live (Murray) co-speared a project with UTOPIA to provide a fiber optic infrastructure throughout the city. Several other cities jumped aboard, but several cities that had jumped on backed off at the last minute (due to our extremely bought out ex-mayor Rocky Anderson - he took a lot of kickbacks from Qwest and Comcast).

Because of the open fiber optic infrastructure several businesses have come in and offered services over the network. They all compete. Their prices are low and their speeds are extremely high… and best of all, they don’t throttle my connection speed!

We need these open infrastructures all over the nation to really kick net neutrality into high gear!

How can a developer predict how the server will interact with the client if there is a hidden interference layer in between?

The philosophy of the Internet lies in the belief that ‘All packets are created equal’. This is also known as Net neutrality.

In other words, the network is dumb and intelligence shifts to the edge of the network(i.e. to the nodes or the applications). This philosophy of ‘dumb pipes and smart nodes’ has fulfilled the vision of ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom’ and has led to the unprecedented innovation we have witnessed in the last decade. We take this innovation for granted .. at our peril.

(link)

Amazing one of the most active complaint issues by the citizens on Canada’s interent and the major political parties in Canada still have no comment? Why?

“The CRTC certainly shows no signs of protecting consumers, nor do the Conservatives and Liberals; they are much more likely to protect the interests of corporations when it comes to an issue such as this”..

Net neutrality bill hits House of Commons
CBC.ca - 14 hours ago
By Peter Nowak CBC News NDP digital spokesman Charlie Angus doesn’t believe the CRTC has all the tools it needs to prevent interference in the internet by service providers.
Net neutrality bill ‘about fairness to consumers’ p2pnet.net
Federal NDP To Introduce Net Neutrality Bill DigitalJournal.com
Metro Canada - Ottawa - IT World Canada Blogs - GigaOm - mediacaster
all 21 news articles »

Interesting to note that this issue gets no attention from Canada’s MAJOR private media organizations. Why? They are clearly influenced by Bell? Compare this to ..

Stand by your ex (or be hoist by your own Couillard) Globe and Mail - What was he doing in Julie Couillard’s house so long after they had broken up? Why did he leave sensitive documents there?
all 1,393 news articles »

“Net neutrality bill hits House of Commons
The private member’s bill, C-552, is in reaction to moves by some of Canada’s largest internet service providers (ISPs), including Bell Canada Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc., to limit their customers’ uses of the internet. Bell, Rogers and a few others say a small percentage of customers have been congesting their networks by using peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent, so they have slowed the internet down at peak times of the day.

The ISPs’ actions have provoked outrage from internet users, with about 300 protesters taking to the steps of Parliament Hill on Tuesday. Critics have said the targeting of peer-to-peer applications is just the tip of the iceberg. If ISPs are allowed to decide which internet applications can and can’t be used, innovative new companies that were born from experimentation — such as Google, Amazon and eBay — may not happen in the future.

“Net neutrality affects everybody, every person, every business, every hospital, every institution is involved in the exchange of information over the internet,” Angus told CBCnews.ca. “This shouldn’t be about party lines.”

I want road neutrality. I’m completely pissed that my state/municipality is road traffic shaping. Limiting the roadway allocated to single occupancy vehicles to the point that they congest during peak periods. Sure it ensures that buses and multi-occupancy vehicles in the carpool lanes can flow at consistent speeds but who are they to make the traffic shaping rules. Roadways are public goods. In fact, my taxes have paid to build them. All citizens deserve unmanaged flow.

And then there is priority boarding, and senior’s menus. Don’t get me started on senior’s menus.

;-)

“But unless they stick to the mainstream, they risk being ignored by politicians and the general public…”

I’m not sure what you mean here by “special interest groups”.

It is because we haven’t got Net Neutrality that issues such as throttling, fair competition, and privacy have made it to the foreground as well. Net Neutrality is the missing PRINCIPLE while the issues are the SYMPTOMS or CONSEQUENCES.

Trying to “isolate” net neutrality as one “issue”, on its own, is a little difficult under the circumstances. If anything, ALL of these battles have become simultaneously necessary, as a direct result of the actions of large backbone providers, like Bell, over the last while.

All of these issues should serve as PRIME EXAMPLES of WHY Net Neutrality is needed.

Hey I looked at the photos in the article, one by one, and didn’t spot any particular scruffiness - even the guy in the suit (4th photo) has his tie on straight.

“busloads of teenagers on school trips to visit Canada’s seat of government walked past them, blissfully unaware that the fight to keep Facebook free was happening right next to them.”

Maybe some of them read the signs and asked questions. Most teenagers can read, speak and turn their heads. Maybe some remained unaware of what was going on, but “blissfully”? Sounds patronising.