Hi-Sci-Fi

by Irma Arkus

Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, was kind enough to join us this past week, and talk about the upcoming changes in Bell and Rogers’ policies of “traffic shaping” or “bandwidth throttling.”

The resulting interview uncovers potential dangers of leaving industry of access providers to their own devices, as these policies impact negatively both the consumers and businesses. For one, CBC’s latest claim to fame, using BitTorrent to distribute their show (which is, by the way, the greatest thing ever) ended in a fiasco as users experienced an extreme delay, resulting in downloads taking up to 11 hours.

This was due to recent bandwidth throttling policies that slow down traffic from certain apps and IPs, BitTorrent in CBC example. As a result, we have access providers that act as content distributors and censors, as they render certain applications virtually unusable.

How do you as consumers feel about these type of policies?

Listen to the interview below.