TorrentFreak

• Ernesto
• January 31, 2011
• 26
• canada
• Print

Canada is slowly moving back into the dark ages. Where most other countries are doing all they can to ensure that consumers have high speed connections and sufficient bandwidth, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) suggests a model where users available bandwidth is capped.

This if of course a disastrous proposal that will hinder innovation and affect many Internet users. Not surprisingly, the public is outraged.

Although the news does not directly affect P2P users, we do want to refer TorrentFreak readers to the following announcement that was just posted by OpenMedia.

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The citizen engagement group OpenMedia.ca has announced that an unprecedented 160,000 Canadians have signed the Stop The Meter petition. The petition calls on Canadian political leaders, including Liberal Party Leader Michael Ignatieff and Conservative Industry Minister Tony Clement, to take action to stop new Internet usage fees, or “Internet metering”.

The Stop The Meter campaign is shaping up to be the largest online action in Canadian history.

After CRTC made a decision that allowed Big Telecom to control the cost of the Internet, the number of citizens involved with the Stop The Meter campaign began to grow at the rapid rate of over 15,000 per day, and is quickly coming to represent a significant portion of Canada’s voting population.

Though the New Democratic Party (NDP) of Canada did recently come out in opposition to Internet metering, the Liberal and Conservative Parties have remained awkwardly silent.

“Considering the historic public outcry on this issue, we expect the other parties to be scrambling to endorse the Stop The Meter campaign,” said OpenMedia.ca founder Steve Anderson. “If they aren’t, they probably should be.

“Canadian voters appear to be unanimous in their distain for greedy big telecom corporations, and the CRTC’s role in enabling them to gouge out citizens’ pocket books, and unfairly hogtie competing independent ISPs. They know that these unnecessary fees will stifle innovation, ground-up entrepreneurialism, and social progress ”

Via Facebook, Twitter, and email, OpenMedia.ca has heard from business owners, media producers, and citizens who have expressed that Internet metering will impede their lifestyles and livelihoods. They are now waiting to see whether their government will represent them, and overturn the CRTC’s usage-based billing decision.