Canadian Democrats are Pro BitTorrent and Against Throttling
Written by Ernesto on October 11, 2008Three days before the Canadian elections, the party leader of the New Democrats has spoken out in favor of BitTorrent sites, calling them “fundamental to democracy.” At the same time, isoHunt, the largest Canadian BitTorrent site advises its users not to vote for the Conservatives, considering their stance on copyright issues.
Jack Layton, leader of the Canadian New Democrats is a proponent of net-neutrality, and he believes that social networking sites, YouTube and torrent sites are great services that should be available to everyone.
In a direct message to our friends at p2pnet Layton stated: “Torrent sites [...] are actually very fundamental to making a democracy work, and to helping human intelligence to be shared and exchanged. It’s about as fundamentally democratic as you can get.”
In the video message Layton is very clear. Throttling people’s connections is not an option. The Internet should be open and equal to everyone.
“What we want to see is the Internet used as a public tool — a public tool for exchanging ideas and I particularly want to say that if we don’t fight to preserve it, we could lose it. We don’t want to see hidden fees and gouging and service slow-downs all in the interests of promoting the objectives of certain large corporations,” Layton says in his message to P2Pnet.
With his statement, he joins his fellow party member Charles Angus, who has spoken out against against ‘anti-piracy bills’ and in favor of Net-neutrality many times before. In an interview last June, for example, he said that the proposed three-strikes law is idiotic, and completely useless.
“It’s idiotic because as we see with the DMCA those that get accused of infringements lack the legal power that the corporations that are threatening them have,” Angus said. “So it’s always going to be a completely one-sided argument and if ISP’s are legally bound to cut you off after three claims of infringement, I think there are certainly problems.”
Based on their views on net-neutrality and copyright bills, the New Democrats seem to be the best party to vote for. Much better than the Conservatives at least, who are supporting ACTA and bill C-61. Unfortunately, many Canadians are planning to vote for the Conservative, as they are awfully close to a majority. This triggered isoHunt’s founder Gary Fung, who’s from Canada as well, to encourage his Canadian users not to vote for them.
On the frontpage of isoHunt Gary writes: “I know about 3.7 million Canadians visited isoHunt last month, which is more than 10% of Canada’s population. So I ask all who read this to tell your Canadian friends to not be a slacker and vote on Oct. 14. I don’t care which party you vote, just vote any party but the Conservatives.” In addition to this statement, all Canadian isoHunt visitors will now see the following message on top of the page, which leads them to Gary’s statement.
isoHunt’s message to Canadian voters
The New Democrats seem to be a good alternative to the Conservative party. However, towards the end of the video message Layton scared us a little by saying: “The Internet belongs to Canadians,” but we’re pretty sure he is trying to say that all Canadians should have equal access to the web.
Layton on torrent sites, copyright bills and net-neutrality
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“Jack Layton, leader of the Canadian New Democrats is a proponent of net-neutrality, and he beliefs that social networking sites, YouTube and torrent sites are great services that should be available to everyone.”
depends, as long as torrents are not for piracy and ch!ld pr0n as 100% of all torrentsites are.
Awesome. Only if everybody was like him.
Awesome post. Especially since the Canadian elections have already started. I’m underageb&, so I can’t vote, but I’d vote NDP if I could.
The NDP is the only party that actually ‘gets it’. Thank God somebody does.
They wont win in the election but vote for them so they have a good sized opposition party to shoot down bill C-61!
NDP FTW!
Politicians doing the right thing?
Did April fools day come early?
I doubt politicians will ever listen to us, but I suppose if you are Canadian, and you are going to vote, keep net neutrality in mind. It’s a more important issue than many are willing to admit. It’s nice to see our leaders do something good in spite of pressure from the media industry.
If enough of the populous were in favor of killing baby seals the politicians would be in favor of it too. It means nothing really.
I know who I’m voting for coming Oct. 14th :) NDP FTW!!
He’s getting my vote, that’s for sure.
That’s it, I’m moving to Canada and switching citizenship so that I can vote for these guys. ^_~
(Any idea who I need to talk to about putting my application on the really-fast track?)
I’ve always been a NDP supporter. This just makes me happier!
Anybody else notice there’s an idiot with the nice of “Pr0ud Ped0″ or “proud pedophile” or ‘im a pedophile’ etc who keeps posting and making insinuating that
a) all torrent sites have pedo content
b) its easy to find pedo content on torrent files
c) mostly pedo’s use torrent
and basically associating CP with torrents
This has happened on this blog, on wired, on Ars, on our site ezee.se and other sites/blogs which allow user comments.
I wonder if its a longterm strategy to “show” that these kind of sites and torrent sites encourage CP.
Oh well, about the article, good one, these guys are reaching out to the torrent community and openly showing where the stand, hopefully more people with these views will come into positions of power and wont chicken out like a lot of politicians after they get their seat(s).
Good luck to them and I hope you Canucks are listening, so far you have had a lot more sense then your US neighbors and their crazy laws and overly corrupt politicians… god willing you will stay that way.
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se
Oops thats “nick” as in “nickname” not “nice” in my above post, also forgot to mention that we immd delete posts from morons like the above… maybe you guys should do the same.
Cheers!
@11
Yes I have noticed this scumbag (it would be hard not to), I think they should be reported to the police, I suspect it is just a copyright lobby group trying to give torrents a bad name, but you never know and it’s about time the police go after the bad guys.
vote ABC (anything but conservative) canadians we dont want a bush or a mccain!
@11,12
I hadn’t noticed, but now that you mention it I do remember seeing this crop up annoyingly frequently. I’m still inclined to think troll, but no way to tell without an IPtrace. My favorite part is that he apparently thinks the c00l k!d5 still speak l33t.
More food for thought: This one pretends to be a legit post, but is just the first sentence of the article plus a generic “torrents are for porn” message. Bot much?
you can vote NDP and get taxed to the point where you have no choice to pirate or vote conservative and get some tax relief and buy your content legally.
Bit Torrent is not a valid reason for me to vote for a borderline communists.
He’s full of it. You can see his eyes moving down while he speaks. He’s reading off something. The man doesn’t even know how torrent works or have a Facebook account. Feeding crap to voters. I’m voting Conservative! Harper is keeping us out of a recession. Just goes to show how well he’s doing his job. Dion is another idiot. Loves to respond to any statement but never has the proper solution to fix anything. A Conservative win is in the bag!
Hopefully this NEW SOCIALIST party loses by a landslide.
It’s an obvious desperation move to whore themselves out to greedy internet thieves.
@13- yep, “copyright lobby group” or some other “rights holder/group” is what came to mind.
@15 - he was post #1, I now see that TF has deleted that post (no idea if it was after I wrote my post or suggested it but I would like to think so ;D )
I think one of the reasons that he is using “l33t hacker” language is he is trying to by pass the filters set up on TF/eZee etc which put such comments into moderation queue.
Nice to see @16 & 17 mix it up a bit so we have torrents and politics smack bang in each other :D
Sounds like a great time to move to Canada!
Jiff
http://www.privacy-center.ru.tc
Layton was one of the biggest supporters of importing the worst of American copyright law into Canada a few years ago. This legislation was written by and came with full support from multi-national (and largely non-Canadian) publishing companies (e.g., riaa, mpaa members). He is largely a populist politician, that seems to change policy for the sake of increasing his 15% (or so) of popular vote.
The NDP no doubt has some positive effects on Canadian politics, but Copyright law, and any policy around the Internet, is not their strength.
@ 17 conservative Bill C-61 an act to ammend to copyright act ring any bells?
canadian dmca?
duh?
if you care about the future of the internet you will vote for anything but conservative.
Do you hear that!!??? Jack Layton says, and I quote, “The Internet belongs to Canadians.” I had no idea the owners were that close to me. It might be the guy across the street. I have to find out.
I should bring some beer.
Thanks Harper, 50 billion dollars of corporate tax cuts, less money to pay down the massive debt with. Yay! And the liberal party isn’t any better…
Well if torrents become legal in Canada, shouldn’t internet belong to them since all the servers would move there anyway ?
Jack Layton is full of it. If he thought he could get another vote by telling some lies he would do it.
I am all for net-neutrality and torrents but there are a lot more things on the line in this election than the interwebs.
the NDP would destroy Canada if they ever got into power.
Torrent will became legal in near future,everybody use torrents now its impossible to finish it.
Torrent is the future
Er… you idiot, torrents are legal now.
Sharing copyrighted content is not in many jurisdictions.
All your internets are belong to Candada.
Just to clarify, Canada has a multiparty system, the largest of which are the Conservatives, the Liberals, and the NDP (the New Democrats in this article).
Conservatives are Republicans, the NDP are socialists, and the Liberals are analogous to American Democrats. The title of this article equates the NDP to “Democrats”, but that’s not accurate - in Canada Democrats=Liberals.
In Canada socialism isn’t a dirty word - we have socialized medicine, university, etc - but the race is always down to only the big two. The NDP is pretty fringe.
Jack Layton can hardly be described as a “Democrat” in the American sense of the world. Being from Canada, and having a strong knowledge of the American and Canadian political parties, I can say that the American Democrats and the Canadian New Democrats are two very different parties. The New Democrats are a very socialist, strongly leftist, Marxist type party. The American Democrats are much more central on the political left-right scale, similar to the Canadian Liberal party.
I will not support Layton because of his comments on net-neutrality, etc. I do not believe that the Conservatives are anti-neutrality, and unlike the NDP, they will not completely destroy the country in four years if given a majority government. There’s a reason the NDP has never formed federal government in Canada, and likely never will in the near future.
i want to dedicate all my bandwith to the pedo community
@28 canada? snown1gg3rs :p
YAY!
I do get to vote in this election, and I will!
By a lucky coincidence, in my riding it is best to vote for the NDP to help thwart the Conservatives.
@27
I download copyrighted contend every day and I use torrent,P2P,http e etc.
Fuck who don’t like it.
I really wonder why you apparently filter comments with the word f\u/c\k in them and possibly other curses but still let these smear campaign-like crap slip through.
I really wonder why you apparently filter comments with the word f\u/c\k in them and possibly other curses but still let these smear campaign-like crap slip which are always using the same single word through.
yeah and then he’d tax all the corporations and give tax cuts to everyone and then our economy would end up like the states’.
If you can’t stomach the NDP, the greens also oppose C-61 and restrictive copyright laws.
political lies, lies and more lies.
YAY thank god i live in canada
well get got my vote
“the NDP would destroy Canada if they ever got into power.”
Isn’t that what the conservatives and liberals are already doing now?
“Conservatives are Republicans, the NDP are socialists, and the Liberals are analogous to American Democrats.”
The democrat party is more right wing than the conservative party of canada.
I still don’t like Layton, Corporate tax increases don’t makes sense, since the corporations will just move their head offices out of canada and take jobs away from canadians, but at least he gets that idea and will speak up in the house(of commons). Just as long as he never becomes PM, which he never will. Anyways, i would still vote conservative, but my riding is a Liberal stronghold, so I’m voting green. they’re probably in favor of net neutrality too.
Green FTW!
lol i pirate all the time but im still voting Conservative! it’s all about $$$ and the tories are the best for the economy.
what a bs comment Above. You clearly dont understand copyright or your just a troll
sounds like canada has hope :)
abooot
@16: you’re a fecking moron.
the conservatives make life easy for those who already have it good, but they’re not the best for the economy, not by a long shot. they inherited a country with already well balanced finances. most of their changes have been rather inconsequential. the last time they had a majority they f\u/cked up the economy really badly. and also, the conditions that created the economic problems in america are quite different from the conditions in canada.
@43: “well get got my vote”
————————————–
People like you are the Achilles Heel of democracy.
Hahahah! So very true! I was wondering when a fellow like-minded Canadian would mention the fact that it was Chretien and the Liberals whose agenda was fiscal balance.
The Sponsorship Scandal and the replacement of Chretien with his less liked predecessor Paul Martin is what resulted in the defeat of the Liberals.
Since coming into power Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have done nothing but criticized Dion and the Liberals via a smear campaign via ads. The smear campaign has happened well before Harper decided to call an election.
This bulldog yelps uncontrollably but has yet to draw up effective policy.
I am voting for the Liberals. They are the party that draws up policies from both the right and the left. Although decima polls indicated that they were running a distant 2nd, as of recently they have gained ground and are in striking distance of taking more seats away from the conservatives.
More than likely the Conservatives will win the election but they will be a minority government yet again, having less seats than they currently do.
@20 I’d like to see some proof of your statement because thats B.S. One thing Jack Layton has never done is support any big corporate interests. He’s a socialist by definition, that’s why he belongs to the New Democrat Party.
@16& 17 Harper is keeping us out of nothing. He’s had a limp minority government that can’t accomplish anything. His lower taxes have only resulted in Canada losing its huge budget surplus that it had under the liberal party. Conservative talk tough about lower taxes and smaller government but just like the USA, they always come out the other way around. Also, Harper and his industry minister seem to be deeply in the pocket of Hollywood lobbyist with their American style DMCA plan.
Anyway, if you want a nice country to live in, you pay high taxes and enjoy the benefits of everyone working together. Or you can keep a few extra bucks and live in a hell on earth like the USA with its inept health care system, unresponsive government and outrageous crime statistics.
I would just like to point out that Jack Layton talking about “preserving out democracy” is pretty fucking funny. Jack Layton is a former member of the Communist Part of Canada.
I understand voting to preserve P2P, but not voting for the NDP. Jack Layton has turned that party into a joke.
I think being pro BitTorrent is one way of preaching p2p technology to the Anti-p2p inbreds.We need to embrace Communism to fully realize the potential for a global community of sharing and caring individuals.
I’m just wondering what will happen after everyone done seeding leech on.
Well I’m Canadian and I will be voting on Tuesday. I won’t be voting conservative because I hate the Conservatives (I won’t bother going into details because some readers will get offended). I was thinking of voting Liberal since I’m a lefty by nature but being from the west and tired of French Prime Ministers (especially ones that struggle with English as much as Stephane Dion does) I won’t be voting Liberal. Whats left - the NDP. Their pro-union, pro P2P, 2 big things in my life. Do I want the NDP to get a majority and run the country? Hell no! But as an earlier poster stated having a decent opposition is key to tackle Bill C-61 & net neutrality.
NDP is a mainstream social democratic party with populist and trade unionist roots - it isn’t the Canadian counterpart to America’s Democrats, and it’s not a “Marxist” fringe party either. There’s an NDP government in Manitoba right now, for goodness sake.
I think anyone with two brain-cells to rub together wouldn’t vote for the Conservative Party anyways. It’s usually the ‘country folk’ that are into killing brown people, inbreeding and bible-thumping that cling to that party. And a healthy dose of the just plain stupid city-folk that have been duped into thinking a politician is going to put more money in his pocket.
This statement from Jack Layton makes me even happier about voting for my local incumbent NDP member, Joe Comartin. He’s been a strong voice for civil liberties, gov’t accountability, and getting us the hell out of Afghanistan.
I find the pro-conservative comments by people following a filesharing blog surprising.
Canadians here should make themselves aware of C-61 and its implications. Although that bill died when the election was called, the Conservatives have stated in their platform document that they plan to re-introduce it. For this reason alone people should seriously consider the consequences of voting Conservative.
The NDP have a track-record of standing up for minority voices. They support low-income earners, families. And yes, they have also spoken up against C-61 and P2P throttling by Bell Canada. However, the comments that they will not form government are correct; the best outcome is that they will remain a strong voice of opposition to a likely right-wing government.
Something else I find surprising is that nobody has mentioned the Green Party of Canada. Although they have even less popular support than the NDP, and will be lucky to get a single seat in parliament, they have the strongest platform for issues important to us here. At the beginning of the election, Michael Geist posted a “copyright pledge.” Although many individual Liberals and NDP candidates (not one Conservative) have pledged support, the Greens are the only party to wholeheartly embrace its principles. Read more at http://michaelgeist.ca.
Voters need to look at these issues carefully, and at the local candidates for representation that they have in their riding and make and informed decision. There is no one right answer, but I’m pretty sure Conservative is wrong.
Layton got no chance, he’s too much left wing oriented. Vote for him means a 50 billion deficit so it won’t happens.
BQ is too close of ADISQ (the lobby who shut down Qctorrent) to be for net neutrality and Liberal, yet we don’t know a thing about this party.
In my county, I’ve got 2 choices, conservative or BQ. It’s bill 61 or left wing independantist…
This election is a shame…
i had full intentions of voting for NDP on election day anyway,but now with this article this DEFINATLY solidifies my vote for them!!!
Hey Anonymous, This “NEW Socialist party” are the ones who originally brought in free health care in this country. If you think that is a bad idea, ask some pore smoe in the US who is dying because he can’t afford health insurrance. If you don’t live here, shut your mouth.
Nice guy huh
The NDP are just as slimy and scheming on the left as the conservatives are on the right. Layton is a real talker and while he says everything you want to hear, I would never trust him with a government.
Conservatives are just as bad, Harper has his party in muzzles and is basically a dictator. With a Conservative majority government, we’d be screwed on a lot of things (C-61, healthcare cuts, de-regulation of food inspection, arts & culture cuts, stupid laws that put MORE ppl in jail unnecessarily, etc.). Harper gets most of his support from the prairie provinces… farmers and oil guys.
Liberals have had too many chances and not done enough progressive things imo. They manage the economy great and they are o.k. on policy, but I think they are a tired old party that lost direction. They’re just managers, not leaders. I liked Chrétien, but not Paul Martin… I think Stephane Dion has a great vision for Canada, but frankly the Greens did it first and they have a better platform ON EVERYTHING!
srsly, the Greens opposed C-61, they are for improvement and revamping healthcare to be more preventative, they are pro-environment and pro-sustainable economy (which means 35 hr work week and “buy Canadian” policy for any government spending, like military equipment, revitalizing our railway system. I mean they have everything we’ve been wanting for years AND they are fiscally conservative so they won’t throw us into deficit. They are even want to decriminalize marijuana).
VOTE GREEN!!
http://www.greenparty.ca/en/platform
“Conservatives are Republicans, the NDP are socialists, and the Liberals are analogous to American Democrats. The title of this article equates the NDP to “Democrats”, but that’s not accurate - in Canada Democrats=Liberals.”
Actually Conservatives=Democrats, and the rest lean to the left (liberals/green, then NDP)
The now defunct Reform party was the closest comparison to the Republican party in the US that Canada had. Canada is after all more left then our neighbours south.
You’re only undermining the torrent argument.
seriously guys, vote for the NDP.
Harper: “let’s give corporate tax cuts and put tax on the little ppl. and oh, fuk the internet users. we love riaa coz they pay us big moneys.”
Dion: “omgz we have no moneys and so we need to put (carbon) tax on the people yay. and who the fuk said me no speaks englishs me speakss perfectly englishss.”
@71
Stephen Harper’s french isn’t better than Dion’s english… As long as it’s fonctionnal…
Don’t laugh on somebody because of his english…. really we could do the same in Qc about some politician’s french….
another scam . only a fool would believe . hope the canadian learn from U$ mistake .
Don’t kid yourself. These guys are so left wing they would put the old soviet regime of Joseph Stalin to shame. God forbid if he was ever elected the economy would be so screwed, taxes through the roof and a budget deficit close to that of the Bush administration. Jack Layton reminds me of a vacuum cleaner salesman. Promise promise promise.
The Toronto Star article linked too is old, current opinion polls have the Conservatives actually losing support with around 33-35%, down from the 38% they got in the last election.
Liberals also down, with NDP, Bloc and Green all being up 2-3%
@79
FYI, here are the numbers you were somewhat incorrectly quoting:
Party - 2006 - Latest Poll
—– - —- - ———–
Conservative - 36.27% - 34.2%
Liberal - 30.23% - 26.7%
Bloc - 10.48% - 9.5%
NDP - 17.48% - 21.4%
Green - 4.48% - 8.2%
As you can see the actual gap from the tories to the grits has increased from 6% from the January 2006 election to 7.5 % on the final Nanos-CPAC poll. This pretty much assures the tories of a majority government. FYI, Nanos’ numbers were pretty much dead on in their final poll before the 2006 election
To be honest any win is a downfall. Nothing really changes. Salary increases will never match the rate of inflation. Most of us will still live paycheck to paycheck. High credit card interest rates. Paying an insane amount for gas when by now we should be already using eco-friendly alternatives. Big corporations will always have a helping hand from the goverment while our jobs are outsourced. Doesn’t matter if its NDP, Conservations, etc. Things will remain the same until we hit a breaking point in society. Forget about torrents, riaa, whatever hollywood wants they’ll get eventually. Its up to the population to stand up and say something “We’re not gonna take it!”.
Personally I won’t vote Layton because I think he’s a pompous, arrogant ass. Much as I like this statement he’s made on bittorrent, it doesn’t change my mind about him and really, all he’s doing here is taking a shot in the dark that’s costing him nothing for a handful of extra votes on an issue that hasn’t come up in the course of the campaign at all and will only mean anything to a select fringe group of people, many of whom were thinking NDP anyway. I will never vote NDP again while Layton is leading the party, despite the fact that the NDP are probably closest to my personal beliefs and ideology. I just can’t do it. Maybe I’ll vote Green, I dunno.
its as bad as hijacking a computer remotely
trottling torrent=terrorist
Personally, I think the New Democrats here in Canada are the best choice to have a minority/majority government. We all know they’re better than the Conservatives!
But of course, Stephen Harper prevails and once again Canada will be stuck with him for a few years. :|
I’m not sure who I’m going to vote for yet, but I’ve been really turned off by the conservatives negative ads, we don’t need to be imitating that part of American culture
hi thanks everyone for posting thanks for voting Liberal
Canada is now doomed to another few years with Harper. Ugh!
isohunt.com is currently inaccessible. any idea why ? is it a temporary thing or has the site gone down permanently ? >=[ I checked and it says the Canadian Conservative party has won the elections. Whats gonna happen to isohunt ??????????
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