Highlights

UPDATE 5/22/2012 - Delayed till later in the year but not killed.. yet. https://torrentfreak.com/us-six-strikes-anti-piracy-scheme-delayed-120518/ The "six strikes" plan announced about a week ago hits us in the gut and threatens to undo everything that successfully repelling SOPA/PIPA has done and this time the problem isn't as easily solved at the governmental level. CNet announced that the RIAA/MPAA plan will result in major ISP's (Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and possibly AT&T) inspecting the network traffic of their customers and essentially policing them for copyrighted material being downloaded, seemingly regardless if this is being done legitimately or under 'fair use' or not. The CNET article linked above has more details on the specific details of each strike and how enforcement will gradually escalate but as many have pointed out this move not only needs antitrust scrutiny but is also a clear invasion of privacy with pretexting implications. Another point that has been brought up often this past week is how little this may end up affecting the pirates anyhow as many of them will just take advantage of measures such as VPN's and proxies to dodge the issue, the VPN shopping has already begun. Ultimately this is not whether about infringement is taking place, but also inability to have a choice between ISP's with different or lacking infringement policing policies given America's monopolistic/duopolistic internet provider situation in many parts of the country. While we normally stay away from politics and privacy issues, the implications of degraded service from punitive measures in this case vs being lucky enough to find a provider that has not signed onto this plan is clearly something we need to take into account when mapping and presenting differing ISP options. RT's Six Strikes coverage. Aside from legitimate online purchases from places like Amazon and Steam that may result in a false positive, there are MANY variations of cases where downloading a pirate copy of something may end up falling under fair use, especially those where an alleged infringer can prove that they have legitimate right. These are only some examples where a legitimate customer will be unfairly inconvenienced - Downloading a pirate DVDRip to save yourself the trouble of encoding/backing up something you legally own for easier access (also working around or bypassing a crippled "digital copy" that may have an expiry date) for that purpose - Replacing a scratched copy of productivity and development software for reinstall or patching purposes i.e. photoshop, visual studio quickly and efficiently while working on a contract deadline. - Bypassing overly restrictive DRM that obstruct from fair use i.e. limited installs, forced internet connection requirements for offline use. The problem is exacerbated if the company goes out of business or they fail to maintain or keep up their authentication servers. Especially when the game is no longer being sold or patches to correct the situation in these cases are not provided by the company. - "Someone rents a physical DVD from Netflix because it's not available streaming yet. When it arrives they find that it's scratched, and then they proceed to download that video. After watching the video they delete their copy and send the DVD back to Netflix. Is that a lost sale? in this case downloaded video will almost be certainly an inferior copy to the physical DVD given the nature of lossy compression in addition to the inconvenience. Lastly, here are some petition links to sign in protest. We waited for some time to report and highlight this in order to also include any actions such as petitions in protest against "six strikes" in this writeup. https://www.change.org/petitions/riaa-and-the-obama-administration-stop-isps-from-launching-a-massive-copyright-spying-scheme-this-july-12th# - Petition http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/backdoor_sopa/?source=fb

"Together, the FCC and Samknows are setting out to provide US consumers with reliable and accurate statistics of their broadband connections. If you are interested in using one of our units to measure your home broadband connection, then please sign up below. You will get to play a part in changing the face of the American broadband industry and you also get to measure your broadband performance accurately for the first time." Sign up at http://www.testmyisp.com/ This was originally posted in our external articles forum but we felt it's an important enough of an ongoing effort to not fall off the front page. Broadband standards in the US are falling behind and the US is facing emerging issues from every direction from data caps, (soon to be) monitoring and lack of consistency between advertised/reported speeds and what is actually accessible by the end user. These days the FCC is beleaguered from all sides but you can do your part to help.

The original post with bill scans can be found here. http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r26817647-Burloak-Usage-Based-Billing-Nightmare . There cannot be a worse case example for what will could be in store for any country that refuses to regulate this kind of behaviour. This total comes from *only* THREE months of a regular "triple-play" bill including TV, internet and phone usage in Canada, with the major component of this bill coming from $1/gb so called "overage charges". Even more shocking is that this customer only took action when the amount became triple what he usually pays, when $891 was withdrawn from his account. This means that routinely, this Canadian is used to paying in the range of $300 *MONTHLY* for his service. In this particular case he was billed $689.21 for 650gb of usage at $1.00/gb and that's before tax, and he normally spends upwards of $4000/year for his service (does this sound right to any sane reader?). This customer puts it best as to both the oversight and accuracy of such billing practices: "Internet usage based billing is flawed. The methodology and devices that determine the bandwidth are not certified or regulated by Measurement Canada. There is no recourse for your customers to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the bandwidth measurements. Cogeco customers must rely on the ‘Internet Usage’ meter Cogeco has on the website. The meter is not always up to date and has frequent outages. The metering Cogeco uses does not distinguish between wanted and unwanted traffic. This means that a customer would have to pay overages if their modem was the victim of a malicious attack. Cogeco charges exact overage charges without having a flawless metering system in place." . Canada does have a Weights and Measures Act that specifically defines and regulates what can be considered a legal unit of measure for the purposes of commerce but we do not have exact specifics as to why, despite having a body named Measurement Canada and what seems to be useful legislation that it hasn't been applied to broadband use. Our international readers would think that this may be a worst case of roaming charges, or something related to wireless in general. Fees of such magnitude are not uncommon when someone lets their phone roam in a different country or forgets to turn off data on a bill by the byte wireless plan, however in Canada such charges are not out of the realm of impossibility for basic residential service. Other countries and regulators who are facing similar pricing regimes or deregulatory efforts should take note. (Update) It is also not unusual to be confused by the nature of the bill and shocked at the billing itemization, by comparison even the AT&T bills (taken from our upcoming AT&T expanded feature) are light reading! Page 1 , Page 2 . Some of our non Canadian readers and contributors have already asked about the rental items in Cogeco's bill, which we've clarified that equipment "rental" is often required without choice to become a customer of one of the big players. No choice is usually allowed for individual purchase. As I was writing this up, DSLReports promoted this forum posting into front page news with more background information , also giving a history to the rate increases and series of events that have led to Canadians being charged for virtually everything but the air they breathe by world standards. http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Cogeco-User-Socked-With-Thousands-in-Overages-118090 . By the way, while this could have fallen under "External News", it falls under Foundation News for a reason. This is a current bill and something that may be within our hands to affect change. We will do our best to highlight this sort of treatment and also help this household in getting this bill properly killed or reduced substantially. Stay tuned. UPDATE : 2/16/2012 . We've received word that this matter managed to reach upper management and has been resolved. However, the exception of one person doesn't necessarily mean that the system that created it has been addressed, and this incident still stands as an example of how far the egregiousness can go when it comes to UBB/data caps/however they are defined once the doors are open to it. For every one person that manages to raise public uproar there may be many more who don't and quietly pay the "debt", or worse.. have their credit ratings affected by it.

Telecom and cable incumbents in the US states of South Carolina and Georgia are pushing legislation that prevent communities from building their own broadband networks, many of which are in areas those companies have deemed unprofitable and ignored. Despite that they are still lobbying for laws that would revoke the local right for those communities to serve themselves. Furthermore they are defining broadband at unusably low speeds even by current standards so that they continue to under-serve and under-invest while ignoring their responsibilities to manage and maintain their networks as the needs of their customers grow. They should be focused on that instead or preventing communities from deciding for themselves at the local level. Georgia and South Carolina are only the beginning in a growing US-wide push that first began with North Carolina. GigaOM compares the situation to the railroads of yesteryear attempting to prevent the airline industry from evolving and allowing people to choose to fly. Many of these communities are building superior networks with fiber assets that serve their needs with longer term value for the future. In essence they are building what these companies should have been building for them. We strongly encourage you to read GigaOM's article for yourself. The full details and steps to take action can be found at http://decidelocally.com/ UPDATE: 3/7/2012. The georgia bill SB313 has been shelved. We await news on South Carolina