Much has been made of the move by the CBC Television Network in Canada to slap one of their shows up on a BitTorrent feed. Everyone from Doc Searls to Boing Boing to Techdirt have been singing the praises of this move. The problem is that the other great Canadian institution of greed Bell Canada has come out an openly admitted that it has told all the ISP’s and its own customers that it is engaging in traffic shaping and don’t bother complaining because they don’t care.

Michael Geist I believe was the first to break the news that Bell was doing this. For some though this was something that had been a topic of conversation long before Michael broke the news. I remember several Twitter DM’s with a fellow Canadian where we discussed how our Bell service seemed to be acting rather strange when doing certain things.

The whole point is that it doesn’t matter how innovative someone; or some corporation, wants to be when the gatekeepers to the Internet decide unilaterally that it is up to them what goes through those gates. When this happens you can kiss innovation good-bye.

Bell Canada has decided that it is once more God and that screw you if you don’t like it. The fact is Canada doesn’t have net neutrality and we don’t have a government that give’s a hot damn about its citizens. It would rather get into bed with Big Media interests from the US and line their pockets in the process.

So a word of warning to our US friends down there below the 49th parallel - this is what happens when you don’t have true net neutrality. You get fucked over and innovation will in the end find another home.

Conversation Tags: Bell Canada, traffic shaping, net neutrality