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Canadian ISPs Plan Net Censorship
Mike Finch
American Free Press
Sunday, July 13, 2008
A net-neutrality activist group has uncovered plans for the demise of the free Internet by 2010 in Canada. By 2012, the group says, the trend will be global.
Bell Canada and TELUS, Canada’s two largest Internet service providers (ISPs), will begin charging per-site fees on most Internet sites, reports anonymous sources within TELUS.
“It’s beyond censorship, it is killing the biggest ecosystem of free expression and freedom of speech that has ever existed,” I Power spokesperson Reese Leysen said. I Power was the first group to report on the possible changes.
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Bell Canada has not returned calls or emails.
The plans made by the large telecom businesses would change the Internet into a cable-like system, where customers sign up for specific web sites, and must pay to see each individual site beyond a certain point. Subscription browsing would be limited, extra fees would be applied to access out-of-network sites. Many sites would be blocked altogether.
“We had inside sources from bigger companies who gave us the information on how exclusivity deals are being made at this moment between ISPs and big content providers (like TV production studios and major video game publishers) to decide which web sites will be in the ‘standard package’ offered to their customers, leaving all the rest of the Internet unreachable unless you pay extra subscription fees per every ‘non-standard’ site you visit,” Leysen said. “We knew the source to be 100% reliable, but we also knew the story would be highly controversial if we released the information. We did it because we knew that we’d get more official confirmations once we’d come forward with it. And indeed that is what happened. Dylan Pattyn, who is writing the soon-to-be published article for Time Magazine, received confirmation from sources within Bell Canada and TELUS after we released the information.”
The plans would in effect be economic censorship, with only the top 100 to 200 sites making the cut in the initial subscription package. Such plans would likely favor major news outlets and suppress smaller news outlets, as the major news outlets would be free (with subscription), and alternative news outlets, like AFP, would incur a fee for every visit.
“The Internet will become a playground for billion-dollar content providers just like television is,” said Leysen. “It won’t be possible for a few teenagers in their parents’ basement to start a small site like E-bay that then grows out to be the next big thing anymore. Right now the Internet belongs to those with the greatest ideas. In the future, it’ll belong to those with the biggest budgets.”
With plans in Canada uncovered, I Power thinks that companies in the United States and other nations are also planning similar actions.
“By 2012 ISPs all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These ‘other’ sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet,” Leysen said.
Such a subscription plan could possibly restrict free speech far beyond even the current restrictions set by the governments of communist China. Not only would browsing be limited, but privacy would be invaded, as every web site viewed would likely be recorded on a bill in a manner similar to a phone bill.
Why would the ISPs institute such a plan? One word: money.
“This new subscription model is commercially far more beneficial to them than how it is now,” Leysen said. “If Fox wants to launch a new television show online, they’ll have to pay big money to all major ISPs to ensure that their new show will be offered and pushed in the ‘standard package’ of sites/services/channels that people will get through their Internet access. Plus ISPs will also gain extra revenue out of people trying to access the rest of the Internet, as they’ll pay extra subscription fees for every web site they visit.”
But it’s not just the big ISPs that stand to gain.
“Marketing and big budget ‘content-pushing’ just doesn’t seem to work on the Internet, and this is something that several industries want fixed. ISPs know this and will benefit greatly by fixing this for the marketing and entertainment industry,” Leysen said.
The ISPs are said to be confident they can institute such plans through deceptive marketing and fear tactics.
“The Internet will be more and more marketed as a place full of child pornography and other horrible illegal activity in order to get people on their [the ISP’s] side once they start restricting it and make it ‘safer,’” Leysen said. “Unless we really make a stand for this and make sure that mainstream media thoroughly covers the issue, the whole thing will be eased in with proper marketing to make sure that most mainstream customers won’t make a big deal out of it. They will only realize what was lost long after it’s gone.”
For more information about this story see http://ipower.ning.com
For more information about Internet freedom: savetheinternet.com
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July 13th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Since when the internet belongs to big corporations? Those bastards won’t get away with this. I bet Al Gore is behind that one too. We need action!
July 13th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
When these devilish plans will be implemented, I shall prefer to not have any Internet at all. They will not get a dime from me. I will also cancel every other service that they or their minions offer. If greedy corporate whores continue on the way of subverting the political process by lobbying political prostitutes and thinking of yet another devious scheme to rob their customers blind, there will be nothing more left to do than to stop consuming altogether and maybe even to stop working as a corporate slave.
There surely must be a special place in the very depths of hell for all these corporate and political criminals.
Politics may not be the oldest profession but the results are the same…
July 13th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
The neocon agenda is getting more and more obvious. The dragnet is tightening. Most ’sleepers’ won’t know what hit them till they start choking on the tight noose.
July 14th, 2008 at 5:10 am
This is the same fake story that popped up a few weeks ago. Yes, there is an eventual shift they are planning to convert the web into subscription based tv style setups. That’s for internet2. It’s not a canadian thing, and Canada will be one of the last to allow this as it goes against our rights as we stand right now.
Why is prisonplanet helping push this myth when not even a month ago you had a nice article debunking this EXACT myth.
Obviously, you should be worried, but this is alarm-ism at it’s best and it’s already been debunked. It will be years before this ‘plan’ even gets into the planning stages.
coming from a standpoint where I have a good knowledge of the internet, how it works right down to the switches, routers, and frame relay networks. This is my career. You can’t simply turn this system over without years of intensive planning.
The entire backbone (fiber) trunks of the internet will need to be rerouted to handle a new, compuserve style internet. The internet works as it does now because the underlying network is a giant web spanning the earth. connections are routed through the best available paths. This works because the internet is not centralized. As soon as you convert this web into an 8 lane highway, servicing only a few major stops, the lanes get congested. the very nature of packet delivery will have to be rethought when moving from the internet to the intranet, which is essentially what will happen.
The internet will no longer be a giant network of smaller networks, all interconnected. It will be 1 network, tightly controlled. the current hardware technology in place simply does not provide the means to do this.
The sky isn’t falling quite yet people, and the series of tubes that make up the internet are not clogged, yet. Get back to important fights, like stopping ww4, getting our governments back to working for the people.
Do a little light reading on the nature of the internet, and you’ll easily understand how this change isn’t possible YET.
July 14th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
This article is nonsense, and Franks Thoughts knows less about Canada than even most Americans.
July 15th, 2008 at 10:21 am
If it is the mandate of these large conglomerates to eliminate freedom of speech and press, then I suggest that people make a choice to stop purchasing their services and products from these corporations. When people turn to other service providers, the harder it hits in the ‘controllers’ pocket books and they will have no alternative but to change/shift their control agenda if they want to stay in business. What would be real cool is to bankrupt these directors ….
July 15th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I have to say this did worry me when I read this article. But lets face it by the time this comes into force most of the Internet consuming public will too worried about finding food to worry if their facebook buddy count has increased. Myspace/facebook will become a grave yard, virtually.
August 31st, 2008 at 1:56 am
Now if they control what you can access on internet and try to increase charges on usage ? what is going to happen , people will stop buying computers and a chain reaction will start that they will not be able to stop , they don’t understand the masses hold all the power , just don’t spend your money where and when it gives them more power ! Gee how about a old fashion book ? or to avoid your email from being observed but government , you advance message technolgy , write and mail a letter !!! come on folks let’s be a bit creative here !!!!!!!!!!