Home | Michael Geist summs up the Rogers situation quite nicely »
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By admin | April 9, 2007
*Update - Promote your opinion, request a BoycottRogers.com email address*
This site is about the Canadian ISP Rogers’ decision to fight against the peer to peer file sharing protocol Bittorrent. They advertise plans with varying speeds, but do not honor them for certain types of online activities like using Bittorrent.
This is like your electric company regulating how you use your electricity- reducing the current available to you when you use a microwave because microwaves can be used for illegal purposes. Sure, the microwave can be used to aid in the production of illegal narcotics, but many people just use it to reheat dinner.
Bittorrent is an internet protocol- simply a tool that allows people to distribute files without having to own a large expensive server. It is used by many software development groups to make their programs available to the public, as well many other people for benign reasons. Some people use it to transfer illegally copied files, however the protocol itself is just a convenient conduit as are usenet, irc, and ftp- other protocols commonly used for illegal activity.
Rogers is not doing this reduction in service for Bittorrent because of their moral stance on illegal file sharing, they’re doing it because it saves them money. They advertise a upload/download limit, but then expect 99% of their clients never to use the capacity. Bittorrent and streaming media (from Youtube or something similar) both require large amounts of bandwidth and both can be used for questionable activities, but Bittorrent is what’s being crippled. This is simply opportunism. Bittorrent is an open protocol that is not owned by anyone, however streaming media companies have lawyers to fight back with.
Well, Bittorrent may not have lawyers, but Rogers has customers. Customers who are getting fed up with being unfairly treated. Customers who believe in net neutrality. Soon to be customers of other ISPs. Cancel your account. We’ll give you as much help as we can to ensure you do not pay a cancellation fee. If you do cancel, don’t be a member of the silent majority- tell us about it. More importantly, tell Rogers’ management about it. If you can’t get out without a fee, publicly pledge that you will cancel at the first possible moment unless Rogers changes their policy.
This issue has been getting attention from some major players in the Canadian Net Neutrality debate. It’s time something was done.
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