NewTeeVee has an interesting write-up on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) recent foray into the world of legitimate bittorrent distribution.

The CBC released a full episode of their show, Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister, with no DRM, in full-resolution, via bittorrent. As soon as it was made available, Canadian viewers began complaining about extremely slow download times. The amazing thing is that Bell Canada (one of the huge Canadian ISP’s) just came right out and said, yep, we’re throttling.

This type of throttling —where most users are totally unaware of it— has a very negative impact on people’s overall perception of the targeted technology. When a person’s first bittorrent experience is slow and unsatisfying, they assume the technology itself is broken or lame (even when it’s certainly not the case).

This is a crystal clear example of why net-neutrality is so important. The situation would be better if there were competitive markets for internet service everywhere in the world AND customers were well informed on the traffic shaping habits of their local providers. However, at this point it appears that legislation might be the best way to ensure a neutral and non-discriminatory network.

I encourage everyone to get involved.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 6:23 pm. Both comments and pings are currently closed.