The ripples following the takedown of Megaupload by the US government is still rippling through the tech industry with many wondering who could possibly be next.

Considering the fact that the US government feels that it doesn’t have to respect any country boundaries as long as the can convince the governments of those countries that it is in their best interests to go along with the US there are any number of similar businesses as Megaupload that could end up in the sites of the US Department of Justice.

Already we have seen sites like FileSonic and SileServer turn off the ability to share files with other people on their services and the other day we reported about how Uploaded.to had shut down access to the site to anyone from the United States.

So who else could possibly face the wrath of an entertainment industry paid for government.

Well according to Sean Ludwig at VentureBeat there are possibly 15 other companies that might be worried about what the future could hold; because it’s not like being located in a country other than the U.S. is going to make any difference.

It should be noted that the majority of companies on the list are equally as shady as Megaupload was which by all intents and purposes should put them directly in the cross-hairs of the DoJ.

• BayFiles - Hong Kong
• DepositFiles – Cyprus
• Divx Stage
• HulkShare
• MediaFire - Texas
• MegaShares
• NovaMov
• OvFile
• PutLocker
• RapidShare - Switzerland
• SockShare
• UploadHere
• UploadKing
• WUpload - Hong Kong
• ZShare - Hong Kong

Chances are that now that the DoJ has tasted blood by successfully taking down Megaupload we will be seeing a lot more actions like this against other companies in the same line of business.

With the Feds taking down Megaupload here’s some other file-sharing sites that could be next is a post from: The Inquisitr

Well the other shoe has fallen folks.

For those of you who may have forgotten Megaupload was that file-sharing site that got a bunch of big name artists to take part in a music video supporting Megaupload only to have it taken down on YouTube under some highly questionable reasons by Universal.

Of course the video was reposted, t hen taken down and then finally reposted again where it remains at this point in time.

Unfortunately though it would seem that the Feds have decided that the company needs to be taught a real lesson on who the boss is and have shut the site down along with charging its founder and others with violating piracy laws.

The indictment accuses the company of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. The indictment was unsealed Thursday, one day after websites shut down in protest of two congressional proposals intended to thwart the online piracy of copyrighted movies and TV programs.

via Associated Press

This action of course just happened to occur one day after the Great Internet Black-out that saw many big name websites “go dark” in opposition to the government’s proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation.

Here’s the video that Megaupload had made.

Feds shuts down Megaupload claiming more that $500 million in lost revenue is a post from: The Inquisitr

Every week it seems that the Republicans are butting heads with the Obama government over something and this past week has been no different as everyone involved is trying to get a payroll tax extension in place before the end of the year.

Not one to shy away from the use of social networks to try and sway public opinion the Obama White House has taken to Twitter to try and get average Americans to weigh in with their opinions over the battle being caused by the Republicans.

At the center of this go around is a two month extension which the White House has been trying to get passed so that they can at least make it into the new year and past the expensive holiday season before trying to hammer out a longer term agreement. It seems though that the Republicans are having none of it and want to work out a longer term deal now even if that means the payroll tax break disappearing and Americans finding more money disappearing from their paychecks.

So the White House is calling on Americans to head to Twitter and express their thoughts when it comes to having that extra $40.00 per paycheck that the payroll tax break brings them.

In a new tactic, the White House has called on middle class Americans to write in about how the payroll tax hike would affect them and published the responses on its website.

“Forty bucks a paycheck is HUGE for me. I am supporting my adult daughter and her four children,” wrote K.J., from Sacramento, California, one of 18,000 responses the White House says it has received since Tuesday.

“By not passing the extended payroll tax cut they are literally taking food from my grandkids’ mouths.”

via PhysOrg

You can read more reactions at the special page the White House has set up for the responses.

The White House heads to Twitter to battle the Republicans over tax extension is a post from: The Inquisitr

When US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta hops on a military jet to fly home to California from Washington on many weekends it costs

U.S. taxpayers nearly $30,000 round trip, Panetta however only pays the price of a commercial coach airline ticket.

When Panetta took his post in the Obama Administration he explained his plans to visit family, an administrator says of his time spent traveling:

“The White House understood when Mr. Panetta took the job that he would return to Monterey to visit his family, as he did when he was director of the CIA.”

The cost is so expensive because the Defense Secretary is required to fly on specially equipped military jets rather than standard commercial aircraft and those jets cost $3,200 per hour to operate.

In his defense his co-workers say even when at home:

“He works virtually nonstop wherever he is, including on the weekends, and believes that he does some of his best thinking when he’s away from Washington.”

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill says he “should speak to” the issue “in light of the cuts we are going to have to do everywhere.”

Do you think such ridiculous government spending during a time when we are trying to cut $1.2 trillion from the US budget over the next 10 ears should be allowed?

[via Los Angeles Times]

US Defense Secretary Flies Home On Weekends, Each Trip Costs Tax Payers $30,000 is a post from: The Inquisitr

This is corruption at its peak. A one-month old baby was reportedly on the Nigerian government payroll.

The discovery was made as efforts are made to get rid the bureaucracy composed of bloated workforce with ghost employees.

Garba Gajam, justice commissioner for Zamfara State, said:

“In the on-going verification exercise of the payrolls… in the state we discovered that a month-old baby was among the employees of one local government who is paid a salary. What is even more astonishing is that it was indicated in the payroll that the infant holds an ordinary national diploma, revealing that the discovery is a widespread trend in the local government service where senior officials stuff payrolls with the names of their wives and children”

The Zamfara is among the states in Nigeria that has adopted the sharia law which imposes amputation of a wrist for theft.

Just last August, a five-month old baby was also found on the payroll of another local municipality, exposing the corruption that has sickened Africa’s most populous country.

Perpetrators are expected to refund the funds that they stole and face prosecution for misappropriating public funds.

So, don’t be surprised if you see a government official in Nigeria soon with an amputated wrist.

Baby with Diploma Receives Salary in Nigeria is a post from: The Inquisitr

When Bangladesh-born artist Hasan Elahi was stopped at an airport in 2002 and then put through several months of scary interrogations he decided that hiding anything from the government was pointless. Instead of hiding his information Elahi decided to bottleneck those agencies that interrogated him by posting an overwhelming amount of data about himself on his personal website.

On his site Elahi puts up pics of everywhere he eats, what his dinner fork looks like, what his food looks like and everything else he observes throughout the day.

Writing in the New York Times. Elahi says:

 “You want to watch me? Fine … But I can watch myself better than you can, and I can get a level of detail that you will never have.”

After launching his website Hasan began to track server logs and discovered that he was being watched by the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Executive Office of the President.

Just for a bit of fun Elahi has made it hard to decipher a timeline for his websites information, deliberately making his data hard to place into any type of useful order.

“By putting everything about me out there, I am simultaneously telling everything and nothing about my life,” he writes. “In an era in which everything is archived and tracked, the best way to maintain privacy may be to give it up.”

Do you think Hasan Elahi’s website is a good way to waste U.S. officials time after they spent months attempting to tie him to crimes that they could never prove?

Artist Overwhelms Government Agencies With Personal Data After Being Targeted is a post from: The Inquisitr

Banks are having such a rough time these days. If it isn’t customers getting pissed off over being charged to use their bank debit cards it’s those nasty hackers breaking into their computer systems and making off with all kinds of information.

While there isn’t much that will be done about the first problem, after all who gives a crap about customers anyway, it seems that the National Security Agency, which is some super secret arm of the US military, has decided that they are perfectly suited to help those Wall Street banks fight back against those evil hackers.

This is all part of a larger attempt by these incredibly powerful and rich banks to get the US military and private defense contractors to fight off all those horrible cyber criminals out there. Claiming that hackers could possibly take up residence within the computer systems used by banking companies the banks say they could then disable trading systems, create fake crashes which could lead to real ones, and of course the good old stealing of money via huge wire transfers.

At this point the co-operation is still in discussion stages with NSA director Keith Alexander saying that the talks are just about them sharing information with banks about malicious software making the rounds. Additionally the NSA is working with the NASDAQ to improve their defenses against cyber attacks after it was found that their network had been broken into last year.

Apparently also on the list of companies that are supposedly perfect targets for hackers are oil companies, gas companies, technology companies, and defense contracting companies.

via Reuters

NSA getting into bed with Banks to help them fight hackers is a post from: The Inquisitr

Google has refused to remove videos from their search results and YouTube service which show acts of police brutality however the search giant has agreed in the last six months to many government requests regarding the collection and removal of content.

According to recent company data U.S. Government agencies made 5,950 requests for data from January 2011 to June 2011, requests that included more than 11,000 accounts, a significant increase over 2010 requests.

In their annual transparency Google wrote:

“The increase isn’t surprising, since each year we offer more products and services, and we have a larger number of users.”

According to Google they complied with 63 percent of requests for content-removal made by the government while 92 requests involved more than 757 individual items.

Google wrote:

“We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove.”

According to Google government requests said the videos were “allegedly defaming law enforcement individuals.”

When explaining why they released request data Google noted:

“We hope this tool will shine some light on the appropriate scope and authority of government requests to obtain user data around the globe.”

While some requests such as illegal activity take-downs and copyright issues make sense it’s interesting to learn that the U.S. Government attempted to sensor police brutality videos.

Do you believe Google should comply with the brutality video take down requests or did they make the right decision by protecting a users freedom of speech?

[via]

Google Refuses To Remove Police Brutality Videos, Complies With Other Government Requests is a post from: The Inquisitr

Everything you do on the web, from surfing websites to wasting your life on Facebook, downloading files to sending and reading emails, it all has to go through your broadband provider and they keep track of it all, whether you like it or not.

In most case this really doesn’t matter, and part of the price we pay for being able to use the Internet; but we also hope that at some point that data gets purge, or at the very least doesn’t get shared with anyone.

However that may not be true if this leaked document from the Department of Justice is any indication. Called “Retention Periods of Major Cellular Service Providers” (pdf) it is meant as a guide for law enforcement agencies who need to get their grimy mitts on our data. The data covers such areas as customer IP addresses, call logs, text messages, and browsing habits.

The document, marked for “Law Enforcement Use Only”, covers the data retention practices of the US telecom companies which include: AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile; and it seems they all have differences when it comes to retaining your data.

Where T-Mobile will keep a list of everyone you have exchanged text messages with for up to five years its competitor Sprint keeps them for five years. Verizon seems to be the best of them as they only keep the list, and the message contents, for a single year whereas AT&T will keep just the list for seven years.

The secret document was unearthed recently by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina via a FOIA request.

“People who are upset that Facebook is storing all their information should be really concerned that their cell phone is tracking them everywhere they’ve been,” said Catherine Crump, an ACLU staff attorney. “The government has this information because it wants to engage in surveillance.”

via Wired

This should actually come as no surprise to anyone and is probably the tip of the iceberg.

So which big American telecom is the worst in data retention? is a post from: The Inquisitr

It took an odd partnership but the Democrats and various members of the Tea Party worked together on Wednesday to vote down the GOP stopgap bill.

The surprise defeat came at a vote of 230-195. Democrats were opposed to the bill because it contained $1.5 billion in cuts to the governmental loan program which provides discounts to car manufacturers who build fuel-efficient vehicles. On the GOP side many members believed that the underlying bill allowed high rate spending which they were hoping to cut.

With the bill shot down by two parties House Speaker John Boehner and his GOP team of lawmakers have went back to the drawing board. The GOP hopes to come up with a suitable alternative before the government shuts down at the end of next week.

If a measure isn’t signed into law soon there’s also a chance that FEMA could run out of money early next week, thereby stopping their efforts to support Hurricane Irene recovery efforts and other disasters.  Part of the bill that was rejected would have provided $3.7 billion to relief efforts.

The hope was that the stopgap bill would pass in order to give the government enough cash to survive through November 18 when they would examine 12 unfinished spending bills.

Do you think it was a good idea to shut down a temporary order that would have kept the government moving along? Also what do you think about Tea Party Republicans teaming up with Democrats to stop a bill? It must have been a fairly awful option for that partnership to take place.

Democrats And Tea Party Members Team Up To Shut Down Stopgap Bill is a post from: The Inquisitr

Are you an American? Do you feel alienated? Do you feel like your interests and concerns are not heard nor addressed by those people with power and influence?

You are not alone. A Harris Alienation Index said that the level of alienation among Americans has jumped up 11 points in one year to 63. It was 52 last year. The last time the index jumped by this much was from 1972 to 1973 during the Nixon administration. The index was also in the 60s during the presidency of Bill Clinton.

Every year since 1966, The Harris Poll as surveyed by Harris Interactive, has measured how alienated Americans feel and then calculated the Harris Alienation Index based on the results.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll survey on 1,956 adults. The Index is based on replies to five questions, many of which show major changes since last year. Here are some conclusions:

73% of all adults believe the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, compared to 68% last year;

73% believe that the people running the country don’t really care what happens to you, compared to 50% in 2010, an increase of 23%;

66% believe that what you think doesn’t count very much anymore, compared to 52% last year, an increase of 14%;

63% believe that most people in power try to take advantage of people like you compared to 53% last year, an increase of 10%; and,

41% believe that they are left out of things going on around them, compared to 37% last year.

In addition, 87% feel that the people in Washington are out of touch with the rest of the country, compared to 70% last year, an increase of 17%.  

We will see if this Alienation Index would reflect on the result of next year’s elections.

The next time you feel alienated, just remember, you are not alone.

Americans Feel Alienated (As If No One Cares Anymore) is a post from: The Inquisitr

Over the years of the Harper Conservative government in Canada there has been a constant push to give the police more power when it comes to getting information about you from your ISP. For the most part they have failed in being able to push any legislation through the House of Commons but for the last four years or so that was because they didn’t have a majority government.

Well as of the last election that changed and now Harper is back trying to push a revamped “Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communication Act” through the Parliament; and you should be really afraid.

C-52 requires all telecommunications company to provide to law enforcement “any information in the service provider’s possession or control respecting the name, address, telephone number, and electronic mail address of any subscriber to any of the service provider’s telecommunications services and the Internet protocol address, mobile identification number, electronic serial number, local service provider identifier, international mobile equipment identity number, international mobile subscriber identity number and subscriber identity module card [SIM card] number that are associated with the subscriber’s service and equipment.”

To get that information, law enforcement won’t necessarily need a warrant. Each agency can designate up to 5 percent of its total employees as authorized to request the information, and it can ban telcos from admitting that they have provided any such information. Bill C-52 looks to be a key part of the upcoming “omnibus” bill that will include a host of other security-related material.

via Ars Technica

Even our country’s Privacy Commissioner considers this to be a bad bill saying that it is too broad and gives the police too much power.

We are concerned that clause 16 of Bill C-52 would give authorities access to a wide scope of personal information without a warrant; for example, unlisted numbers, email account data and IP addresses. The Government itself took the view that this information was sensitive enough to make trafficking in such ‘identity information’ aCriminal Code offence. Many Canadians consider this information sensitive and worthy of protection, which does not fit with the proposed self-authorized access model.

Given that Harper has a majority government now things don’t look very good at this point for Canadians when it comes to their privacy on the web.

Canadian internet privacy getting another screwing by the Harper government is a post from: The Inquisitr

Chinese government officials have sensored searches for ailing leader Jiang Zemin for fear that issues regarding his health could lead to revolt and other actions in the country.

The censorship began after Jiang, 84, was said to be dying or possibly had already died as early as Friday when he failed to stand alongside various other leaders of the country’s communist party during the party’s 90th anniversary celebration.

The country blocked terms on Twitter that not only included Jiang’s name but also “301″ which is the name of the hospital in Beijing where he is being treated. Other words banned include “river” (the word used by some savvy Tweeters in place of Jiang’s name), also banned were “brain death” and “brain dead” among others.

The move shouldn’t surprise many citizens in the country who find it common place for their leaders to guard secrets about their senior officials.

It’s still unclear why Chinese officials have decided to block terms about their leaders health, however speculation is that they want to control how his death is perceived in the media, while officials are still unsure how his death will resonate with citizens.

Jiang took over the party after the Tiananmen Square massacre and has helped introduce free-market economics to the country while reducing the state’s role in business.

Jiang Zemin Internet Searches Censored by Chinese Government As Health Possibly Fails is a post from: The Inquisitr

LulzSec seems to be on a bit of a tear lately.

No happy with just hacking the hell out of Sony Pictures this past week they have now decided to give the FBI the middle finger by hacking one of their private non-profit affiliate organization called Infragard.

LulzSec published 180 usernames, hashed passwords, plain text passwords, real names and email addresses.

Where did the plain text passwords come from? Considering LulzSec was able to decrypt them it would imply that the hashes were not salted, or that the salt used was stored in an insecure manner.

One interesting point to note is that not all of the users passwords were cracked… Why? Because these users likely used passwords of reasonable complexity and length. This makes brute forcing far more difficult and LulzSec couldn’t be bothered to crack them.

In addition to stealing data from Infragard, LulzSec also defaced their website with a joke YouTube video and the text “LET IT FLOW YOU STUPID FBI BATTLESHIPS” in a window titled “NATO – National Agency of Tiny Origamis LOL”.

via Sophos

Somehow I think LulzSec may have poked the wrong bear.

How to piss off the FBI? Hack their buddy’s Infragard site. is a post from: The Inquisitr

Every day it seems that governments, state or federal, seek out to prove over and over again just how much they do not understand how technology and the Internet work.

To show just how brain dead these officials are we have the news today, via VentureBeat, that Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam has signed into law a bill that makes it illegal to not only share your Netflix account but any streaming subscription.

The bill makes it a crime for anyone other than account holders to log into services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Rdio, or Rhapsody. It also empowers streaming media companies that identify illegal sharing to contact law enforcement authorities to press charges.

So, a college student who gives access of his Netflix streaming account to half the residents in a dormitory will now be punishable by law, according to the bill’s sponsor Gerald McCormick.

Needless to say this bill was being heavily endorsed and pushed by the various entertainment lobbying groups.

Tennessee Gov wins moron prize – makes it illegal to share your Netflix account is a post from: The Inquisitr

First there was the COICA bill that failed to pass but it has been replaced by the new and *cough* improved Protect IP Act that admittedly fixed some of the problems with COICA but in return brought a whole slew of new problems.

As with the COICA Act a large segment of those people who actually understand technology have come out against the new Act, including: librarians, public interest groups, human rights groups, and a number of technology groups.

On top of this a group of Internet and DNS specialists have come out and said that the Protect IP Act could actually break the Internet in some pretty significant ways:

• The U.S. Government and private industry have identified Internet security and stability as a key part of a wider cyber security strategy, and if implemented, the DNS related provisions of PROTECT IP would weaken this important commitment. DNS filters would be evaded easily, and would likely prove ineffective at reducing online infringement. Further, widespread circumvention would threaten the security and stability of the global DNS.
• The DNS provisions would undermine the universality of domain names, which has been one of the key enablers of the innovation, economic growth, and improvements in communications and information access unleashed by the global Internet.
• Migration away from ISP-provided DNS servers would harm efforts that rely on DNS data to detect and mitigate security threats and improve network performance.
• Dependencies within the DNS would pose significant risk of collateral damage, with filtering of one domain potentially affecting users’ ability to reach non-infringing Internet content.
• The site redirection envisioned in Section 3(d)(II)(A)(ii) is inconsistent with security extensions to the DNS that are known as DNSSEC.
• The U.S. Government and private industry have identified DNSSEC as a key part of a wider cyber security strategy, and many private, military, and governmental networks have invested in DNSSEC technologies.
• If implemented, this section of the PROTECT IP Act would weaken this important effort to improve Internet security. It would enshrine and institutionalize the very network manipulation that DNSSEC must fight in order to prevent cyberattacks and other malevolent behavior on the global Internet, thereby exposing networks and users to increased security and privacy risks.

Even with all this strong opposition against the Protect IP Act, and because Hollywood wants this, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously voted to move the Act forward as is.

So who are the Senators that have voted to break the Internet and support the entertainment’s needs over the consumers:

• Patrick J. Leahy — Vermont
• Herb Kohl — Wisconsin
• Jeff Sessions — Alabama
• Dianne Feinstein — California
• Orrin G. Hatch — Utah
• Richard Blumenthal — Connecticut
• Chuck Grassley — Iowa
• Michael Lee — Utah
• Jon Kyl — Arizona
• Chuck Schumer — New York
• Lindsey Graham — South Carolina
• Dick Durbin — Illinois
• John Cornyn — Texas
• Tom Coburn — Oklahoma
• Sheldon Whitehouse — Rhode Island
• Amy Klobuchar — Minnesota
• Al Franken — Minnesota
• Chris Coons — Delaware

If I’m not mistaken the US is coming up on an election year so maybe now would be the time to ask your elected representative if they are supporting this kind of crap, and if so – why?

via Techdirt

Is your Senator in Hollywood’s back pocket when it comes to Protect IP? is a post from: The Inquisitr

So, the government is ostensibly shutting down this afternoon… over Planned Parenthood? Or something?

Rep. Donna Edwards spoke about the matter of government shutdown on the House floor, citing lyrics from the White Stripes song “Effect and Cause” to illustrate the situation- alas, with a marked lack of Jack White hotness. Witness:

[Video] Rep. Donna Edwards quotes White Stripes on House floor is a post from: The Inquisitr

We are seeing social networks like Facebook being used by police and other government agencies to alert people of events as they happen. From Amber Alerts to earthquakes around the world we are getting our news as it is happening increasingly from services other than the typical radio, television, and print.

Now the US government is looking at using Facebook and Twitter to announce changes in its terror alerts. This is part of a larger restructuring of the current way terror alerts are classified and then sent out as notifications to the public.

The U.S. government’s new system to replace the five color-coded terror alerts will have two levels of warnings — elevated and imminent — that will be relayed to the public only under certain circumstances for limited periods of time, sometimes using Facebook and Twitter, according to a draft Homeland Security Department plan obtained by The Associated Press.

Some terror warnings could be withheld from the public entirely if announcing a threat would risk exposing an intelligence operation or an ongoing investigation, according to the government’s confidential plan.

Like a gallon of milk, the new terror warnings will each come with a stamped expiration date.

via Yahoo News.

 

Next up for Facebook and Twitter? Terror Alerts from US government. is a post from: The Inquisitr

It’s bad enough that we have Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seizing domains, including legal foreign domains, just because they think the sites are doing something illegal but now it seems that the Obama administration wants to go even further and make it so you have to get government approval for that new domain.

Yes, as hard as it might to believe, Declan McCullagh over at CNET has a report that:

The Obama administration is quietly seeking the power for it and other governments to veto future top-level domain names, a move that raises questions about free expression, national sovereignty, and the role of states in shaping the future of the Internet.

This is coming about as a new wave of domain suffixes are being applied for to extend the list of top level domains that already exist: .com, .org, and .net. The Obama administration is glossing over the affair as they say in a statement to CNET:

“has merit as it diminishes the potential for blocking of top level domain strings considered objectionable by governments. This type of blocking harms the architecture of the DNS and undermines the goal of universal resolvability (i.e., a single global Internet that facilitates the free flow of goods and services and freedom of expression).”

However Declan points out that what the government is looking for is veto rights over any new domain suffix being created.

The Obama administration is proposing (PDF) that domain approval procedures be changed to include a mandatory “review” by an ICANN advisory panel comprised of representatives of roughly 100 nations. The process is open-ended, saying that any government “may raise an objection to a proposed (suffix) for any reason.” Unless at least one other nation disagrees, the proposed new domain name “shall” be rejected.

This would create an explicit governmental veto over new top-level domains. Under the procedures previously used in the creation of .biz, .name, and .info, among others, governments could offer advice, but the members of the ICANN board had the final decision.

Okay so Obama isn’t really looking have a say over what you want to call your new domain but that doesn’t mean that having a veto over whether a new domain suffix is added isn’t good either.

Obama wants you to clear that new domain name with the government is a post from: The Inquisitr

You could almost hear the back-slapping and popping of champaign corks at the news that the government in Canada issued a statement that the country’s CRTC could rescind the whole data cap thing or the government would do it for them.

Whoopee! Right?

Not so fast, you might want to put those corks back in the bottles.

Let’s clarify a few things first.

Caps still exist and will continue to exist

Data caps in Canada existed before the whole UBB debacle hit the web. You see there are two ways to get internet access in Canada, like much of the world: DSL and cable. Prior to this uproar cable companies that provided access e.g.: Cogeco, Shaw Cable, and I believe Rogers Cable had started putting caps on new accounts.

To give you an idea of these kind of caps here is Cogeco’s Internet pricelist:

So even at the top end of the account spectrum users are still going to be paying a $100 for only 150 GB of data – this is less that even the question cap by Comcast in the US. Now consider the proliferation behind, and marketing push of, video streaming and downloading – it won’t take long to eat through 150 GB, just do the math.

Oh and when it comes to the times when you go over all I can say is ouch:

Shaw Cable is no better as their rates are:

• High-Speed Lite: Up to 1 Mbps download speed with a 15GB data cap
• High-Speed: Up to 7.5 Mbps download speed with a 60GB data cap
• High-Speed Extreme: Up to 15 Mbps download speed with a 100GB data cap
• High-Speed Warp: Up to 50 Mbps download speed with a 175GB data cap.

Then there is the other cable player – Rogers:

• Ultra-Lite: 500 Kbps with a data cap of 2GB
• Lite: 3Mbps with a data cap of 15GB
• Express: 10Mbps with a data cap of 60GB
• Extreme: 15 Mbps with a data cap of 80GB
• Extreme Plus: 25Mbps with a data cap of 125GB
• Ultimate: 50 Mbps with a data cap of 175GB

However here’s the kicker – this so-called rollback that everyone is excited about doesn’t affect these companies. So even if the rollback sticks cable internet users are still stuck with onerous data caps which shouldn’t be really all that surprising since the last thing these companies want is users watching TV; or other streaming video, on the web instead of their cable channels.

Any reconsideration of data caps and UBB by the CRTC will only affect the most recent decisions which means that unless there is some sort of massive market pressure on the cable companies they will continue to have data caps.

As Prof. Michael Geist points out in a post on this:

[....]

It may matter because the CRTC review could be confined to the two most recent UBB decisions, which focus on pricing discounts, not on the affirmation of the application of wholesale UBB.  If this is the case, Bell’s request to delay and the CRTC’s review could leave the basic concepts behind wholesale UBB untouched.  Indeed, the decision to request a delay may have been an attempt to save UBB and simply reopen the matter of price.  Given that Clement is focused on the very concept of wholesale UBB and its implications on competition, it is not clear whether the CRTC review will address the foundational questions associated with UBB by reopening all the decisions or only the most recent one (the CRTC statement says it has decided to “launch, of our own motion, a review of our decision..”).

This rollback of UBB is a done deal

Think again.

As Professor Michael Geist reports on his blog the CRTC considers this just a delay of implementation.

CRTC Chair Konrad von Finckenstein has told a House of Commons committee that the CRTC will delay implementation of the usage based billing decision by at least 60 days.  The CRTC says it will review the decision with an eye to protecting consumers, ensuring that heavy users pay for their excess usage, and that small ISPs retain maximum flexibility to innovate in the marketplace.

On top of this the CRTC seems to think that it is its responsibility to rein in this wanton use of Canadian Internet usage and that this delay will only be for 60 days.

“We don’t have a monopoly on wisdom,” he admitted, adding that CRTC had last night decided to suspend the new rules for 60 days and to review its own decision. When pressed about changes that might be coming, von Finckenstein made clear that nothing may change. “I cannot tell you what the outcome of the review is,” he repeated.

The government has now pledged publicly to block the rules in their current form, but the CRTC has yet to hear officially from any official on the matter. Though delayed, its rules currently remain in place.

Even if it changes the billing requirements, CRTC still wants to “find economic ways to discipline the use of the Internet,” von Finckenstein said in response to a question. Companies like Netflix are “putting a great stress on the Internet and there’s no incentive for companies to invest in maintaining the Internet.” Usage-based billing would encourage people to adopt more bandwidth-efficient technologies (or to forgo things like Internet video altogether, which would be terrific for cable operators).

via Ars Technica

Since when is it a government agencies responsibility to train us on how to use the Internet?

This isn’t just about independent ISPs getting the shaft.

Part of the argument against UBB is how it is giving Bell the ability to fully control the DSL market and in the end forcing the small independent DSL resellers out of business. As important as these businesses are to the whole ecosystem the shaft being given is much harder and deeper to the consumer; and this isn’t doesn’t affect the general consumer but is a wholesale death knell for any Canadian content producers.

It isn’t just those monster downloads that are counted against any data caps but also anything you upload counts against them as well. So take for example my work over at WinExtra creating and uploading our Daily Brief show. Each of those files average about 250MB in size and are uploaded 5 days a week which would work out to around 5GB per month  and then there is all the podcasting that I do as well.

This is before my use of the web when it comes to my work as a blogger with all the video streaming, or listening to podcasts, or just all the reading I do each month.

Data caps would have a detrimental effect on business of all kinds but especially those that earn any kind of living from depending on the Internet.

It’s election year

While the Harper government has come out and said that they will overturn the CRTC UBB decision (the most recent one) we have to remember that this is also the government that has been a key supporter of ACTA and the total rewriting of Canadian copyright laws at the behest; and help, of the US entertainment industry.

The Harper government has never proven itself to be a consumer friendly government and I think that much of the posturing over UBB and the CRTC is more with an eye to the upcoming federal election rather than any real concern for the consumer.

As well any discussion regarding UBB and data caps it might be nice to see Bell have to reconsider its plans like this the country; and government, would be far better off if the effort was put into re-examining what already exists when it comes to data caps.

What is really needed is for Canada to have a digital roadmap for the future that put heavy accent on the consumer and the potential that the Internet has to return the country to the top of the global tech leaders list.

Going forward

I don’t hold out much hope for a digital roadmap no matter how much it would make sense to have one and as much as it is heart-warming to see the uproar over Bell’s moves I am really afraid that like most things in Canada that once the natives have been pacified we’ll find ourselves back in the same position.

As Knowlton Thomas from TechVibes writes:

OpenMedia says that one this is clear: “Canadians will decide the future of the Internet, not industry ‘stakeholders’.” But this may still be an optimistic view. While it’s certainly been proven that as consumers we carry serious clout, we’re a long way from having true power over our country’s telecommunications oligopoly.

Unfortunately, it’s a case of “time will tell.” The ball is always going to be in the corportations’ court – we’ve just got to play good defence.

As he says – time will tell but I definitely wouldn’t be popping that cork anytime too soon.

Canada and its data caps flipflop – don’t pop the champagne yet is a post from: The Inquisitr