With your assistance, we have helped propel Net Neutrality from an obscure issue into a national effort to secure open and equal access to the Internet for all Canadians. NOW is the time to let the CRTC know where YOU stand on Internet freedom!

Big Telecom has been caught:

• throttling or slowing Internet traffic to businesses and consumers;
• blocking access to websites that criticized them;
• crippling consumer devices and applications.

The upcoming CRTC decision will have major and long-lasting implications for our Internet. Our online level playing field of innovation and free speech hangs in the balance.

Please Take Action and invite your fellow Canadians to do the same!

Start here: http://saveournet.ca/content/take-action

What is this about?
The net neutrality controversy is about how the internet will function in the future. Recent deviations from the principle of neutrality by some of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies have put the issue of how we want the internet to function squarely before us. Canadians must make choices about how the internet should be understood: as a common conduit in which all information is treated equal, or as a place where different types of information and applications are treated differently by the companies that control access to the internet.

What is the problem?
The problem is that Canada’s telecommunications laws, while prohibiting “unjust discrimination” and interference with content by telecom carriers, does not adequately protect network neutrality on the internet. The existing laws may not prevent big ISPs, for example, from offering new tiered services to content providers, and thereby turning the internet into a two-tiered network on which some content (guess whose?) is prioritized over other content. In the end, those with deep pockets will end up in the “fast lane”, while all other internet content providers will be relegated to a much slower lane.

Another problem is ISP “traffic-shaping”: a practice by which ISPs slow down P2P traffic in order to make space for other traffic on an ostensibly congested network. Many people consider such discriminatory treatment of certain kinds of internet traffic to be “unjust discrimination” under the Telecommunications Act and a violation of the principle of network neutrality, but big ISPs defend the practice as just and legal.

*Examples of ISP’s closing down the Internet
*Relevant Policy and background information