The myth of lemming mass suicide is long-standing and has been popularized by a number of factors. ... Due to their association with this odd behaviour, lemming suicide is a frequently-used metaphor in reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences. This is the theme of the video game Lemmings, where the player attempts to save the mindlessly marching rodents from walking to their deaths.

Bell's traffic shaping is hurting a lot more than P2P users. There are many reports on the dslreports.com Teksavvy forum (»TekSavvy) of people who have been unable to access work-related electronic resources from home, properly use online banking, use internet telephone services, or play online games, because Bell's throttling system is so badly implemented that it can't distinguish these normal, low-bandwidth, *and incontrovertibly legal* activities from P2P filesharing. In most cases, the same problems apply to Rogers as well.

Because Bell and Rogers have a duopoly on last mile internet access in most of Ontario, there is now no way for anyone who wants/needs to make use of the Internet to work from home, play games online, or otherwise take full advantage of the internet revolution have no way to do so. This is literally a step backwards to the pre-broadband dialup days of Internet service.

CBC needs to follow this up this issue urgently as neither Bell or Rogers have shown any willingness to reduce the collateral damage of their war on P2P.

Indeed, Bell's arrogance on traffic shaping is such that Bell spokesman Jason Laszlo was recently caught stating on Facebook that he is "realizing how little seperates (sic) journalists from lemmings."[1] Assuming the Facebook page is not a forgery, it seems clear that neither Bell or its spokeman have all that much respect for their fellow Canadians.

[1] »Jason Laszlo (Bell spokesman)'s real thoughts on this issue

Your recent article on internet traffic management completely missed the point about Bell Canada's decision to interfere with the services it provides to third party DSL wholesalers.

There is no evidence that Bell's decision to throttle service provided to wholesalers has anything to do with preserving capacity on Bell's network. Rather, it's a fairly simple case where Bell has used its position as a monopoly provider of last mile DSL service to prevent any DSL ISP from offering better service than Bell's retail DSL ISP arm (Sympatico) chooses to offer. While there is no evidence of Bell deliberately crippling third party DSL ISPs, the definite *effect* of Bell's policy is to tilt the playing field such that no Bell competitor can offer better service than Sympatico chooses to offer.

Furthermore, Bell's wholesale throttling effects far more than P2P users. There are many reports on the dslreports.com Teksavvy forum[1] of people who have been unable to access work-related electronic resources from home, properly use online banking, use internet telephone services, or play online games, because Bell's throttling system is so badly implemented that it can't distinguish these normal, low-bandwidth, *and incontrovertibly legal* activities from P2P filesharing.

Calling wholesale ISP throttling a mere capacity issue related to P2P traffic completely whitewashes the issues involved. Bell Canada is the only one who benefits from this. Indeed, Bell spokesman Jason Laszlo's appears to be so happy about the way this issue has played out in the media that at 1:14pm on Saturday, Laszlo's facebook status page indicated that he was "realizing how little seperates (sic) most journalists from lemmings." [2]

I strongly urge you to spend some time researching the ultimate effects of Bell's decision to throttle wholesale ISPs--start by reading [1] for a few hours--and write a follow up piece as soon as possible.

Regards,
Coridon Henshaw,
Communications liberties activist,
Ottawa.

[1] »TekSavvy

[2] A screen capture can be found here: »Jason Laszlo (Bell spokesman)'s real thoughts on this issue