Month: February 2015

Kenji Kushida is a scholar at Stanford University, who has written a most explanatory overview of how America came to dominate cyberspace, through computer companies.  He traces the evolution of the Internet to a series of actions taken by the US government to limit the power of the telephone companies.  Kushida looks at the USA, […]

The announcement that the FCC would regulate carriers of Internet applications as common carriers has excited a storm of opposition from everyone but the people. The Financial Post today published my response to some concerns about the dictatorship of the Internet. Dictators could rule the Internet A response to Robert McDowell and Gordon Goldstein Financial Post Comment, […]

I have nothing but praise for the majority decision in Ben Klass’ fight with Bell and Videotron (Broadcasting and Telecom Decision CRTC 2015-26). They have achieved a conceptual revolution: they have adopted essentially an Internet view of the businesses they regulate. Since they did not announce their revolution as such, let me point it out. […]

When I read conservative blogging treatment of net neutrality before the FCC, I despair of US politics. Here is Glen Beck, for example. Here is Ajit Pai, Republican appointed FCC Commissioner. Why is a choice between control of what you send or receive that is exercized by large carriers without a referee, on the one hand,  and […]

Net neutrality is a term we use today to express an old legal concept: common carriage. A “common carrier’ is bound to carry goods without unjust or undue discrimination. Thus a ferry-operator, railroad, or telephone company is bound not to discriminate against your shipments in favour of his shipments. It also implies an arbitrator to […]