
Canada's Bell Tried to Have VPNs Banned During NAFTA Negotiations - myinnerbanjo
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190130/10141941498/canadas-bell-tried-to-have-vpns-banned-during-nafta-negotiations.shtml
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deogeo
> Bell argued that Canadians accessing content from a US service with a VPN
> “unjustly enriches the US service, which has not paid for the Canadian
> rights”

Odd how 'free trade' doesn't apply to consumers. Are they not allowed to
import digital goods?

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ac29
Its not a free trade issue, its a matter of contractual distribution
agreements with geographical limitations. That's pretty common in many
industries, not just those dealing in digital goods.

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deogeo
The consumer never agreed to those contracts. He bought the goods in the US,
and imported them into Canada, via a VPN. He could just as well have driven
across the border, bought a DVD, and carried it back.

~~~
SpaceManiac
DVDs have region locking. The United States and Canada happen to be in the
same region, and there are bypasses, but technical controls against importing
digital goods are already normalized, and I doubt this analogy will convince
policymakers.

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dtech
This is irrelevant. Replace DVD with an apple. The point is that free trade
between countries means you should be able to buy in one country and use in
the other country.

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Belphemur
It's not surprising, we're talking about the same company that want to remove
net neutrality in Canada.

Not only that, but they want to create a "website police" to block any website
that they deem "dangerous".

Of course they don't want people to use VPN...

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byron_fast
Being allowed options other than Bell has been a huge boon to consumers and
businesses in Ontario.

Although we still overpay for everything and Bell probably still makes money
on the underlying infrastructure, at least we don't have to deal with them
directly.

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colmmacc
I wonder what percentage of the Canadian population can receive terrestrial TV
and radio transmissions? I can pick up the Washington stations in Vancouver,
BC and even as far north as Squamish in good conditions, and that's without a
particularly good antenna.

Many other Canadian cities like Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Kingston, Winnipeg,
Quebec and Windsor, all seem pretty close to the border too. Of course it
works the other way too, I can pick up Canadian radio in Bellingham or even
Mount Vernon.

How do country based TV rights work in /that/ context?

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vinay427
Just to add another anecdote, I really appreciated being able to listen to the
CBC radio channels throughout the metro Detroit area, and CBC news is
officially offered (and included in most packages) through the local cable
provider there.

I didn't realize people in many other parts of the country lacked access to
CBC on TV until I moved elsewhere.

~~~
grawprog
Access to CBC in rural areas has actually gotten worse since the switch to
digital only broadcasting a while back. My dad hasn't had cablr for years now
he lost CBC shortly after that on the Sunshine Coast. Even after buying and
then modifying and improving a couple digital antennas now.

~~~
conservajerk
My parents have the same issue in Northern BC. When I was growing up we had
two channels. They now have no channels.

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Scoundreller
It’s surprising that they’ve never leased space on a free-to-Air satellite
service. Or just mandated free carriage when issuing distribution licenses.

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sys_64738
So anybody on Bell Canada wouldn't be able to work remote and VPN into work?
Would that apply to those working for Bell Canada, too? The absurdity of these
companies is beyond belief.

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anonymousab
Their target is specifically VPNs advertised or mostly used for bypassing
regional restrictions and piracy.

Of course there's a massive grey area of "what about VPNs that aren't
advertising that purpose but are used in that way" that they would exploit in
the most hamfisted and self-beneficial manner possible, but that's par for the
course for most corporate lobbying initiatives.

~~~
14
My guess is of course Bell would create their own VPN that would adhere to
their own standards that you could use for a fee

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gamesbrainiac
How would you actually go about banning VPNs? This makes no sense. You can
barely make a moral argument, and what is to prevent people from just
tunneling into a server that is, say located in the Swiss alps?

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stevenicr
Is there any publication of similar things that were brought up during these
negotiations?

I started hosting some sites in Canada some time ago, and like what the
privacy and similar policies are of this datacenter.

I was about to deploy more sites to the same center when I saw an article
about some of the initial negotiations. I realized that in an effort to
appease one set of companies or another group of people with whatever agendas,
we may see the Canada gov change restrictions in certain ways making privacy
and other things less protected.

So I started looking at other places and have yet to see anything about any
final details on the agreements and attempted policy changes.

If anyone knows of some good resources to get a grip on this please share.

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guardiangod
I guess it's Bell Let's Talk In Open Day, all day every day.

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chmielewski
Good for them I’ve had so many problems with data ingress across that border
on on our .ca

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grumpy-cowboy
Lets ban Bell Canada. Here the list of Bell's subsidiaries to ban :

    
    
      - Bell Canada
      - Bell Media
      - Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (37.5%)
      - Bell Mobility
      - Bell Aliant
      - Virgin Mobile Canada
      - Bell Internet
      - Bell TV
      - Bell Fibe TV
      - Fibe
      - Bell MTS
      - Lucky Mobile
      - The Source (retailer)
      - CraveTV

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philwelch
> Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (37.5%)

MLSE owns every Toronto pro sports franchise except the Blue Jays. (The Blue
Jays, it turns out, are owned by Bell's competitor, Rogers.) But if Bell
Canada only owns 37.5% of it, logically we only need to boycott 37.5% of the
MLSE teams. Starting from the educated guess that the Maple Leafs are almost
half of MLSE's value, the next biggest chunk--probably the closest to
37.5%--would be the Raptors, with their Canadian Football and MLS teams taking
up the remaining sliver of value.

So, just boycott the Raptors and it'll work out.

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chocolatebunny
I'd rather boycott the leafs because I'm tired of losing.

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acct1771
And because Buffalo's a long way to drive to see a pro hockey game in person?

