Canada Gives Thumbs Up to P2P Networks

On the heel’s of the U.S. federal election, Canadian NDP leader Jack Layton delivers a message on YouTube saying that he fully supports peer-to-peer (P2P) networks during Canada’s own election. Layton, party leader of the NDP, a major political group in Canada, says that P2P networks are part of innovation and should not be regulated by government bodies.

According to Layton:

"There’s the politics behind the net, for example. We’ve got these big corporations that are moving in to threaten net neutrality.

Now I think this is very, very dangerous and we have put the whole issue of net neutrality right into the heart of our campaign platform and I’d urge you to visit ndp.ca to see what we’re saying about it."

Net neutrality has become a hot topic, one that even Barack Obama has talked about in his presidential campaign on a very serious level. Many ISPs have gone towards monitoring and regulating both usage type and bandwidth with customers.

It’s no surprise that major ISPs and network technology companies such as Cisco are in favor of regulating networks. The backers claim that by monitoring and introducing tiers, customers will receive a better online experience. Of course, consumers are against this and U.S. government officials are still up in arms on what to do.

"Just like we don’t favor two-tiered healthcare, we don’t favor two-tiered Internet either. What we want to see is the Internet used as a public tool—a public tool for exchanging ideas and I particularly want to say that if we don’t fight to preserve it, we could lose it," says Layton.

Many consumers are frustrated already with the way Internet connection packages are sold. For example, while connection speeds are increasing, ISPs are finding more ways to put a cap on what customers can download and how much. Got a nice 10Mbit or higher connection? Be prepared to be slapped with a large overage bill or have your connection suspended if your ISP feels that you’ve downloaded "an excessive amount" of data.

Net neutrality is one topic that certainly will get hotter with the results of this year’s election.