This morning, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, based at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law, asked the federal Privacy Commissioner to investigate the Internet service provider (ISP) industry's practice of profiling users online to target them with advertising.
CIPPIC, as this organization is called, is the closest thing Canada has to a conscience with the new technologies.
You'd think the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission would have stepped into that role a little more energetically than it has. It seems to have been loath to delve too far into holding high-tech companies accountable to any standards. And when it does get active, as it did in the recent foofaraw over bandwidth-shaping practices, it sucked in its gut and ... demanded Bell explain itself. The commission might be doing a lot of stuff, but it must work more visibly and faster in a world that is clearly changing very quickly.
The CRTC's U.S. counterpart, the Federal Communications Commission, is a much more aggressive regulator (in a land obsessed with deregulation). This morning the FCC took a step closer to “punishing” Comcast after the company had blocked Internet traffic among users of file-sharing software that allows them to exchange large amounts of data. Though the punishment is not likely to include a fine, it could require Comcast to stop blocking peer-to-peer traffic, open up their business to the FCC describing what exactly Comcast had done and to be a lot more transparent with its customers about how it manages its network.
Both Comcast and Canadian ISPs (along with just about all other ISPs) use a technology generically called deep-packet inspection, which “sniffs” Internet traffic and measures who is doing what online. They either use it to throttle certain kinds of online activity or use information gleaned from deep-packet inspection to learn its customers' habits and then deliver these customers to advertisers.
While the FCC wants Comcast to open up its business practices to the public — something no business likes to do — CIPPIC wants to hand the responsibility to Canada's privacy commissioner.
Both approaches are interesting, and certainly describe the differences between the Canadian and U.S. approach to basically the same issue.
But the FCC has more teeth in its jurisdiction than the Canadian Privacy Commissioner does, and it's still hard to see why the Canadian public's interests aren't being more actively championed by the CRTC.
Coincidentally, this morning also brought news that a class-action lawsuit has been launched in Quebec over plans by Bell Mobility Inc. and Telus Communications Inc. to charge customers for incoming text messages. Bell and Telus want to charge customers 15 cents per incoming text message, with Bell introducing the charge on Aug. 8 and Telus on Aug. 24.
Why do practices like these have to be handled by individuals launching lawsuits or self-appointed law clinics writing stiff letters? Why are our regulators quiet while the service providers, of both Internet and cellphone services, keep charging whatever they want and doing things that they wouldn't do if they were more actively regulated?
It's not like Canadian Internet providers have been angels, living just above the poverty line. But it appears they have been milking their customers, and should be accountable for their actions. And if we don't have enough competition among them to rein in their practices, then we should at least have a regulator who will demand they make themselves more transparent.
My big worry is that if the CRTC doesn't step into the fray, it will fall to the government to pass legislation governing ISPs. And we've seen how sympathetic Ottawa has been toward large corporate interests when it released its bill to update the Copyright Act.
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