Category Archives: Technology

| Business, In the news, My articles, Technology

What is a wireless spectrum auction?

It’s perhaps notable that two blog posts I’m linking to about the announcement by Industry Canada that part of the wireless spectrum auction will be set aside for new entrants to the market start with the word “finally”.

Though Michael Geist did a good job explaining the issue back in June (certainly better than Industry Canada’s very technical policy framework document), I take a crack at it in today’s Gazette.

In short, it means some wireless frequencies (which cellphones use to communicate with cell towers, and for which wireless providers need licenses from Industry Canada to operate) will be reserved for new companies in the market, like Shaw or Yak or Videotron (which currently re-sells Rogers service under its own brand). This wasn’t the idea of the current oligopoly (Bell, Rogers, Telus) because they say it gives an unfair advantage to newcomers (even though many of their licenses came through similar breaks given to their predecessors).

So now, the only thing standing in the way of at least one new entrant into the business (either regionally or nationally) is the opening bids, which for a high-bandwidth national frequency could reach past $200 million.

Videotron plans to use $500 million to setup a Quebec-wide network (including the cost of the cell site equipment and administrative costs of running an entire wireless network), which might expand to other provinces if successful.

Also included in the decision this week is a requirement for existing cell providers to share tower space with new entrants (which will significantly lower their startup costs) and a requirement to allow roaming (so, for example, new Videotron customers will be able to use their phones outside Quebec with reasonable fees being billed for use of the other company’s network).

Read more of my article here.

| Media, Opinion, Video, Web design

Canoe.tv: Clueless

For the first time ever, a Canadian company is going to be broadcasting videos on the Internet.

At least that’s what Quebecor would have us believe. They’re calling their new service Canoe.tv Canada’s first Internet broadcaster. In its newspapers, it clarifies that it’s the first Canadian web broadcaster “to feature specially commissioned programs in English and French“, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

The service, available in French and English, is basically a YouTube clone, only without any of that user-generated content junk that nobody wants. It also includes live content from networks like LCN, though the live feeds use Windows Media instead of Flash like the rest of the site.

On the French side, its content includes Prenez garde aux chiens, as well as interviews from Larocque-Lapierre, Denis Lévesque and others. Curiously, no Vlog despite the fact that Quebecor Media owns the show and the show is about online video.

The English side is even stranger. There’s more content from CBC (Just for Laughs, Rick Mercer, Peter Mansbridge, etc.) than there is from Sun Media’s crappy SUN TV. There are, however, plenty of Sunshine Girl videos.

But aside from their arrogance proclaiming to be the first to do something everyone else is already doing (in fact, the entire site was designed by a company called Feed Room), here’s why I don’t like the site:

  1. There’s no way to embed individual videos in blogs
  2. There’s no way to comment on videos
  3. Videos are referred to as “stories” in the “bookmark” page (that’s how you find out how to link to individual videos), and have 81-character URLs (just long enough to get cut in emails — YouTube’s URLs are half that length, and they have a lot more videos)
  4. Navigation uses some sort of proprietary Flash/JavaScript system which breaks just about every tool my browser has (opening links in new windows, the back button, scrolling)
  5. Videos are undated (probably deliberately, since most of them are old)

If I wanted to design a web video portal that was doomed to failure, it would look something like this. It might get some traffic, thanks to exclusive video (though anything worth watching is available straight from the source), but it’s not going to take off.

In short: FAIL.

UPDATE (Nov. 29/30): Some more reaction from the blogosphere:

InfoPresse points out that the site has virtually no fiction content, because of licensing issues. Le Devoir also has an article with detail about the problem.

UPDATE (Nov. 30): Pierre-Karl Péladeau does a very awkward-sounding presentation of Canoe.tv. In it, he says it’s a “totally Canadian” site, which is laughable because it was designed by an American company.

He also says that Sun Media can do a better job than the Canadian Television Fund at producing Canadian programming. The CTF funds things like Degrassi: TNG, The Rick Mercer Report, Slings and Arrows, ReGenesis, Intelligence and Little Mosque on the Prairie, all of which won Gemini awards this year. Sun Media funds sucker-generated-content show CANOE Live and … uhh … that’s about it.

Also, the Sun Family blog points out that 24 Hours Toronto didn’t even bother to rewrite the press release announcing the network so it conforms to its style.

UPDATE (Dec. 6): CBC tech guy Bruno Guglielminetti (whose name I can spell without looking it up first) interviews Peladeau for an article in Le Devoir.

UPDATE (Dec. 11): Intruders.tv has an interview with Dominique-Sébastien Forest, who has some long title at Canoe.tv. In the overly long interview that sounds more like a press release until the last few minutes, he notes:

  • They’re working on getting a real-time Flash encoder for live feeds, which are currently displayed through Windows Media.
  • Quebecor doesn’t consider CBC as competition online. They’re just another content provider who will share in the revenues.
  • The site is focused on professional content only (you know, like the Sunshine Girls I mentioned above).
  • It doesn’t offer embedding because their content license agreements don’t permit them to.
  • Nobody apparently noticed that there are no dates on the videos.
  • They’re working on adding comments to videos, like Espace Canoë has
  • He’s confirmed that Vlog will be coming back as a web-only show on Canoe.tv.
| Montreal, Opinion, Slow News Day, Technology

Internet providers have better things to do than monitor my bandwidth

Le Devoir has an article today claiming that Bell and Videotron deliberately ignore unusual increases in clients’ Internet bandwidth usage which might tell them that someone is gaining access to their connection without their knowledge.

The logic is simple: They can see clearly when bandwidth usage goes up, but they don’t warn the customer because they profit heavily off bandwidth overage charges.

Thing is, I’m not terribly convinced that’s the answer.

First of all, there’s an assumption that Internet Service Providers like high-bandwidth users. But they don’t. They hate peer-to-peer networks and other bandwidth-intensive activities. The vast majority of Internet users are well below their monthly quota, and the difference between the two is free bandwidth the companies are not eager to give away. There’s also the problem that a high-bandwidth user will slow the connections of other users on the network.

Secondly, I have no reason not to believe the providers’ PR-clouded appeal to their own laziness. They say they don’t have the resources to check every account for unusual activity (and if they do for one customer, they’ll be expected to do it for all). They’d have to hire tons of new people just to do this (and they won’t, of course; they’ll just pull people off technical and customer service). They’d have to do it on a schedule more often than once a month (because that’s when people are billed for excessive bandwidth use), and that’s really not feasible.

Similarly, the comparison with credit card companies and banks is a bit silly. These organizations deal directly with money, which is very important. You might get charged $30 for maxing out on bandwidth for one month, but it’s hardly the end of the world.

Finally, this isn’t an exact science. An increase in bandwidth usage might mean someone’s stealing your Wi-Fi, or it might mean your grandson is over for the holidays and is playing Halo 3 all day. And how many Wi-Fi leechers really run up the bandwidth meter anyway?

Just my two cents. (That doesn’t put me over the limit, right?)

| In the news, On the Net, Web design

Don’t tase me, ho ho ho

Sorry for the headline, but it’s all I could think of after seeing this ad (via Muddy Hill Post) from the Taser folks:

Santa’s Taser ad

The ad is for the Taser C2, which comes in different colours and is apparently marketed as a form of self-defence mechanism for infants when they’re separated from their mothers.

It’s also “police proven”, as shown from the great Taser–saves–lives stories we’ve seen in the news lately. It’s a track record to be proud of.

For those of you unfamiliar with the cultural reference, Wired educates.

| In the news, Media, Public transit, Technology, Video

If only bus drivers had writers like these

Via Martine, the WGA, the American writers union which is currently holding us hostage by denying us House-isms on strike for the rights to more than mere pennies from DVD sales and all of nothing from online publishing of TV shows and movies, isn’t lying down or holding useless marches with picket signs. They’re creating media to rally support for their cause.

In essence, it’s a tactic we’ve seen before but on a much larger scale. When CBC employees were locked out in 2005, they started producing blogs and podcasts to keep communication going. After it was over, the blogger for CBC Unlocked, Tod Maffin, was given the job of running Inside the CBC, a decidedly uncorporate, uncensored blog about the inner life of the Mother Corp., with its blessing.

Locked-out journalists at the Journal de Québec are still, since April, putting out a competing daily newspaper as part of their pressure tactics. The move has rallied support among other unions (who have helped them financially) politicians and newsmakers (who refuse to deal with Canoe reporters, a fly-by-night “wire services” and other scabs) and readers (who have cancelled subscriptions and are picking up the competing paper).

With Hollywood, the tactic that’s getting the most play is online video (ironic since the dispute is over how little they get paid for online video). Writers for popular shows like The Office, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have been cracking jokes on YouTube, and the actors are coming out to support them. Some like McDreamy and co. talk calmly about the issues, others like Sarah Silverman make the funny, and then there’s Sandra Oh.

The latest campaign, called “Speechless“, involves short black-and-white clips of actors in a world without scriptwriters. Most of them are of the actor-stands-blank-faced-and-says-nothing variety. Others are pretty funny. There’s a new one every day.

Some of my favourites below:

Continue reading →

| Video, Web design

Ann Bourget using YouTube in Quebec City race

Ann Bourget, the leader of the renouveau municipal de Québec party and front-runner in the race for Quebec City mayor (a special election was called to replace Andrée Boucher, who died in office in August), is using a blog and YouTube videos as part of her campaign.

Using the Internet isn’t new for Bourget, who has had an online presence since at least 2005, but she’s still kind of getting used to the YouTube thing (she giggles quite a bit in her latest video).

The Internet presence is a huge improvement over the boring party website and she spends time tackling real issues by answering real questions from her website’s visitors. It’s a lesson for people who want to run a local campaign.

Her latest video, which answers a bunch of questions, starts off with the most important one: Will you bring the Nordiques back?

| Opinion, Technology, TV

Internet CanCon is already here

When news broke this month about the idea of the CRTC considering regulation of the Internet to enforce CanCon-style rules, I was going to blog about it but quickly realized plenty of people would be doing that. Sure, enough, there was a blogger revolt at the idea and even a Facebook group for people to join.

The arguments against the idea are fairly straightforward:

  1. The entire issue was brought up by mainstream content producers and artists, but not new media artists who profit mainly off the Internet
  2. It’s impractical to try to control what people access on the Internet. The only countries that actually try to do that are backward, undemocratic regimes
  3. CanCon sucks

I agree, and this issue won’t go very far in the regulatory department because of it.

Unfortunately, those people who believe the Internet doesn’t have borders are going to find themselves disappointed by the fact that the Internet already commercially regulates what Canadians can see online, thanks to geographic IP mapping, which can tell a server what country you’re in based on your IP address.

This geographically-based content comes in three major forms:

  • Helpful localization. Google has been doing this for quite a while, redirecting Google.com to Google.ca. There is localized content but all the features are intact. You can even switch to the U.S. version if you want.
  • Unavoidable licensing restrictions. The reason I can’t listen to Pandora is because they don’t have a license to broadcast the music outside the U.S. They’re forced to prevent people from outside the country from connecting (leading hard-core international users to use proxies).
  • Commercial exclusivity agreements. U.S.-based Comedy Central recently signed an agreement with Canada-based Comedy Network that, among other things, forces visitors to only use the Canadian site. Canadians who go to ComedyCentral.com get a message explaining they’ve been screwed over and are told everything is available at the Comedy Network site. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help if someone has linked directly to a Comedy Central video. You have to go to the Comedy Network website and search for that video from scratch. (The Comedy Network, by the way, was born out of CanCon and is basically a Comedy Central clone mixed in with reruns of CBC shows like This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Just for Laughs). The fact that you can’t watch videos of U.S. network series on their websites is also because of this. You can’t watch Heroes on NBC.com, you have to go to Global’s website and watch it there.

This situation is only going to get worse from here. Now that servers can determine the origin of their visitors, it’s a short step to regulating what content goes where. And while media companies feel their way through the darkness trying to figure everything out, we’re going to find an increasing disconnect between what Canadians and Americans have access to online.

CanCon is bad for Canadian content

This debate over Internet CanCon has caused a debate over the old media version of the rules to resurface. Casey McKinnon, who was really peeved over this and hates CanCon, gave an interview with Intruders.tv (via) talking about how horrible it is that we lower our standards just for more flag-waving.

I have another argument to make in the anti-CanCon debate: It’s counterproductive, and actually hurts Canadian broadcasting (at least in TV).

The reason, for me, is two words: simultaneous substitution.

That’s the rule that requires Canadian cable providers to substitute U.S. networks’ signals with Canadian ones when both are showing the same show at the same time. That way, Canadian viewers are exposed to Canadian advertising and all the money stays up here.

It sounds great, but it has a side-effect: It makes it more profitable for Canadian networks to simulcast American programming. They don’t even have to rebroadcast at the same quality (Global, for example, is notoriously bad for rebroadcasting HD content in standard definition on its HD channel).

Without simultaneous substitution, Canadians would turn to American networks for American programming, and Canadian networks would either have to compete directly or begin to look elsewhere for content. That could mean licensing TV shows from Britain or Australia, or investing in their own, original programming.

Of course, I’m being far too optimistic here. Canadian TV networks have to be dragged kicking and screaming toward their production budgets to greenlight Canadian-made shows. And that lack of original quality programming is why people are turning to the Internet in droves.

But at least we can make it less profitable for Canadian networks to re-run American programming. Use the power of economic competition for good.

UPDATE (Nov. 25): The Star coincidentally mentions some of these issues in an article about what technology and web services Canadians can’t get.

| In the news, Technology

Networks need investment, so invest

An industry-funded study has “shown” that the Internet faces “brownouts” or bandwidth saturation as early as 2010, if Internet service providers don’t improve the “last mile” of their networks, spending billions of dollars installing fibre-optic cable to replace coaxial cable and twin-wire phone lines.

So, uhh, why don’t they just do that then?

I’m not going to be all Huffington Post about this and suggest it’s a big conspiracy to control what we see on the Internet, but you have to admit the timing of an industry-funded survey that pulls figures out of its ass is kind of suspicious.

We’ll see in the coming weeks if industry leaders propose “innovative solutions” to this problem.

| In the news, Montreal, Technology, West Island

Ile Sans Fil might get a big boost from City Hall

Ile Sans FilMy first dealing with Île Sans Fil came a few years ago when I was at Concordia. I was talking with this guy who had a crazy idea of setting up wireless hotspots all over the place and letting people connect to them for free.

Though I thought the cause noble, I had my doubts, chiefly because Internet service providers were against the idea of people sharing their access. It put more strain on bandwidth and removed a layer of accountability. Concordia, which had strict rules about sharing Internet access because it had a fat pipe and didn’t regulate bandwidth, didn’t let them set up.

So they went elsewhere. Coffee shops in the plateau were helpful, because it would give the young early adopters of this Wi-Fi thing a reason to come to their shops and order coffee. The network expanded and now it has hotspots all over the city.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with Evan Prodromou at Caffè Art Java (an ISF hotspot), interviewing him for an article that will hopefully come out before I have grandchildren. He briefly said hi to a friend of his from ISF and mentioned that they’re finally, after all this time, talking to the City of Montreal about municipally-backed hotspots.

Today, it looks like those talks were fruitful. La Presse’s Tristan Peloquin has the scoop through a document ISF handed to him that was obtained by him yesterday. The city will be offering the group $200,000 a year for five years to setup and run 400 wireless hotspots in public areas of the city, including Place des Arts and all 17 nature parks in Montreal, (parks like Mount Royal Park, Jean-Drapeau, Angrignon Park, Cap St. Jacques, Ile Bizard, Lafontaine Park, Maisonneuve Park and Jarry Park).

The proposal still has to be presented to the executive committee, who will have the last word.

UPDATE: The slide presentation about the project is online (PDF)

| Business, Montreal, Technology

Kanuk not above outright spam

In my ongoing fight against spam, I tend to give local businesses a bit of slack when it comes to netiquette. They’re small and inexperienced, so you might forgive them for minor glitches.

But spam is still spam. Last week I received this email message from Montreal-based Kanuk, maker of those winter coats you’ll all be buying in the coming weeks. Since they have a privacy policy which implies they only send email messages to people who opt in, I have to call them on a violation.

Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2007 05:37:55 -0500
From: Kanuk <info@kanuk.com>
Subject: Rappel : Solde Kanuk directement à la manufacture, jusqu’à lundi

Le grand solde Kanuk bat son plein jusqu’à lundi 12 novembre.
C’est le meilleur moment pour choisir votre manteau chaud Kanuk.
Chez Kanuk, au 485, rue Rachel Est à Montréal.
http://www.kanuk.com

Deux étages de soldes vous attendent à l’atelier-magasin Kanuk au
485, rue Rachel Est à Montréal, dès 8h00 tous les jours
pendant le Solde d’entrepôt Kanuk.

Au plaisir,

Daniel Poirier,
au nom de l’équipe Kanuk

As usual, I’ve sent them an email and will update if and when they respond.

The email was sent through Canadian B2B Internet service provider Radiant, which should also have better measures to prevent such things.

| Business, Opinion, Web design

Rogers not above outright spam

Going through my spam folder again today, I noticed an email from Rogers, my wireless provider. It was a promotional message (as opposed to the one I get every month telling me my bill is ready) announcing, and I kid you not folks, that they redesigned their website.

Rogers spam

(Email sent Nov. 13, 2007. Click to embiggen)

Since I’m not a fan of spam, especially from large companies that should know better like Chapters/Indigo and CIBC (the latter — a bank — has still not responded to my request for an explanation beyond assigning it a support ticket number), I couldn’t let this one go without mentioning it as well.

The big difference here is that I am a Rogers customer, so they didn’t harvest my email or take it from an old form gathering dust in their basement. But I call it spam because I never asked for it and it’s purely promotional in nature.

Also problematic:

  • The email is not personalized, even with my name, violating one of Rogers’s own anti-fraud policies. Further complicating matters is that I’m invited to click on image links that bring me to addresses that start with http://mailtrack.rnm.ca… (which redirects me to a Rogers website).
  • The message is HTML only, with no plain-text version
  • Clicking on links to visit the “new” Rogers.com brings me to this horribly-designed web page which asks me to choose my province (and language). Don’t they already know this information? They provide me wireless service after all.
  • Like a lot of these messages I see, there’s a tiny link at the bottom for people who want to “opt-out of future email communications” (which I can assume implies I never opted-in in the first place). That link brings me to a login page. Once I login, I’m brought to the standard homepage with no clue given on where I should go to opt out of emails. I’ve looked around for about 10 minutes now and still haven’t found it.
  • I’ve had to login three times browsing the site. And now they’ve just suspended my account for 24 hours because the password I used 5 minutes ago is no longer the right one. Oh wait, it hasn’t. My previous login is now still valid. Top-notch security there, Rogers.
  • There’s no difference between the “new” Rogers website and the old one, except for a few trivial changes. It looks exactly the same. The entire purpose of the email is put into question.

I’ve filled out an “abuse” form and emailed the sender of the email message asking for an explanation of how I got this email. I’ll update if I get one.

| Montreal, Technology

Wireless network survey has holes

An article at NowPublic asserts that 24% of Montreal’s wireless networks are unsecured. The study, under the supervision of Champlain College Saint-Lambert professor Marc André Léger, showed that the number was down from the 31% showed in a similar study in May in St. Lambert.

(He’s assuming that there’s no significant difference between wireless networks in St. Lambert and in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, where the second study was performed, and considering the demographics of the two areas, particularly in terms of income, that’s a pretty big assumption to make.)

The article also notes that the study appears to make no distinction between unsecured home networks (where someone just bought home a wireless router, left the default settings on and never thought about security) and unencrypted networks that perform security authorization in some other way (Ile sans fil, as well as most commercial networks, allow you to connect freely to the network, but won’t allow you to access anything but their own servers until you login, sign up, purchase service or just click a button below a user agreement).

Without that very important distinction, the survey is kind of meaningless to me.

| In the news, Opinion, Technology

Own a photocopier, get sued

In the “are you sure that wasn’t in the Onion first?” files, Access Copyright, a Canadian copyright licensing agency, is suing Staples/Business Depot/Bureau en Gros for copyright infringement, to the tune of $10 million.

Their argument (and I use the term loosely) seems to be that because the chain has a photocopying service, it is profiting off the illegal photocopying going on in its stores and is liable for contributory infringement.

Welcome to the post-Napster world folks, where simply offering people the tools to commit copyright infringement somehow makes you guilty. Next up, we can expect photocopying machine makers, paper mills and ink manufacturers, as well as the retailers who sell them, to get handed court papers. Now that personal responsibility is dead, everyone else is guilty. The bar owner is responsible if someone drives home drunk. Railroad companies are responsible if someone gets hit by a train.

If this had been brought up 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But then the DMCA brought in the idea that manufacturing the “tools” to infringe copyright circumvent access or copy protection mechanisms (thanks Jonathan) was also against the law. Napster was shut down, Jon Johansen was arrested (charged, and later acquitted) and anyone involved in facilitating the distribution of content was living a life of fear.

Fortunately in Canada, we’re a bit more sane when it comes to copyright law. The Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that Internet service providers were not responsible for copyright infringement that merely passed through their servers.

It’s also hard to prove that, just because someone’s photocopying a copyrighted work, they plan on selling it or redistributing it to others against the law. (For that matter, do people still infringe copyrights using photocopiers for anything other than university textbooks? It seems so 10-years-ago.)

Michael Geist, naturally, has some brief thoughts on the matter. He agrees Access Copyright has a very big hill to climb to make its case. (UPDATE Nov. 19: Now that he’s seen the suit, he sees it as a “sure loser”)

Insanity = genius

Frankly, I welcome this lawsuit (though I think it would be better to see it in the U.S.). Courts can’t simply rely on the fact that Napster was so obviously profiting off copyright infringement to set the bar for these kinds of cases. The slippery slope has to be travelled until they realize that tools that can be used to do illegal things should not themselves be illegal.

At some point, jurisprudence will have to live up to the fact that we’ve already passed reductio ad absurdum.