Received a letter from the CEO of my ISP, Teksavvy. It states:

Bell has been directed by the CRTC to provide matching speeds which would allow us all to have more flexibility in our day to day online requirements. Instead of adhering to these directives, Bell decided to take this issue to the federal Cabinet and at the same time file a tariff application with the CRTC proposing to introduce Usage Based Billing (UBB) on its wholesale customer accounts.

[…]

If Bell were to be allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards (multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on
overages). This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs from month to month.

This is a total disaster, like most of Bell’s policies with regard to internet access lately. Anyway, he (Rocky Gaudrault) gives details about how to protest:

If you’d like to make your comments/concerns known about what Bell is
attempting to do, please do so here

Select the word “Tariff” from the drop down list.

Add the following in Subject Line “File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 – Bell Canada – TN 7181” and make your thoughts known!

This is what I wrote by way of complaint:

Please, do not allow Bell to apply UBB to wholesale accounts. I switched to Teksavvy precisely to avoid Bell’s backwards policies. We should not allow our internet service to get worse with time as every other technological measure gets better. The only reasons for it are the Bell / Rogers duopoly on internet service and their related failure to build infrastructure for the (totally predictable) growth of internet video; real competition must be allowed or we will fall even further behind other countries. Please ensure that Bell cannot force regressive billing practices upon wholesalers like my ISP. Instead, force them to invest in their infrastructure so we need not see bandwidth as a scarce resource.

The deadline is midnight tonight, so if you care about this, please submit a message.

I find it endlessly fascinating to think about how one medium is going to influence another. Right now, there are so many media spilling into the same pot that it’s hard to imagine how the stew will taste. But in this AV Club year-in-movies retrospective, Tasha Robinson makes an apt observation:

To me, the trend there seems to be less about people filtering the world through their pop-culture experiences—apart from the occasional extreme iconoclast, who in this industry doesn’t?—and more about people filtering the world through camera lenses, seeing every experience as something to be caught on video and shared with a hungry voyeuristic world. I recently watched Martin Scorsese’s 2008 Rolling Stones concert doc Shine A Light, and I laughed at the way Scorsese’s cameras capture people in the process of capturing Mick Jagger’s cavorting on their phones. He’s making his movie—a big, shiny, energetic, polished production—and they’re making their low-fi versions in the middle of it. Or looked at another way, they’re in the front row at a Stones concert… and they’re watching the experience on tiny little screens held up in front of their faces, because capturing it for later is more important than living it.

That attitude has its benefits—for one thing, it gave us Trouble The Water, which rides entirely on the amazing from-the-ground footage two New Orleans residents shot to document their own lives before, during, and after Katrina. I suspect we’re going to see a lot more of that in 2009, as people continue to turn their cameras on themselves and their neighborhoods. Given that so many of our favorite 2008 movies were little lo-fi films about ordinary people rather than the pricey escapist fare, I’m suspecting this might ultimately be a good thing, and I hope it continues.

One of many interesting ideas here is that with so many cameras out there capturing footage, there’s a potential for a new kind of cinema that is both theatrical and collectivist. Imagine a room full of people at an event; you stage something going on in the room, and count on the people there to record it for you. You then sort through the footage from the event and assemble it. Or, you could post all the collective footage for anyone to assemble their own edit. It’s the sort of production that would have been completely inconceivable 15 – 20 years ago.

It’s also the sort of production perpetrated by none other than The Beastie Boys, with their awesomely titled Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That in 2006, the year Google bought YouTube, and conceived well before YouTube opened for business.

I don’t know the moral of this story – it’s ongoing, as they say. Perhaps it’s that the Beasties are awesome.

I just rented a film off iTunes for the first time. The service only became available in Canada in June, and when it first started the selection was far from compelling, so it’s taken me until now to give it a shot. I chose the middling spy thriller Spy Game.

The iTunes movie experience has some good points. I liked that my download was watchable fairly quickly, which compares favourably to either bittorrenting or actually getting off my ass and going and renting a flick. The quality is decent (let’s say slightly below DVD quality). The price was good, too – $4. And at 48 hours, the rental period is more reasonable than Rogers on Demand’s 24. The ease of getting the flick onto the iPhone is a plus, too.

But other than that it’s all bad.

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Like I was saying I was all awesome drum tour on hard until I get to motherfucking “Vasoline”. I see it in the list, I’m like “aw yeah, I love that song, great break,” and then FAIL in the first 8 bars. That break did not like me. It just wouldn’t let me in. I practiced for an entire hour and still no MFing joy.

I hereby vow to not cut my hair until I DOMINATE Vaseline.

In other news, I’ve been toying around with some PSP games, which of course is postponing my completion of a swath of DS games including the excellent The World Ends With You. I’m a few hours into Crisis Core, which is pretty okay, and then I stop by EB Games again and pick up the Armored Core PSP version cause no one wants it and it’s only $15. About a half hour of play reveals it to be a long way from an A-list title and a long way from the mythic Great Mech Game that I know will be made someday but hasn’t been yet. Points off for not calling mechs “wanzers” like Front Mission, but extra points for the crazy deep garage. That’s what these games are all about – you can’t just slap a giant robot in a game and call it a day; if you can’t spend hours swapping out radiators and shoulder guns, might as well walk away with your head hanging low. Unlike Front Mission, the Armored Core series definitely transmits the might and majesty of these giant beasts, and both games give you the gearhead tweaking you crave, but Armored Core yawns when it comes to combat. It’s arena-style head-to-head tournaments and that’s it, no real campaign to speak of. If they could slap a proper story onto one of these games they could have a winner.

Like Sherman through the south I cut a swath through the videogame market, leaving the scorched and chapped husks of partially completed games in my wake. Is this article right? Is my attention span devastated by the internet? Isn’t it enough that I managed to put four whole hours into Crisis Core? Not continuously, though, I suppose…. sigh

Wow. Bell just unveiled its video download store, and as Ars notes, the timing could be no worse. Bell is about to go in front of the CRTC about the fact that they’re throttling P2P traffic, legal or not, for Bell customers AND for independent resellers’ customers. With this announcement, the anti-competitive aspects of throttling need no longer be simply inferred, they are writ large by Bell itself. Finally, the issue of network neutrality gets a shot in the arm. Thanks Bell! (more in the Globe here)

This week there was news that Bell is slowing down P2P traffic, i.e. bitshaping, even for their resellers. And there was information on Rogers’ new fee structure, with the highest plan costing $100 a month and still subject to a bit cap.

Meanwhile, in the US, Comcast is backing down from bitshaping after a public outcry. What the hell is going on?

At issue here is net neutrality, and in the US there is public debate on the issue, whereas here there has been none. In brief, net neutrality is the principle that the network should treat all content and devices equally – that internet access should behave like electricity or your water supply. And generally that’s how it’s gone up until recently, when gradually the internet providers have been introducing bitshaping (slowing down certain types of traffic, most often BitTorrent) and bitcaps (a limit on how much you can download before incurring extra fees).

Don’t be distracted by the current focus on piracy – the idea that ‘a few bad apples’ are slowing down the internet for everyone else. The real issue is internet video in all its forms: bittorrented TV shows, youtube, and pay-per-download services like iTunes and Xbox Live. Video takes a lot of bandwidth and with the explosion in online video, suddenly ISPs are seeing people actually use some of the bandwidth they are paying for. And they’d rather not, you know, make less money. Let’s not forget that both Bell and Rogers sell TV services, and online video threatens their profits in that business as well. The last thing they want is someone canceling their cable to download shows off iTunes – but if that happens, they want to get their cut. Despite the fact that their broadband services are sold on the promise of fast, rich media.

Another issue is competition. We have less of it here, and so our telecoms can beat up the consumer to their hearts’ content without fear of consumers jumping ship, as there’s no ship to jump to. What they’d love to do is sell you access to pieces of the internet like they currently do with TV channels: wanna play games online? $15 a month. Facebook? $15 a month. Yeah, Rogers already does exactly that with its phone service (the facebook part, that is). It sucks for the little guy, yeah. But it sucks for our entire country as we watch Canada become a technological backwater in an age when high-tech competitiveness is more important than ever. We have 60% cellphone ownership here compared to 80% in the US. Typical broadband speeds in Japan are nearly 10 times faster than the Canadian average. There are a lot of amazing things that can be done with ubiquitous high speed access if we’re not paying through the nose for the ‘privilege’.

So what should we do? Amongst other things, join the net neutrality Facebook group. By getting 40,000 members, Michael Geist’s Fair Copyright group was able to forestall brutal DMCA-style legislation up here, so it could very well work. Also check out this site although it hasn’t been updated in some time, the petition has 6000 signatures already. In general, just get the word out and let’s make this an issue that more people know about.

Inside the iPhone Gray Market, from Business Week. One of our writers has a grey market iPhone (do I name names? It’s not illegal). Anyway it strikes me that this article misses the point, wondering as it does why apple tolerates all the unlocked phones. Hell, Apple gets paid no matter how you use it – that’s the beauty of selling hardware. It’s the carriers and the negotiations therewith that prevent the legit iPhone from gracing us with its perfectly legal presence, but the article doesn’t mention that.

I’m thinking about getting one. Thinking pretty hard about it. But it’s the mobile internet that really interests me – I don’t need portable video and I already have an iPod and a phone. I heard about Rogers’ unlimited plan and got all excited until I realized it was a pretend unlimited plan. And I don’t want to jump on an unlocked iPhone and then have it locked out when the legit iPhone shows up.

Again I say, it’s hard up here for a nerd.

Here’s a good, measured piece from Ars’ Nate Anderson: Is the music industry dying? The answer is: no. CD sales are tanking hard, but digital sales are skyrocketing – not just at iTunes but also eMusic and presumably others.

Convenience isn’t the only thing at work here; price is also a major factor. [eMusic CEO David] Pakman believes that the CD is priced “completely wrong,” and points out that hundreds of major DVDs can be had for $4 or $5. Despite the pressure that music labels have been under the last few years, CD prices have never approached this level (not counting those Beatles Greatest Hits! (as played by the Western Ljubljana State Radio Orchestra) discs you find in value bins).

Goddamned right. If CDs were $3 I’d be buying the hell outta them. But it’s clear that the major labels have had a big hand in their own downfall, and not just the suing-own-customers thing. They could have lowered prices on CDs to $3 and still made money, and they could have realized that albums full of junk filler tracks won’t sell like hotcakes in the era of single track downloads. And they could have ditched the DRM a lot quicker.

So given that, and thinking of the recently-announced iTunes movie rentals full of DRM and time limitations, what’s Hollywood thinking? Isn’t it clear that the DRM has got to go eventually? They should get out in front of that shit right now, and not cock it up like the labels did.

Until reading this Ars article, I had never heard of Wireless Nomad, a Toronto Co-op ISP. I don’t think I can use them because it doesn’t sound like they can deal with dry ducks or whatever they call it when you have DSL but no landline, but I wish I could. They’re cheaper than Bell, with no bit caps. And every router they give out provides free WiFi access to people in range, in such a way that doesn’t hurt the subscriber’s speeds. If you live in Toronto, you should consider them ahead of Bell and Rogers.

There was, of course, the articles about the $150-million payout to Viacom and Viacom’s subsequent switch to HD-DVD exclusive. Then there was a little bit of lash back when Fox reaffirmed that it and MGM’s titles (which are distributed by Fox) will be Blu-Ray exclusive. My theory is that the HD-DVD people knew the Fox announcement was coming and tried to pre-empt it, but I have nothing to base this on.

We know that Blu-Ray is outselling HD-DVD two (or is it three?) to one. So any ‘victories’ for HD-DVD seem like needless prolongation of a war that has already been decided.

That said, I was discussing with a friend the other day whether the war itself is irrelevant and perhaps downloads will win the day. It’s safe to say that downloads will eventually win, it’s a question of when. The interested parties are waging their own war: that of network neutrality. Those who control the pipes can effectively destroy any download business if they so choose with bit caps and bit throttling. Their current plan offerings, at least in Canada, do not really allow for large-scale downloading, say of hours of HD-quality video a night. Bell will rent you a fibre-optic connection for $75 a month, but that comes with a 30 GB bit cap, above which you are charged by the gig. You could get into surcharge territory after six hours of continuous downloading. So a carrier victory in the network war could substantially delay the obsoleting of physical media, at least long enough for us to actually have to pay attention to the tiresome Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD flareout, which sucks.

Two related items came to my attention today: this article about the growing importance of game trailers, and Narcogen’s shot-by-shot analysis of the E3 Halo 3 trailer – the latter clearly an example of the ‘forensic approach’ detailed in the former.

It is worth noting that the two examples the article gives of trailers backfiring were Halo 2’s 2004 E3 trailer, and Killzone’s 2005 trailer. The article implies that gamers’ expectations can be raised too high, and thus trailers can backfire. Sure, that can happen. But the reason for the backfire is clear, in both cases: the trailers were deceptive. The Halo trailer contained gameplay footage of levels that didn’t appear in the game. The Killzone trailer was pre-rendered, so it had no relation whatsoever to what the game itself would look like. Small deceptions abound in film trailers (different music, sound effects, severe dialogue editing), but if you made a trailer that different from the actual film, you’d likely run afoul of fraudulent advertising laws.

I can’t see how the forensic approach to video is anything but an exciting development. Perhaps it’s only coming now because the technologies required – the pause button and the internet – are relatively recent phenomena. (I think of those poor structuralist film students in the 70s and before, having to watch repeated showings of the same film before they could perpetrate a shot-by-shot analysis). Anyway, it seems of a kind with ARGs, and signifies that techniques previously only practised in ivory towers can now be done by anyone, for entertainment even. The motivation is clear, too; it’s not that “these internet losers have too much time on their hands” but rather that – as the Traxus reference indicates – the material is layered with meaning in such a way that rewards close viewing. Sure, it’s hyped-up graphics porn for the mainstream, but it’s rich with detail for the story nerds, too.

Here’s an article about it, and here’s the document itself (43-page PDF). It’s a report by the Nordicity Group paid for by the Canadian Television Fund and the Banff TV fest, and it’s meant to set the terms of industry debate at Banff. The issue is the disruption of the traditional TV industry in Canada by new media. That there will be (and already has been) a disruption is not up for debate, but the extent of it, and this report will be somewhat encouraging to scared traditional media bodies. Wise words:

History shows that new media (e.g. television at its introduction) appears disruptive at the outset, threatening to destruct traditional media. Yet what we have seen happen is that they eventually settle into a co-existence with one another as they each evolve to fulfill different roles in our everyday lives. TV did not destroy radio, as radio did not destroy newspapers – although each did replace some of the role of the medium it followed. In the same regard, the Internet will challenge the role of traditional TV distribution, and interactive content will compete to a certain extent with TV content – but there will likely be some form of co-existence.

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Just finished getting Google Apps for your domain runing on the ol’ AR. Got to say, it’s a pretty compelling bunch of apps. We all know about gmail, and that’s all good – although probably the least important part for me. What is really appealing is hassle-free document sharing and collaboration, and the sheer excellence of Google Calendar. Not only is the web interface great, but it’s super-easy to share calendars with everyone on your domain.

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Interesting article from Saturday’s Globe about the movement to build a new internet infrastructure, now in the research stages. A couple key quotes:

The Internet was not designed for Second Life or “adult entertainment” videos either – high-volume, resource-consuming uses of the network. If just 1 per cent of the DVDs that NetFlicks [sic] sends to customers every day were downloaded, we would need a tenfold increase in the current core capacity of the Internet.

And:

In fact, he wonders if the only economically sustainable model for the Internet may be a nationally funded or regulated infrastructure – or some sort of government monopoly. (Though he adds that, “in the current economic and political climate” of the U.S., proposing this idea “is nearly suicide.”)

I’ve wondered the same thing before, but in the context of Rogers (a huge Canadian ISP) and their tendency to stifle innovation through things like bitshaping and extortionate wireless data plans. Let alone the paltry bandwidth of their “high speed” cable plans. I’m of the mind that real high-speed internet access should be made available to all, at reasonable rates; and if Rogers et al can’t do it, the govmint should make ‘em!

A bunch of indie labels want to pull out of eMusic because the price per track is too low. eMusic’s CEO responds. Both are worth reading.

I’m an eMusic subscriber. I love it and it’s my main way of getting music, so I tend to agree with the eMusic side. My plan, which I guess is no longer available, is $20 US for 90 songs a month. If we estimate 12 songs per album, that’s under $3 an album. Keep in mind that these are non-DRMed mp3s that you get to keep. Not a bad deal.

What’s music worth? Who knows. I’d definitely pay more than $3 for an album, but at the same time labels need to realize they’re not competing with iTunes, they’re competing with free. In some ways it’s a miracle that a nerd like me will spend any money on music at all, let alone $240/year. I guess I’m still happy that the days of the $25 CD are over.

Update: good post on the topic at CDM, and more at hypebot plus apparently a few in-depth posts to follow tomorrow.

Finally got around to giving Joost a whirl. You probably already know what it is, but if not, it’s an IPTV app that offers on-demand programming and what they call internet features like search and chat. It’s from the makers of Skype.

I was frankly disappointed, but what I want from TV is not necessarily what everyone wants. And in terms of content, what they have right now is limited, so it may be early to judge. But frankly, they have their marketing going full-bore, so it might be worth pointing out that they’re not about to replace traditional TV for anyone without having all the big shows, or live news, or any of the strengths of TV. They have stuff from many smaller providers, and archive material from bigger names. i.e. “Much does Wakestock 2004”.

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Reading the Globe last week, I discovered that Toronto is the largest network on Facebook. Which is crazy since the cities of London and New York are obviously much larger in meatspace, but TO’s Facebook population dwarfs theirs. It’s crazy but it’s entirely believable to a Toronto resident: over the past couple months, Facebook has come up in conversation more often than even the weather. It’s spread quicker than a zombie plague. And in fact, to those who refuse to sign up (I’m on Facebook myself, but I know a few holdouts), it’s like your friends are one by one succumbing to the virus. Instead of asking for your brains, they ask if you’re on Facebook, and if not, why not?

That Torontonians would get all wrapped up in relentless, privacy-invading bulletins of friend-related minutiae flies in the face of our reputation as a quiet, withdrawn people. I suppose you could explain it by saying we are indeed withdrawn, and that Facebook appeals because it is the form of socializing that involves the least amount of actual socializing. Or, you could just call bullshit on the “quiet Toronto” myth. Either one works for me.

But then I remembered a past realization, that Toronto, city of SARS, filmic home of Resident Evil, Land of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead remake, is of course the capital of the zombie world. Which explains how infectious networking would especially catch hold here, but which also goes a little towards supporting another half-baked theory: that zombies in fiction symbolize P2P networked communications, and the fear of zombies reflects the fear that old, hierarchical, gatekeeper media have of a society that has no place for them.

That’s probably too cultural studies for a nice saturday afternoon, so let me clunkily segway into a mention of zombie-demon musical sensation Evil Dead: The Musical, which is back in Toronto. I saw it a couple of days ago for the first time, and it’s worth attending. It’s one of the only entertainment events that you can walk out of soaked in blood, and it contains some great writing such as one character’s dying words, “Death’s a bitch… a stupid bitch.”

Or, the continued, ultra-fascinating experimentation with tumblr.

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