On April 1st, the CRTC launched an online forum for consumers to register comments, voice complaints, and take part in a discussion regarding the accusations that have been directed at Canadian internet service providers (specifically Bell and Rogers) towards the practice of “throttling” or “traffic shaping”, the slowing down or blocking of BitTorrent traffic. On April 30th the CRTC’s forum will close and as we near that deadline I’m sad to report that the participation level has been low, failing to match the outcry that brought about attention to the issue in the first place.

As I write this, there are but 323 comments posted in the forum’s most active category “Impact On User Experience” and when you consider how many of those are replies and back-and-forth discussions , the number of actual participants is quite low, especially for an issue that impacts the country as a whole. The CRTC’s YouTube video on the issue has been viewed a mere 1,739 times and it was posted in mid-march.

Keep in mind that there have been several active forums, full of angry complaints in existence for years, that privacy activists and BitTorrent fans have created entire websites on the issue. Members of the media, like myself have written about it, Google has endorsed the discussion, promoted it, and is among a number of high-profile companies pushing for regulation on the matter. The recent trial and guilty verdict of The Pirate Bay founders grabbed headlines and continues to do so, bringing all issues regarding BitTorrent and its controversial use back into the spotlight around the world, and yet here, where there’s the ideal opportunity to take an interest, only a handful bother to do so.

Why? One of the reasons for the low turn-out might be because the use of traffic shaping tools is not nearly as high here in Canada as it is in other countries. That the perception of the issue doesn’t quite match the reality. One of the difficulties I’ve had in getting behind the online outcries myself has been a complete lack of evidence to show that “throttling” is taking place. Neither of my Bell Sympatico or Rogers high-speed accounts have ever been throttled, nor those within my social circle which includes IT staff, gamers, graphic designers, and media members, all heavy consumers of online content. I posted a special tool on my blog here, asking readers to use it to test their accounts for the activity and although many did just that, none of them came up with any results.

Over the years there have been a few people I know to think their accounts were being manipulated, voicing very similar complaints to those posted on the CRTC forum, where their speeds have suddenly dropped or slowed when they turn on their BitTorrent clients. When I’ve investigated their set-ups, each time it’s turned out to be a more common technical cause; their ports are closed or poorly forwarded or they’ve changed the settings on their client. BitTorrent is complicated technology and we’ve yet to see a “BitTorrent For Dummies” equivalent and for most people who try it, few can understand what happens when something goes wrong.

Even amongst the technically savvy, claims of “throttling” have often given way to other more mundane causes. One online community I visit often spent months investigating problems with the uploading speeds of its members, many convinced their accounts were being throttled, but in the end it turned out that there were so many people trying to seed, keeping multiple torrents open, over thirty in many cases, that it was too much for the tracker to handle. Once they instigated a limit, keeping users to a maximum of fifteen torrents open at any time, traffic flowed freely again.

In my discussions with executives from Bell and Rogers, both have made it clear that they have not taken a moral stance on BitTorrent and that any use of traffic management tools has been to mange congestion from an extreme minimal number of users, a very small percentage who, for one reason or another, are causing problems with their BitTorrent use, activity that does not reflect the majority of BitTorrent users in the country.

As much as it is easy to want to paint both large corporations as villains, it’s hard not to give their claims credit when most Canadian BitTorrent users seems to be happily downloading away.

This isn’t to say that the 323 comments posted at the CRTC forum aren’t making intelligent points or that the central issue isn’t an important one. There’s a strong principle to support here, to have companies like Rogers and Bell agree to, that the traffic of no single application should be singled out for tempering, that any form of segregation takes us down a slippery slope that is dangerous for the growth of online culture. Or, as WayneB has posted:

“It should be illegal for an ISP to:

1) Prioritize traffic

2) Block access to any port

3) Block any sort of transfer including encrypted data

The ISP as a service provider, has no place in the homes and offices of the nation, deciding what the user can or cannot do with their internet connection. Allowing the ISP to make this sort of decision will stop innovation in internet services.”

There’s one week left, voice your support here.