The personal site and rant archive of Brad Leclerc

I haven’t posted anything on here in over 6 months? Guess G+ (*cough*) has pretty much taken over as my go to place to post pretty much everything.

What the heck is there left to blog about when I already post like mad on G+? I really don’t know. Might be time to think about fully switching over and just re-directing to my G+ page from here and forget the silly pretense of having a separate blog for no real reason…

So I was invited to take part in the Canadian Internet Forum put on by CIRA yesterday due to my owning a .ca domain, and I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts about the whole ordeal while they were still fresh in my mind.

For those that don’t already know, CIRA is the Candian Internet Registry Authority, and controls the .ca domain space, as well having a big part in pushing for policy changes surrounding the governance of the internet in Canada, as well as globally.

They put together a string of small gatherings around the country over the last little while to start building feedback about what Canadians think is important regarding internet governance, and a range of other internet related issues. Then they used that feedback to bring a bunch of awesome people together in Ottawa for the Canadian Internet Forum, as a giant leap towards figuring out what should/needs to be done, and allowing a lot of public input.

When I say “a lot of public input”, I mean there where LITTERALLY a couple of hours of just bringing a mic around the room of 300 or so people and letting them not only ask the panelists/speaker questions, but simply to comment, or even try to ANSWER questions CIRA had for the public. It was really refreshing to see that kind of interaction built right from the start.

I don’t want to get bogged down (or bore you to death) with a fully recap of the day’s events or anything, but here are a few of the major points that seemed to come out throughout the day…

• We need to finish rolling out IPv6, and we need to do it ASAP. Thankfully many Canadian organizations already have, but not nearly enough.
• DNSsec (A security focused DNS implementation) is going to be importment moving forward, and needs to be pushed for. I was really happy to hear Marc Blanchet (unfortunately I can’t remember the organization he’s currently with, and the CIF agenda online only lists the speakers’ names) mention DNSsec, as it’s an issue near and dear to me that not enough people are pushing.
• An open, free (as in speech), fast, and reliable internet is paramount. Things like the UBB issue that is currently going on will not be tolerated by the Canadian public…and on that note, go here to help do something about it.
• Canadians, and people in the major population centers especially, could and should do more to participate in the world of internet governance on the local AND global scale. For example, there is currently no ISOC (Internet Society) chapter in Ottawa, and extremely few in Canada in general. That will be changing soon, even if I have to be the one to start a local chapter.
• Digital literacy and education is massively important, and may actually drive other future changes to the education system in a broader sense as we build the tools necessary to really use the available technology to help children (and adults) become more digitally literate and so how useful they can be in other areas of education.

That is by no means a complete list of the things that seemed to bubble to the surface during the day of talks and conversation, and I look forward to seeing the white paper that CIRA is going to put together based on the day’s events. Needless to say, if you missed it, you missed a LOT of great discussion.

I even made a couple of potential business contacts, met some great people face to face, and got a pile of new book titles to add to my never ending reading list …and that’s always a good thing.

NOTE: This post contains a good dose of rambling. I’m tired, so I have no idea if any of it will make sense, and can’t be bothered to proof read it. You’re been warned.

In the past few days there has been some mild panicking and worrying over the CRTC’s request for comments on it’s newest bunch of proposed changes to broadcasting regulations (which can be read it it’s entirety over here).

If you don’t feel like wadding through all the legal mumbo-jumbo and repetitiveness (or sift through the original regulations to figure out what exactly they are changing), here’s the short version.. They want to replace the text…

“A licensee shall not broadcast any false or misleading news”

with…

“A licensee shall not broadcast any news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public”

There are other changes/additions being proposed as well, such as some clarifications of how they define “obscene” language, but that one change is getting the most attention by FAR.

Some people (by which I mean MOST people), are arguing that such a change opens up the door for broadcasters to misinform the public a lot more easily without less chance of legal repercussions, and leads the way for “FOX News North”, and all manner of very scary things. And I think they are right about that.

What I don’t agree with them on though, is that they think that that means it’s a bad idea, and I couldn’t disagree more.

While I certainly cherish the thought of being able to trust a news source (or any broadcast medium really), it hasn’t been a reality for quite some time, and is frankly not relevant in my opinion at this point. When anyone with internet access and 45 seconds to spare can get more information from more sources then a day’s worth of watching a TV news channel or radio broadcast, the fact is, people don’t watch the news for information…the news hasn’t been about information for years, maybe decades.

Sure, it includes a tidbit here or there, but really, if you’re watching a TV news program in 2011, you are not looking to find reality, or if you are, you’re definitely not that programs target demographic.

The CRTC has shown, time and time again, that it is not in the business of looking out for the public, so these proposed changes are not surprising in the least to me, and shouldn’t be surprising to anyone given the extremely recent (and ongoing) internet usage cap business.

I consider these changes to be completely irrelevant in today’s news ecosystem, and while I will continue to watch content from broadcasters I consider trustworthy enough to be worth watching, I cannot in good conscious condone restricting broadcasters from broadcasting whatever they like, within legal limits.

There are already laws (outside of the CRTC regulations) regarding anything of any relevance to the public when it comes to broadcasting anything causing harm to someone, and to be blunt, I think the CRTC on the whole tends to be either superfluous or counter-productive to the supposed goal of protecting the public, and I am amazed that the public still allows it to exist at all.

As far as I’m concerned, the fewer regulations the CRTC tries to enforce, the better off we are. Will it open the door for some broadcasters to bend reality a bit if they choose to? Probably. Do I care that people who are unwilling to put in even the tiniest bit of effort to be self-informed and responsible for what they believe might end up being misinformed due to their laziness? Not in the slightest.

I was going to write something about the whole Wikileaks situation, but I’m lazy, so I grabbed a webcam and dumped it onto youtube instead.

Here’s a list of the links I mention in the video:

• WikiRebels Documentary
• Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government
• Open Government Initiative
• EFF Freedom of Information Act misconduct thing

Any comments, either here or on youtube are much appreciated.

Thought I would test the WP Android app a little. So far it seems pretty solid, if a bit basic given that I could just use the web interface. Still though…cool stuff indeed.