ARCHIVED — A Rhonda Hyslop 2
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Reply comment from Rhonda Hyslop received on October 21, 2001 via e-mail
Subject: Reply comment to CBC/src
In the comment from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) dated
September 17, 2001, they write:
"CBC is therefore of the opinion that any Internet-based retransmitter
that wishes to benefit from the advantages of the Regime should first
submit convincing evidence to the effect that it has the technology
required to ensure that its retransmission operations do not go beyond the
limits of Canadian territory."
The internet doesn't work that way. First, you can't guarantee that people downloading the retransmission are coming from any given location. While IP addresses are in part assigned in blocks to various countries, this is not a perfect solution; some ISPs are multinational, and are assigned their own blocks of IP addresses to use as they see fit. Second, you can't guarantee that the signal does not at any point leave the country, even if the sender and the recipient are both inside Canada; many ISPs are not connected to a backbone link in Canada, but in the United States. All internet traffic for those ISPs go down to the US and then back up to Canada. Even if the retransmitter and recipient are both connected to a canadian backbone link, the internet is designed to route around damage (such as the the link being overly congested or entirely shut down) with no regard for international borders. This could result in a stream normally kept within canadian networks being redirected through US networks.
Radio and television stations are not required to ensure that their signal does not cross the border to the United States, nor could they; radio frequency signals pay no more attention to borders than the internet does.
they continue:
"Considering the greater vulnerability of works on the Internet, notably
the high risk of infringement, CBC is of the opinion that any
Internet-based retransmitter wishing to benefit from the advantages of the
Regime should be required to put some effective technical measures in
place to prevent the downloading of a signal, in whole or in part."
If the signal is not downloadable, what is the point of rebroadcasting it? In order to view a signal on a home computer, it must first be downloaded; there is no television or radio style broadcasting in this sense. All traffic on the internet must be requested and downloaded before it can be viewed.
Thank you for providing the opportunity to respond.
-Rhonda
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