New report offers insight into throttling, congestion and usage-based billing

A new report challenges claims made by Canada’s largest telecommunication companies in recent disputes over Internet billing and governance. Casting An Open Net: A Leading-Edge Approach to Canada’s Digital Future, offers an at times scathing critique of telecom positions on Internet congestion, BiTorrent use, billing strategies and throttling and backs its criticisms with topnotch research and analysis.

The report is published by OpenMedia.ca (in the interests of disclosure, I sit on the board of OpenMedia, a Canadian non-profit media advocacy group, altho’ others authored the report), and also takes a look at what is happening internationally in Japan, Sweden, UK, United States, Australia and Chile demonstrating a variety of strategies in other jurisdictions that protect Internet openness without stifling innovation or economic growth.

It is a readable, well researched and welcome contribution to this all-important debate. What follows are some of the highlights.

Public Radio Remix redux: Interview with Roman Mars

“If it makes a sound, it’s radio to me.” — Roman Mars

One of the targets for serious re-imagining at the Radio Without Boundaries conference (which finished up yesterday in Toronto) was traditional radio. Long considered a cultural wasteland, the befouled soundscapes of industrial radio have inspired a new generation of artists who are actively refashioning and expanding the boundaries of radio’s possibilities. At the forefront of this creative movement is Roman Mars, founder of Public Radio Remix.

Public Radio Remixis an experimental sound stream hosted by PRX (the Public Radio Exchange) to showcase pieces from the PRX archive and to develop new approaches to radio. “It’s an effort to break apart format” said Mars in his artist talk on Saturday.

Sex changes and politics: Commentary on ‘Regretters’, a documentary by Marcus Lindeen

Marcus Lindeen directing Orlando and Mikael in 'Regretters'

The Regretters (2010) is a sensitive and compelling documentary about two Danish men who became women through sex reassignment surgery who later changed back (through more surgery) to being men. It is a controversial study – in its subject matter, in its unorthodox production techniques, and in its refusal to speak in easy political terms.

But the surgeries and their difficult details are not the central story in this film. Regretters is about two people who have lived lives of remarkable difficulty and courage to be who they needed to be in the face of bigotry and social hostility. It allows the world to listen in on (and to watch) an intimate and fascinating conversation from within the culturally persecuted community of people who have surgically changed their sex.

A ‘State of Emergency’ in Montreal: Socially acceptable terrorism for the homeless set to begin

In just a few days (on Nov 25) begins one of the most remarkable festivals in Canada, Etat d’Urgence, a cultural gathering for the homeless in the heart of one of North America’s finest urban playgrounds – Montreal, Quebec. The event – as this year’s promotion suggests – is an all inclusive vacation for Montreal’s homeless. And, for the other 14,000 regular Montrealers expected to attend, Etat d’Urgence is a cultural festival that is entirely unique. 

Artists recycle waste into beautiful enigma: Convergence Exhibition opens at Lumenhouse

Indra's Cloud by Anne Percoco

Turning trash into artistry is an alchemy long overdue for a species who according to the U.N. throws out over a billion tonnes of solid waste every year. The artists in Convergence which opened October 16 at Lumenhouse in Brooklyn, New York, want to draw our attention not only to our excesses, but to the confounding and enchanting ways waste can be diverted from oceans and landfills and resurrected as cultural beauty.

Chancellor Merkel mistakes migrant labour policy for multiculturalism

What follows is an account of what German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a group of young Christian Democratic party members on Monday. The verbatim excerpt below (in italics) is revealing.

In the interests of entertainment, I have recreated Merkel’s comments as a dialogue with a fictitious, pesky and well informed attendee at a fundraising event. Imagine the two of them meeting in a large room filled with well-dressed socialites, Chancellor Merkel moving slowly through the crowd with her handlers and encountering rather unintentionally this bespectacled and nebbish character — indeed, a party pooper — whom she tries to evade and does, eventually, successfully slip away from after a very brief exchange.

Chancellor Merkel: In Frankfurt am Main, two out of three children under the age of five have an immigrant background. We are a country which at the beginning of the 60s actually brought guest workers to Germany.

Is resistance the secret of joy? Activist street bands and the sounds of protest

This weekend marks the 5th annual Honk festival in Somerville, MA, a celebration and gathering of activist street bands from across North America. These are the musicians who protest with their instruments, costumes and rowdy improvised dance beats – the marching bands who put festivity into political resistance and a little bit of order into boisterous crowds. It is an often overlooked and yet vital aspect of protest gatherings around the world.