About friggin time is all I can say. While I'm not a Rogers customers, I run off their network via Teksavvy and it's annoying as hell how they throttle connection speed between 6 pm and midnight.
The decision was not made because Rogers cares about it's customers though. Rather, it appears it was the result of the CRTC working with Cisco in response to complaints by the Canadian Gamers Organization.
Last month, the CRTC notified Rogers it was violating federal net neutrality rules by deliberately slowing or throttling time-sensitive internet traffic, specifically online games.
The CRTC based its findings on the results of an investigation in collaboration with Cisco Systems, the hardware and software vendor that Rogers uses.
The probe was launched last year after a complaint by the Canadian Gamers Organization that accused Rogers of hindering online games, such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty: Black Ops, in violation of the federal regulator’s guidelines.
I was really surprised to see Cisco rat out Rogers (if that's what happened - and it appears that it was Cisco that provided the CRTC with evidence / analysis that confirmed Rogers throttles), given Rogers is a Cisco customer. But then again, the Canadian government is a Cisco client also.
Either way, I'm glad to see that the CRTC has learned a lesson from the usage-based billing fiasco last summer. The CRTC could have buried the findings or simply allowed Rogers to come up with a dozen reasons why the findings are misleading and require further investigation, but they seem to have pressed hard and said enough is enough with the throttling.
From a PR perspective this was a wise move. After last years UBB fiasco my view of the CRTC was that they are nothing but a corrupt puppet organization in the government selling out Canadians to corporate interests.
However, if they are able to end Roger's throttling activities (which Rogers had denied they do for years, yet which everyone knows they do) then perhaps there is hope that they weren't corrupt but rather simply incompetent at the time of the UBB fiasco.
Either way, from a PR perspective good on you CRTC - this is after all what government is suppose to do, represent the interests of the Canadian people and not the selective interests of a couple big companies.
For anyone that doesn't think we are living in the Twilight Zone, you might want to read WSJ story about Obama's plans to triple tax rates on corporate dividends for anyone who makes over $200,000 a year (or $250,000 per household).
You can't 'hit' those making $200,000 without impacting everyone unless you hit them in a spot where they aren't interconnected with everyone. You hit the capital gains tax then stock prices fall - after all, why would you want to put your money in a stock where the dividend you are getting gets taxed at 45 per cent - you'd be far better off buying property with that money. So money moves out of stocks and goes elsewhere.
Who knows, perhaps that is Obama's plan to steer the rich (if you consider making $200,000 a year rich) away from stocks and dividends and back in to the housing market.
But remember, if money starts moving out of dividends, then companies stop offering dividends (or do so at lower yields) which then hurts all the seniors who are counting on those fixed returns to live on.
I stopped trying to figure out what these guys in Washington are really doing months ago. It's clear they are merely manipulating the system beyond all sane limits in an attempt to keep the house of cards from crashing down.
I get that the government is basically trying to take away every 'safe' place for rich people to hide their money, thereby forcing them to either put their money to work in ways that better benefit society (such as buying up distressed real estate) but it's a game of three-card-monte if you ask me.
Instead of trying to manipulate how people's savings are used, simply stop spending a gazillion dollars on guns and other crap that the country doesn't really need so that you don't have to squeeze everyone to the max to get the tax revenues you need to avoid going bankrupt.
Anyway, as I've said for a couple years now, the 2012 election is going to be a wild one.
Despite the markets inexplicable recovery over the past few months (a rally that has no reasoning behind it what-so-ever, other than money printing) the system is fundamentally broken with dire threats of a market crash, inflation, deflation and widespread corruption still ever present.
Dinging dividend payments for those who make $200,000 isn't going to do anything to help the economy and will most likely hurt everyone who counts on dividend payments.
Ending the corrupt plutocratic workings of Washington however would help the economy.
But like I say, when you are living in the Twilight Zone up is down and black is white and taxing people more makes more sense that living within your means. Why stop the spending party if you can simply pick the pocket of the tax payers even more.
The Gaurdian reported that Ken Livingstone, a candidate to be the mayor of London, has been 'joking' that bankers should be killed / hung one by one to set an example to the others.
The British Bankers Associated has responded by saying:
“Continual demonisation of the entire banking industry . . . is unhelpful and won’t attract jobs and business to the UK”
From a PR perspective Livingstone has some balls. I don't think his messaging strategy is a bad one given the sentiment among the public and given most people would take what he is saying as an expression of condemnation more than an actual call to murder bankers.
Anyone who is even marginally aware of the causes to this world-wide recession we've been going through since 2008 know that the bankers (in conjunction with the politicians) caused all this and that it is every day people who are getting destroyed by it.
The fact that not a single banker has gone to jail in all this is why you are seeing people saying things like 'hang a banker' and getting positive responses from their publics when doing so.
Anyway, if you like the 'hang the bankers' type of commentary, you should watch the Keiser report, he's always saying things like that.
It has been met with fierce opposition from Internet privacy and civil rights groups, who say the bill would build a state surveillance system into Canada’s Internet.
The Bill is termed theProtecting Children from Internet Predators Act.
The group Anonymous 'attacked' Vic Toews, Public Safety Minister, over it.
From a PR perspective the bill has been meet with mostly outrage by Canadians.
The reason is a simple one. After all, 99.9999 per cent of Canadians are fiercely against child predators (the .00001% who aren't are the predators themselves) and would be willing to put up with almost anything to catch such criminals, so why the outrage?
In my opinion, it's because the public is no longer fooled by the naming conventions associated with government actions.
In the US they called it the Patriot Act (which passed), when in reality it had nothing to do with patriotism, rather it was the removal of people's privacy rights and surveillance creep by the government in to the lives of US citizens.
The National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed, had nothing to do with defence but rather imparted to the government the ability to arrest (through the army) any US citizen and hold them without a trial or access to a lawyer.
The SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), which failed, had very little to do with stopping online piracy but rather gave the US government power to regulate what could or could not be on the Internet. Providing them with the power to shut down any site they wanted without getting a warrant first (hence the encroachment to free speech).
Bill C-30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, from what I can tell, has little to do with protecting children. After all, if the government suspects someone of such behaviours they can easily get a warrant and track their every movement, online and offline. The act appears instead to be more of a Big Brother initiative, giving the police the ability to 'snoop' on everyone at any time without justification for that snooping.
From a PR perspective, what you've got happening here is blow-back from a strategy that has grown long in the tooth wherein the name given to these 'Acts' deceives the public. This is what has caused tremendous mistrust of the government by the public.
The people naming these bills though keep hoping that the public will simply see the name and back the bill without really understanding what it's about. That is what happened with the Patriot Act after all.
This brings us to one of the big problems with slight-of-hand deception and why it's such a bad PR strategy.
The deception preys on the public's trust. They TRUST that when you present a bill about stopping online predators that this is what the bill is really about and nothing more. Then when they find out that the powers granted to stop online predators also can be used to snoop on all Canadians for any reason what-so-ever with no requirement to justify said snooping, they realize they've been duped.
You can only prey on the public's trust so often before they simply stop trusting you.
This is where the US government is right now I'd argue. It doesn't matter what they name their bills any more, people assume that the 'title' has one purpose only and that is to deceive you from what the bill is actually about.
Canada should be weary about following the US example on this front.
If you want to pass a Big Brother is Watching bill, then call it the BBW bill. Now, obviously I'm being tongue-in-cheek as no politician would ever pass a Big Brother is Watching bill.
But in all seriousness, they could have named the bill 'Enhanced Internet Surveillance Bill', because that is what bill C-30 is.
The public may not like the bill, they may still fight against the bill, but they wouldn't be mad because at least there were no shinnanigans taking place, no one was trying to slip one by them by preying on their trust and naming the bill something that upon first impressions they emotionally connect with.
This is definitely a bad practice that is common in PR. The logic is quite simple really, PR folks are tasked with 'communicating' an organization's position and generating positive views on that position. So it's only logical that aligning your position with something your publics feel strongly about - everyone is against child predators for instance - is a quick way to generate immediate support.
The problem though is that you really should stop and ask yourself whether you've gone to far, if your enthusiasm for generating public support has lead you to use phrasing that in the long run will actually hurt your support.
The reason we see more of this in government than in the business sector is that the government doesn't manage its brand the way a private sector business does. In the private sector businesses have to weigh the cost to their business when they lose the trust of their customers. It means their customers stop buying their goods and their competitors end up with all the business (and ultimately their business crashes and burns).
Yet in the government, there is no brand to protect really. The 'brand' is often times whatever the brand of the ruling party is. Without a brand that all Canadians judge the entire government by (not just the ruling party), members of the government don't concern themselves with the long-term impacts of trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes. What are the customers (ie. the citizens) going to do? They can't do business with another government after all.
This strategy though, despite working at times, merely makes the entire system more dysfunctional than it has to be. Because when you lose the public's trust, then even good bills that make sense suddenly have a hard time passing because the public starts to think that everything you are selling is a lie of sorts.
While PR is a tough job and a lot of effort goes in to developing clear communications, writing materials, and engaging in two-way communications with publics, at its core the driving ideology of PR is quite simple, that is to ensure that people understand what you are saying or doing.
It's really that simple at its core. It's hard work when you are carrying it out because as any PR person will tell you it's quite difficult ensuring that publics truly understand what you are doing - take RIM for instance, people are still scratching their heads over RIM because they have no clue what the heck the company is doing or what they were thinking as they fell apart over the past three years.
But if you remember that at its core PR is about that simple task of simply getting people to understanding what you are saying then it becomes a no-brainer that the last thing you want to do is every try to 'pull one over' on them because all that does is make it exponentially harder for you to communicate with them in the future.
Whether you are for or against Bill C-30, the only thing I'd say is that the naming of the bill sucks and I believe it is what has generated this uproar.
Goes to show you how powerful and / or damaging six words can be. Choose six different words, as in name the bill something else, and public reaction may have been different.
But basically, a quick synopsis of the situation is as such:
- Greece owes a ton of money (a lot of it bogus CDS debt they were suckered in to over the past 10 years)
- If Greece goes bankrupt a lot of banks and pension funds and rich people lose a lot of money
- In addition, if Greece goes bankrupt then the rest of the PIIGS would do the same (compounding the losses for banks, pensions and rich people).
- On Sunday they implemented fiscal austerity rules on Greece, the rules being dictated to Greece by the rest of Europe (primarily ECB, IMF and Germany).
- And so you basically have Greece no longer in charge of it's own Country any more and outside forces enforcing strict austerity measures on the population (ie. driving Greeks in to poverty).
In response to these measures on Sunday Greek's rioted.
Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, blasted the EU for the actions it is taking with Greece.
The next day the S&P500 was up as the world took solace in the fact that Greece was not pulling out of the EU or declaring bankruptcy.
It's a sad day when a nation sinks further in to chaos and poverty and the stock markets rejoice in response.
But as a commenter on a blog I read recently commented, the whole situation is best summed up by an old Motorhead song:
The banksters now hold the noose around Greece's neck and the population is beginning to realize that their future is one of serfdom if they are lucky.
On the PR front, what blew my mind was how little coverage all this got in North America. All the news stations were too busy covering Whitney Houston's death.
What's going on with Greece though should concern the world, because every major country in the world is essentially broke (ie. buried under debt they can't pay).
The only reason Greece is front and center is because they are the first to officially be unable to service their debt any longer (another way of saying they are 100 per cent, no doubt about it, utterly bankrupt) while the rest of the world is merely bankrupt but foreclosure proceedings haven't started yet =)
According to a recent study, the number of Fortune 500 companies that had blogs stayed flat in 2011 from 2010, while the number of Inc. 500 companies, the fastest-growing private companies in the United States, dropped to 37 per cent from 50 per cent.
Am I surprised by these findings? Not really.
During recessions companies tend to retreat in to their shell. They fear engagement with their publics because they don't want to have a two way communication model in play when negative news comes out, whether that be corporate earnings misses, corporate restructuring, or a number of things which are common during recessions.
In addition, their marketing departments are having to do more with less, so managing a blog often times takes a back seat to other priorities. Not to mention, good quality content is usually derived from subject matter experts, who themselves are often working overtime (as companies lay people off, the subject matter experts end up taking on more and more responsibilities) leaving them with little time to help support a corporate blog.
I don't think that corporate blogging is dead, nor do I think it's dying, I do think however that it is seen as a luxury activity that can be set aside for the time being.
It's important to remember though, that blogging is merely a medium, so its value always has been and always will be relative to the content quality. It's still a fast and effective option for disseminating messages effectively to key publics.
