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Canadian Gamers Organization
What is the Canadian Gamers Organization?
The CGO believes that games are not just games, they are products under law. They are highly sophisticated pieces of software that run on high end consoles and systems. Canadian consumers should gain the maximum enjoyment when playing the products we buy. LinksLatest NewsCanadian Internet Providers Already Set Up For Mass SurveillanceFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
There has been some talk recently about who would pick up the tab for a bill like C-30 when in fact the throttling technology used to slow down P2P connections can also be used for mass surveillance. The throttling technology used by ISP’s like Bell and Rogers could be applied to snoop on 3rd party providers as well. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has been very vocal since 2008 with respect to the use of throttling software or in tech terms Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) software being used exactly for this purpose. Read more » Rogers To Respond To CRTC Over Throttling TomorrowFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
Rogers is supposed to be responding to the CRTC over evidence the CRTC found of throttling non-P2P applications tomorrow. It is unclear whether if Rogers will in fact respond, and if so whether that response will be made public. CGO was not directly notified by the CRTC’s last communication to Rogers, so here are some important links to follow. Read more » Canadian Gamers Stick up for PS3 Elite Premium MembersFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
This complaint comes as new official statements recently made by Activision staff, puts into question compliance with the competition act by Activision during its pre-release adverting campaigns around the sale and promotions of the Call of Duty Elite Premium service, and whether the public was deliberately mislead through this campaign. Read more » CRTC Slaps Rogers for Throttling Non-P2P TrafficFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
January 20, 2012 - The Canadian Gamers Organization got word today that the CRTC's enforcement division has found Rogers to not be non-compliant with CRTC net neutrality policy, and that it's throttling software and hardware are actively misclassifying a wide range of applications and communication ports. The CRTC has cited evidence obtained and published by Cisco Systems (the hardware and software vendor Rogers uses for throttling), and has threatened a show/cause hearing on this subject if Rogers' response is insufficient or fails to respond. If it goes to a hearing, the CRTC could file an order with the courts to force Rogers to reimburse affected customers.Read more » Canadian Competition Bureau Rules on COD PactFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
The Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO) got a phone call from the Canadian Competition Bureau this afternoon with the results of their investigation on the Call of Duty (COD) pact between Microsoft and Activision. Basically XBOX users are receiving additional game content ahead of PS3 users. This situation also applies to the Call of Duty Elite premium memberships in which Canadian consumers spend extra money for premium content. CGO’s initial investigation found that this practise is called “tied selling” under the competition act and may have adverse effects on competitors in the market. CGO initiated a complaint with the Canadian Competition Bureau to further investigate any negative market effects on competition in the market as a result of this tied selling.Read more » CGO Asks Competition Bureau to Investigate COD PactFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
The Canadian Gamers Organization has asked the Canadian Competition Bureau to further investigate the pact between Activision and Microsoft allowing Xbox users to receive Call of Duty Elite Premium benefits earlier than other platforms. This move comes as many consumers around the globe who have purchased Elite Premium Memberships have had a reasonable expectation that additional paid downloadable content for Modern Warfare 3 would be released to premium members at the same time across platforms. Both Activision, Beach Head, and Infinity Ward employees are being bombarded with questions through social media as to why this pact applies to Elite Premium. CGO believes that this pact may be against competition rules in Canada, and have asked the Competition Bureau to further investigate. The letter sent in tonight to the Competition Bureau is as follows Read more » SOPA DevelopmentsFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
This past week has seen a lot of pressure mounting against a piece of US domestic legislation the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Game publishers this week are increasingly being asked to clarify their position on SOPA, while US politicians state that opposing this bill doesn’t matter and it will go through as is.Read more » Canadian Gamers Weigh In On SOPAFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
The Canadian Gamers Organization is a gamer advocacy group based in Canada. We are currently watching developments across the border on a piece of US legislation that may impact the global gaming community tremendously. That legislation is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). There are completely entrenched positions both for and against this policy, and conflicting reports as to what this will mean for gamers. Read more » Ontario Ombudsman Gets Shafted by Rogers Technical SupportFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
I just happened to catch a tweet Tuesday night from our Ontario Ombudsman André Marin basically complaining that slow speeds he is experiencing ended up being not Rogers fault, and his support ticket has been closed. Read more » CGOs Response to Bells Decision to Drop ThrottlingFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
Bell announced yesterday that it will discontinue ALL its throttling practices on all consumer connections starting March 1st, 2012. This means for all Bell customers, retail and wholesale. The Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO) is pleased to see this moving coming from Bell and what this means for Gamers. CGO has argued for a long time that ISP’s using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) management may not be in compliant with CRTC policy, due to known issues this technology has with misclassifying legit data as P2P filesharing traffic. Read more » Gamers See No CRTC Enforcement After One MonthFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
The CRTC has still yet to put forth any indication of what enforcement measures it will apply against Rogers, after the CRTC found Rogers to be in violation of net neutrality policy on October 27th, 2011. In a follow up e-mail by the Canadian Gamers Organization to the CRTC last week, the CRTC responded stating: Read more » Gamers Welcome CRTC’s UBB Decision But It Falls ShortFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
The Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO) welcomes the CRTC’s decision today to scrap data caps on independent ISPs. CGO co-founder Jason Koblovsky says that usage based billing (UBB) schemes have a direct impact on how much media consumers can purchase. Read more » Gamers Take a Stand For Online ChoiceFiled By Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
October 17, 2011—The Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO), a group currently at the forefront of the fight for net neutrality (Internet openness), has submitted their final response to the CRTC’s request for information. The CGO has been fighting Rogers for discriminating against online applications—namely World of Warcraft and Call of Duty Black Ops—using illegitimate Internet traffic management practices. Read more » CGO's October 14th Reply To The CRTCBy Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
The Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO) received a letter frrom the CRTC requesting more info on games that are throttled by Rogers. The original date for reply was set on October 10th, which was thanksgiving day. CGO asked the commission to extension the deadline for a reply and asked for justification and reasoning behind the CRTC's request for more info. The extension was granted (October 14th, 2011) and the CRTC ignored the request to explain further why they were requesting more information from CGO. The below is CGO's reply to the commission sent in October 14th, 2011: Read more » CGO requests “Clarification” of CRTC RequestBy Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
Yesterday the Canadian Gamers Organization received an odd e-mail from the CRTC. I’m not prepared to accept the response we got today from the CRTC. There’s no logic or justification for the current response. We need to see the logic behind this before we comply. Read more » CGO Correction From Press ReleaseBy Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization Last night we put forth our press release on Rogers response to the CRTC. In it I stated that: “We also believe this issue is widespread to ISP’s who use Cisco’s ITMP systems. Nothing Rogers has provided backs up their claim that this is isolated to Rogers only. “ Read more » Rogers Does Not Comply With CRTC Order In Latest ResponseBy Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization
TORONTO: The Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO) has received Rogers reply to the CRTC late Tuesday evening. The reply can be found here. In its reply to the CRTC Rogers stated that the current system they have in place is working well. Rogers stated that a short term solution for fixing the problem was to whitelist programs, and expect Cisco Systems to have a resolution to the misclassification in the long term, however Rogers did not provide a specific date as to when it would be fixed. Rogers also provided a flowchart to their current customer complaints procedure which CGO co-founder Jason Koblovsky says his members just simply are not seeing. Read more » Gamers Unhappy About New Throttling GuidelinesBy Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization ***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:*** TORONTO, ONTARIO: The CRTC, Canada's telecommunications regulator, has released new guidelines for throttling complaints, which puts the responsibility for monitoring Internet providers' compliance with Internet openness policy directly on the backs of consumers. Read more » CGO's Reaction To CRTC's New Complaints ProcedureBy Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization The CRTC has released new complaint guidelines for ISPs to follow when dealing with consumer complaints around throttling.Read more » Rogers E-mails CGO in Face of Consumer BacklashBy Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization Yesterday we ended being e-mailed twice by an employee at Rogers who seems to be the social media spin doctor for the company, trying to court our support. Below are the e-mails and responses to them:Read more » Showdown: CRTC Vs. Rogers on Net Neutrality EnforcementBy Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization On Friday the CRTC released a letter to Rogers stating that the possibility of other games being affected by the ITMP misclassification bug maybe in fact against section 36 of the Telecommunications Act. The CRTC stated: Read more » CRTC Response To Gamers' ComplaintBy Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization The CRTC has responded to this complaint in 2 parts. In the first complaint about policy adjustments and recommendations, I will have to re-file, but the CRTC has thrown the ITMP bug right back at Rogers requesting further testing data, and if their customer base was notified of the bug (which they didn't do). The CRTC has given Rogers until September 2nd to respond. Read more » The Canadian Gamers Organization: A net neutrality complaintBy Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization Below is a copy of the complaint I sent in on Monday, August 22nd, 2011 to the Ontario Ministry of Consumer and Business services, along with the CRTC's Telecom Complaints Commission, on behalf of the Canadian Gamers Organization. This tests the current complaint system and throttling practices against consumer law, and notifies each of these jurisdictions of significant problems with enforcement and procedure within the CRTC on consumers complaints. Hopefully some change will come out of this. Read more » Canadian Gamers Fed Up With CRTC on Net Neutrality issuesBy Jason Koblovsky of the Canadian Gamers Organization A few months ago, a few Canadian gamers sent in a complaint to the CRTC that suspected Rogers’ throttling practices were affecting connectivity to the World of Warcraft (WoW) game. The CRTC has since looked into the case, and has indicated that Rogers was at fault, and ordered Rogers – under threat of a public inquiry – to fix the issues. Read more » Gamers vs. Rogers: One Month at a TimeBy Adam Webb of OpenMedia.ca Once again, Internet-users of all stripes are reeling over recent accusations that Rogers has been proactively throttling consumer bandwidth. Teresa Murphy, a World of Warcraft gamer, complained to the CRTC last March that the ISP’s Internet Traffic Management Practices (ITMPs) had led to the discriminatory throttling of users with a history of peer-to-peer traffic. Read more » |
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Canadian gamers need a voice both politically and legally. The Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO) helps Canadian gamers have a voice among industry, regulators, and politicians.
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