Mark O'Sullivan • Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you react to it.

A number of weeks ago I wrote a letter to my member of parliament (Lynne Yelich, MP) in an effort to let her know about my concerns over the proposed Bill C-61 – which will, in effect, make almost everyone in Canada a criminal. Here is a complete copy of the letter I sent to Lynne:

June 24, 2008

Dear Lynne,
I’m a constituent who has been following recent developments in Canadian copyright law. I’m concerned that the Copyright bill (C-61) presented by the government on June 12th goes too far in outlawing the lawful use of copyrighted material, and does not take into account the needs of consumers and Canada’s creative community who are exploiting the potential of digital technology. I’m disappointed that this bill adopts an American approach to digital copyright laws, instead of crafting a Canadian approach.

Canada’s copyright laws need to advance Canada’s interests. This means copyright laws that respect ordinary consumer practices, such as unlocking cell phones and copying the contents of purchased DVDs for use in video iPods. The current bill outlaws these practices. This means copyright that facilitates the work of Canadian creators, such as documentary filmmakers, who instead find that this bill outlaws the use of DVDs as source materials for their films. This means we find made-in-Canada solutions to the challenges of file-sharing, such as consideration of the P2P proposal of the Songwriters Association of Canada. Instead, this bill paves the road to importing the consumer file-sharing lawsuit strategy that has failed so spectacularly in the United States. Canada deserves better.

Please ensure that C-61 really is made for Canadians by allowing all Canadian stakeholders a say in its final contents. That means meaningful consultation in the coming months, and opening up Canada’s copyright policy to more than just the special interests that lobbied behind the scenes for this law. As my MP, I urge you to represent my interests in the copyright debate.

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I am sure you have received a number of letters similar to the one you have just read. It is a form-letter from http://www.copyrightforcanadians.ca/, and I haven’t changed it because I agree with everything written therein. The only thing I can possibly add is how utterly shocked and disappointed I was to hear about Bill C-61. Who does Jim Prentice actually “work” for? Because after reading about the bill, I certainly don’t think he’s working for Canadians. I’ve always felt proud to be a citizen of Canada because of the “true, north, strong, and free” way we present ourselves to the world through our social practices and our forthright government. However, in recent years I have seen our government fail us and I have seen the world’s view of Canada change. If this bill comes to pass in its current form, I feel that it is more than just a striking blow to copyright law in Canada; I see it as a strike against what it means to be Canadian. It cheapens us in the eyes of the world, and I truly believe we can no longer afford to let the world down.

Sincerely,
Mark O’Sullivan

I’m not sure what I was hoping for in response; maybe a letter assuring me that she was aware of the situation and would make my concerns heard in parliament. I am positive I can’t be the only person in her constituency that is worried about this issue, after all.

Well, today I got a response … in the form of propaganda:

I received an envelope from my MP, and therein was a poor photocopy of an eight page document explaining how I am incorrect. In essence, it says that all of my concerns are unfounded, and I should basically just shut up and take it. No words of consolation. No pat on the back. No, “I know, Mark. I’m on it. Don’t worry.” Instead I get this. It is a sad day to be Canadian … compliments of Lynne Yelich, MP.

So this morning the first thing I read is how Rogers has “caved” and is now offering (for a limited time) a $30 / 6Gb / Month option for the iPhone3G.

While I’m very impressed that they caved under the pressure, I still don’t think the deal is good enough:

First of all, it is for a limited time only.

Second, there is no way any phone I purchase (even an iPhone3G) is going to last for THREE YEARS without falling apart. My phones typically don’t last longer than a-year-and-a-half. I might be able to do it for two years, but not three.

Third, they say that it is “practically unlimited”; why not just make it unlimited, then? What are they afraid of? The fact that they refuse to have an unlimited plan drives me crazy. I don’t know why.

Fourth, I still think it is a bad deal. When you take the $30 (for data ONLY) and combine it with your voice plan, text messages, caller id ($15 for caller id? Really?!) and everything else you might want in your plan, you’re still going to be paying an obscene amount of money. Rogers has always been about hidden/additional costs – that is not going to change with this limited-time offer.

Finally, when it comes down to it, I just don’t like the way they operate. They are blatantly overpriced and they *are* operating a monopoly.

I am very much looking forward to new carriers starting up in Canada, undercutting Rogers prices, and forcing Rogers to reduce their prices – proving that Rogers has been taking advantage of us for years.

That’s it. I’ve decided that I’m not going to be buying an iPhone this Friday. After reading this article about the three locks Canadians face when purchasing an iPhone (and seeing Bill C-61 rear it’s hideous head again), I just can’t bring myself to do it. I hope that enough Canadians can hold off on buying one so that Rogers feels it in their pocketbook; though I highly doubt this will be the case.

Sadly, I don’t think anything will change in Canada until iPhone is available from other providers, and/or fools like Jim Prentice go back home to purgatory.

I have no idea about the validity of this, but I love it regardless!

Oh, I also found this factoid site about how Rogers really rips us off for anyone who’s interested.

So, apparently the “unlimited surfing for $7″ was a crock. The real news is that (of course) there are no unlimited data plans for the iPhone. I discovered this today when I found:

To quote their website:

Everyone would like to say “NO THANKS” to Rogers/Fido for screwing our iPhone Canadian dream with poor data/voice plans. If you consider these plans not suitable, please sign this petition. On July 11th 2008, we will send a printed copy of all these messages to Rogers HQ to demonstrate our indignation toward them. We would like to say “Thank You, You” for signing this petition and helping the iPhone cause in Canada.

I strongly urge all Canadians to sign the petition and see if we can get some justice.

The news is in. It looks like Fido/Rogers may actually turn a new leaf, after all.

Apparently you will be able to do “unlimited surfing” for just $7 per month.

No mention of the iPhone on this new site (yet), but I imagine it’s coming. I wonder if this plan will apply to the iPhone?

I need to find some fine-print.

Remember when I wrote about the outrageous data transfer rates in Canada due to the monopoly that Roger’s Canada holds over wireless networks?

Well, the other day Apple announced that the iPhone 3G will be available in Canada on July 11th through Rogers and Fido Canada. I am a Fido customer (which is the same as saying I’m a Rogers customer since Fido piggybacks on the Rogers network. As a matter of fact, there are no wireless providers in Canada that don’t use the Roger’s network in one form or another), so I immediately contacted Fido to find out what the phone will cost, what the data transfer plans will cost, etc.

Fido responded to my questions with:

Dear Mr. O’Sullivan,

We would like to thank you for visiting our Fido Web site.

Unfortunately, there are no further details available regarding retail
availability, functionality and pricing.

Kind regards,

Richard
Fido Internet Consultant

Introduce your friends to Fido and you each receive a $20 credit.
For more information, simply click here: http://www.fido.ca/rip/you/off.jsp*

*I love how they threw a nice little advertisement in there for me.

So Richard didn’t know anything, but I figured the internet would. I did some more digging and found a press release on the Rogers website. The press release was pretty much two sentences announcing what Steve Jobs had already told us, two paragraphs bragging about how great Fido and Rogers are, and then the kick in the balls:

iPhone 3G will be available to Fido customers at $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model on a three-year price plan. Stay tuned for price plan information and retail availability.

So wait. Did I just read that right? If I buy an iPhone for the manufacturer’s retail suggested price of $199, I have to sign on to a 3 year contract? I thought the price of the phone was supposed to be discounted if you signed a multi-year contract. That’s how it works for every other phone I’ve ever purchased. MSRP is $500 and I sign a 1 year contract, I only pay $400 for the phone, right? Right?!

So what are Fido and Rogers saying that the iPhone is actually worth if I have to get a 3 year contract? What will I pay if I don’t get any contract and want to buy the phone outright? $499? $599?! If the standard 1-year-plan-equals-one-hundred-dollars rule holds true, that means that Canadians will be paying $599 for the 8Gb iPhone.

And that’s before the absurd data plans that we’ll have to shell out for every month!
The worst part of all of this is that I know for a fact that Canadians won’t say a damn word about it because they’ll be too busy scrambling to get their hands on the new toy that our down-south USA pals have had for years already.

Update
So, MySchizzoBuddy tells me that the $199 pricetag is not actually the MSRP, but the price after the plans have already been discounted. He also says that the deal in the states is that the phone will cost $199 with a 2-year plan. Of course Roger’s had to give us the gears a little bit – heaven forbid we should get the same deal as the Americans (who’s dollar is swiftly becoming less valuable than ours).

Now we just have to wait and see what Rogers has done about the data transfer rates.

I was quite happy with the way that the plugin system worked out in Vanilla 1. My bastardized version of delegation was able to solve a lot of problems that plugin developers would have otherwise faced. A big part of the problem with plugins in Vanilla 1, though, was the fact that I was never really sure *where* a plugin developer might want to plug into my code. Furthermore, the theory behind the functionality was something that novice developers had a hard time wrapping their minds around. The framework was difficult to understand, and so was the method for adding to it.

So, up until now I haven’t thought about plugins/addons/extensions for Garden in any way. I just wanted to make a tight, easy to understand, MVC framework with a nicer-to-use database layer. I think I’ve pretty much got (at least the base of) that working. So it is time, once again, to turn my thoughts to how the hell others are going to add on to my framework without actually changing my code.

I’ve read through various different books on design patterns that could be used (observer pattern, decorator pattern) and different ideas like using reflection as a plugin methodology. I’ve even just gone googling and found mind-twisting discussions like this one.

No matter how much I read (and sometimes fail to understand), I keep coming back to the same two issues:

1. It needs to be dead simple so even the most novice PHP programmer can do it without even flinching.

2. How the hell do we insert a plugin at an arbitrary place in a mixed php/html template without putting hooks directly in there?

So, I’m kind of stuck. I want to use some neat new ideas, but #1 makes me think I shouldn’t bother. And as for arbitrary html placement – I should just forget about it – accept the limitations of the language and work on more pressing issues.

UPDATE

I think I’ve got it. It’s a little different than the way extensions worked in Vanilla 1, but I think it will be way more flexible and probably even easier to write than before.

When I was down in Seattle recently, my American friends were shocked to discover that the iPhone isn’t available in Canada yet. EVERYONE has an iPhone there. I walked past a group of city sewage workers standing around a man-hole: every single one of them toying with their own private iPhone.

On the 29th of April, 2008, Roger’s Canada announced that the iPhone will be available in Canada “soon”. I was more annoyed by this bit of news than happy about it. Why can’t they tell us when? Why does it have to be a Roger’s exclusive? Is anyone aware of the long history of abuse that Roger’s has dealt out to Canadians? Doesn’t everyone know that Roger’s is operating a monopoly?

Recently I went into an Apple store and asked about when the iPhone will be available in Canada. The customer service person I spoke to informed me that (a) he wasn’t supposed to tell me this, but (b) Apple has not been willing to release the iPhone in Canada yet because of the ridiculous data rates up here. I was a customer of Roger’s a number of years ago, and I remember leaving their service after getting an absurd bill from them because I uploaded two pictures to my flickr account (Here is one of my $25 uploads). Knowing all of this, I pushed on and asked what the problem was.

He explained that Rogers (http://www.rogers.ca) has a monopoly on the wireless data transfer rates up here in the Great White North. He said that Apple has been unwilling to release the iPhone here because they are worried about backlash from iPhone users about transfer rates. To quote the customer service guy:

“Apple would be getting a lot of calls from iPhone owners wondering why their first bill from the phone company was higher than the cost of the phone itself.”

But just how bad are the data transfer rates? Well, as it turns out, there are third world countries with cheaper data transfer rates than Canada. Check out this graph from another annoyed consumer, Thomas Purves:

To quote Thomas:

As I’ve noted in the chart, 500MB is about 100 minutes of usage at a Canadian Carrier’s maximum (advertised) download speed of 700kB/s (your mileage will vary, International carriers are typically twice or four times faster). 500MB is not a lot of data in the grand scheme of things, a few GB could make a better example but in that case the red bars would be completely off the charts.

All of you Americans out there should note that while your carriers offer you an unlimited amount of transfer for a set price, there are currently no such options in Canada. Which means that there is absolutely no limit to what our carriers will charge us, and the more data we transfer, the higher the rates get. That graph could keep getting larger and larger until the other carriers no longer even appear on the map while Rogers rolls around in their millions of dollars earned doing things like first charging people to purchase ringtones and then charge them again to download the ringtones they’ve already paid for.

Apparently this is now just the land of the True, North, and Strong. There’s nothing free about it.

The Bush administration has launched an aggressive campaign to pressure the House into passing retroactive immunity for telecoms that participated in the government’s warrantless wiretapping program.

In my humble Canadian opinion, everyone involved should go to jail, with the first person in line being Bush.

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