While Telus cries foul over cable-cutting in its labour dispute, the company has been snipping a few virtual wires of its own.
…Specifically, the connections leading to at least two web sites critical of the company.
If you want to check out their perspective, and Telus is your Internet service provider, you won’t be able to access either Voices for Change or TelusScabs.ca.
(Fortunately – for now, anyway – you can still sneak around Telus’ little ad hoc firewall by visiting this proxy site… although it appears to have some glitches.)
This sets a godawful precedent, especially given the concentration of ownership in the telecommunications industry. Bell Sympatico, MSN or AOL Time Warner adopting similar policies would have serious implications for the Internet’s capacity to allow the free exchange of ideas.
Telus claims the policy is simply to defend their personnel and assets. But as the sole arbiter of what will and won’t be acceptable content in a pitched labour battle, the company is in a stunning conflict of interest. (Not to mention the much more basic issue of an ISP deciding what content its customers will and won’t be able to access.)
And from a public relations standpoint, Telus has — in the felicitous phrase coined by TechDirt — triggered a “Streisand Effect”: dramatically raising the profile of a piece of information by trying to suppress it.
You’d expect the online world to jump on this, and you’d be right; the story has been Metafiltered and Slashdotted (with nearly 600 comments at the time of writing).
Now, if Telus was smart, they’d be hitting the “Comment” link on every blog story they could get their mice on to get their side of the story out there. And this incident gives us a chance to assess the state of online PR at one of the larger players in the Canadian online market.
So I’m offering an unbounty (which is to say, the only prize on offer is the meagre glory of a mention here) to the first person who can turn up an instance of Telus actually engaging the blogospheriverse on this issue. (Updated July 26: Derek Miller was phoned by Telus shortly after posting about the issue. They’re in phone tag hell, so we’ll see what develops.)
Some links:
- Darren Barefoot’s post, where I first read about this
- CRTC complaints department, if you’re narked about having your web access curtailed
- Boing Boing article; they get one detail wrong, in that Voices for Change describes itself, not as a union site, but as “an independent website supporting the TWU and its members”
- The TWU
Well, I just had a very interesting conversation with a manager named Brian at the Telus executive offices (604) 697-8044
He said that even if the photos that endager the wellbeing of their employees and the proprietary information (I have seen no evidence of either, but maybe I am getting a little hard of seeing in my dotage) are removed from the websites in question, they will continue with the censorship anyway. Because it hurts their business – implying that they have the right to block any site that hurts their business. Seems to me they have a lot of news outlets to start blocking. I discussed the concept of common carrier with him at this point – he didn’t know what it meant. You can bet he’ll know by the next phone call he has to take.
He insisted that they have done nothing illegal. I suggested that they have violated the charter. I would really like to see the TWU go after them for this – especially if they were to remove the “questionable” content from those sites being censored.
It’s time for Aunty to have a nice cuppa and calm down.
AB
Telus’s terms of service and acceptable use policy seem to give them the right to block the website in question, and any other, at their sole discretion:
http://www.mytelus.com/internet/policies/TISAA.do
http://www.mytelus.com/internet/nv/aup.do
I’m not sure that would hold up in court, especially given their previous claims of common carrier status in a variety of legal cases (beware, ugly URL):
(link to Michael Geist’s site – edited by Rob because WordPress does sad things to ampersands)
What it does do is show that Telus is willing to block sites it doesn’t like, without court order or involving the police, i.e. without taking steps to claim that the material is actually illegal. That’s not a good sign.
I’ll see what Telus has to say whenever I actually talk to someone on the phone.
Looking through my logs, I see I just got pinged by them. Maybe I can expect a call as well…
I got an email too (presumably from my use of their contact form, in addition to emailing their press contact and CEO directly), but it was just a form letter:
link
Rob:
Apparently, while Darren Entwistle was busy with his hissy fit against the union, there was a lot of collateral damage.
While the whole issue of pictures of employees amounted to those on the picket line, and there were definitely NO security issues, (unless you count the embarresment to be found in the video TELUSIdol.mpg at http://www.archive.org/details/TELUSIdol)the extent of damage by Mr. Entwistle is a fact.
According to the researchers at OpenNet Initiative.net, Darren wiped out access to 766 internet sites as well as the one he was aiming at, while at the same time doing a wonderful job of violating s.36 and s.27(2)of the Canadian Telecommunications Act.
I’m sure those 766 customers won’t have any trouble finding someone else to host their sites and give their money to instead of Darren Ego.
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LOLOLOL
hmmm…wonder if KLiteK++ has it somewhere?
The file can still be found by using a bit torrent. Go to torrentspy.com and do a search for Telus Idol:
(link)
If you don’t have a bittorrent program yet I can recommend Azureus:
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
I was always proud of my trade untill I watched this video. Now I am just totally disgusted at what they represent.
Hi,
After reading all of the comments on the TELUS idol video, I must see it for myself before passing judgement. Does anyone have a copy or a link? Turns out TELUS has blocked the sites posted here.
Stacey
As a TELUS employee, out East, I’ve gotta say the whole union thing isn’t going over too well in these parts. Our place of business was left off the bargaining agreement; TELUS told the TWU that we were all management. Dicks.
We have our connections to what’s going on in the West, and we’ve experienced two major power outages (both labled “vandalism” by Ontario Hydro) and as a logistics technician, they aren’t making it easy for us to do our jobs (UPS won’t cross picket lines.)
I’d be all for the TWU and what they’re up to (6 years without a contract is disgusting) if it weren’t for the fact that they are directly fucking me over every day when i come to work, and i stand to benefit in no way whatsoever if they succeed. It’s not easy to be doing the work of three people, even though TELUS has so graciously offered all of us “perks”…free ice cream today! Free playing cards (with the animal ads) last friday! Oh Boy, I sure do love getting leftover convention swag as a thanks for doing the work of three people!
I’m pro-union. I just wish they’d stop raising hell over corporate retreats (let’s be honest, telling people “customer dollars paid for this!” is pretty stupid. Customer dollars paid for George Cope’s BMW too, but i didn’t say any ruckus being raised over that. Salespeople are loud and rowdy and dirty, and when they get together and drink they’re worse; anyone who’s worked in sales more than five minutes knows that.( The video doesn’t outrage me; the intentional fucking over of eastern Mobility employees does.
meh.
Meanwhile, Voices for change ruthlessly censors users on it’s own site marching to the beat of the Union’s drum.
Oh, the irony.
See my site for more discussion.
Infomation and a link to Telus Idol is available here. It also has a partial transcript.
To “Dave Stalker”: This is Telus management doing this. Not the Union. Aim your disgust in the right direction.
Sorry, forgot the link: http://www.cupwnewvision.org/telusidol.htm
Thanks, all, for your comments, no matter what your perspective is. Croft, Thomas and Nick, thanks for the information. mojocat, thanks for your point of view.
I’m going to engage PC on her/his post, mainly because it’s so recent and there are a few points that jumped to mind.
Some free PR advice: if you’re going to write something like “VFC (Voices for Change) members who can spell properly are especially welcome” on your site’s front page,
Be aware that sarcasm and insults rarely help persuade anyone (something all sides sometimes forget), and
You’ll want to check your own language abilities first… say, around the difference between “its” and “it’s”.
Enough pettiness from me (continued pettiness is, as always, encouraged from other participants). PC, I checked out your site and there’s no “discussion” of supposed VFC censorship — just a repetition of the charge, with no specifics. You could have a more fruitful (and more interesting) conversation with your readers if you brought up a few specifics; otherwise, it just isn’t possible. Kudos, though, for starting a Yahoo! group to air your views.
On the question of hypocrisy, there’s a fundamental difference between starting a web site aimed at advocacy for a particular group and owning a common carrier. Most online communities have rules of behaviour, ranging from fairly wide-open (“anything you want so long as there’s no libel, slander or stuff that will get us shut down by the copyright police”) to more focused and restrictive.
I know nothing about what’s gone on in the VFC forum, so I can’t comment on the specifics. But here’s what I do know: nothing is stopping you from starting your own web site if you disagree with their rules, or the way they’re enforced. (You’ve proven that by launching your site.) Starting up your own high-speed ISP, on the other hand, involves very steep barriers to entry. And the consequences of Telus deciding to block a particular point of view are dramatically more serious than those involved when an individual web site applies its own restrictions.
Big effin deal.
If you don’t like it, move the frickin website.
BooHoo.
A web provider has every right to block and website it sees as unacceptable use. And there is so much competition out there (I know it’s such a dirty word in the socialist world, but I digress…) then move your propaganda site.
Grow up already.
Oh, and by the way, how is that weiners rice and beans diet going now, it only gets better after 3 months, how about 3 more? 6 months more? Maybe you can get decertified if you are out long enough, that’s sure serving your members needs…………..
The tone of the previous post (and the red-baiting, and the ignorance, and…) doesn’t deserve a lot of consideration, so just quickly –
1) There isn’t a lot of competition in broadband, and if you’re a customer who wants to see the whole web — not just the bits Telus wants you to see — your options are extremely limited, and the costs of switching significant.
2) The site in question isn’t hosted by Telus, and I don’t see how you think “unacceptable use” comes into play. As a common carrier — a role Telus has invoked when it suited the company’s purposes — Telus does not in fact have the right to cherry-pick content.
3) Sneering at striking employees because they’ve taken a wage hit speaks for itself. But just for the record, it wasn’t the union leadership that voted against the last tentative agreement — it was the membership. In any event, there’s a new one, and we’ll see where that goes.
I found Telus was intercepting my private home email for atleast 2 months prior to the labour dispute.
You may be aware of the recent manipulation of US copyright law by Telus in an attempt to cover up their union-bashing.
Details here:
http://itschironboy.blogspot.com/