Jesse Brown from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Search Engine has written a stirring editorial about the ways in which Canada's internet infrastructure is being turned into second-rate cable TV by greedy telcos and incompetent regulators.

Every time I think about moving back to Canada some day, I remind myself of how miserable the national Internet infrastructure is — and how awful the big telcos are, and how weak-kneed and ass-licking the telcoms regulator is — and I realize I can't possibly move home. The Internet's where I live, it's how I earn my income. Living on Canada's Internet would be better than living on China's Internet, say, but that's a pretty low bar to hurdle.

1. Last week the CRTC sided with Bell against a group of small Internet Service Providers who want to offer their customers unthrottled connections where what they download is their own business and not subject to interference. 2. In last week's throne speech the Conservative government renewed their intention to "modernize" Canadian copyright law. Their effort to do so last session was Bill C-61, a woefully unbalanced and retrograde piece of legislation that led to the greatest citizen backlash to any proposed bill in recent memory. Yet there has been no indication from new Industry Minister Tony Clement that a much-needed public consultation will take place. The best he has offered is the possibility of a "slightly different" version of the bill. 3. Twitter has just announced that they are killing outbound SMS messaging in Canada due to exorbitant and constant rate hikes from Canadian cell providers (former Industry Minister Jim Prentice vowed to get tough on SMS price gouging, then backpeddled). Cell phone rates in Canada are among the highest in the world, and the result is that mobile penetration is pathetically low and that emerging new cultural platforms like Twitter are being hobbled.

Is Canada becoming a digital ghetto?

(Thanks, Jesse!)