How Canadian Usage-Based Billing Affects You

My name is Robert Yu and I am an avid computer user as well as an open 
source enthusiast, which is why I'm writing the following letter to you. 
I have backgrounds with open-source web programming as well as Java, C, 
and shell-scripting. I also have eight year's worth of using open-source 
software, software including your organisation's OpenOffice.org.

My interest in your organisation's software is simply that it can still 
be used by Canadians. For more information, please read the letter below.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To whom it may concern,

This piece of new comes late, and may sound irrelevant as it is directly 
a Canadian matter, but the peoiple who use your software or those who 
subscribe to your organisation's philosophy include Canadians. Just as 
this issue is of their concern, it is also yours.

Usage-Based Billing (UBB) is a capping plan that supposedly punishes 
users that consume high bandwidth. This is not a pay-as-you-go plan, as 
there is a fixed charge for those of you who do not go over the limit. 
If the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission gets its 
way, we may end up paying $4 CDN for every gigabyte we accumulated after 
the cap. Caps usually go down to 25GB. With today's Internet usage, 
including GNU/Linux or Netflix, this cap is easy to surpass. This means 
that Canadians may effectively be censored from downloading Free 
software; your software will lose a lot of popularity. For those of you 
who want to volunteer or change the software as per the agreement in 
most open-source licences, you cannot.

By using Free software through these years, I learned that the value of 
well-made programs go beyond price. A free-of-charge program does not 
necessarily surpass one that is not free-of-charge, but people do count 
on free software to be made accessible for those who cannot afford their 
closed-source counterparts.

One thing UBB aims to do is to limit choice. UBB requires that all 
Internet Service Providers in Canada to adapt this plan so Canadians 
cannot switch to a cheap alternative tot he highly-pricesd, 
closed-standard Microsoft Windows. The threat to technological 
advancement is real here in Canada.

For those of you who receive this message, please, raise awareness. Tell 
everyone you know, tell your family, friends, and neighbours. The real 
enemy of this threat is people with knowledge. These people have the 
potential to stop the damage before it can begin. There are many ways to 
raise awareness. For example, what I am doing is an attempt to raise 
awareness. Doing the next step, you can also lead those who do not know 
to go to websites such as http://www.stopthemeter.ca. Or go on Facebook 
at www.facebook.com/openmedia.ca.

Let's all help out save OpenOffice.org's Canadian base

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Calling all Canadians! Don't let faulty Internet
billing eat your wallet! Learn about and stop
Usage-Based Billing!

- http://stopusagebasedbilling.wordpress.com/ (Stop Usage Based Billing)
- http://www.openmedia.ca/ (Open Media Internet Non Profit Group)
- http://www.antiubb.com/
- http://openmedia.ca/meter (Stop the Metre Campaign)