This is how I see it, and forgive me if some or all of these points have been made. (I just haven't had the time to read everybody's comments, so forgive me.)
1) I don't believe in limiting access to information. Period. All information, good or bad. That's because information frees societies. The more an individual knows, the more power that individual has, and the more those numbers of educated individuals increase, the more power the general population has.
2) Whether this 25 GB cap is true or not, doesn't matter to me. What matters is any attempt to put a cap on it. I view the internet like having a library card. I think it should always be free, but I understand this is not realistic, since someone has to provide the services and the hardware, so of course people need to be charged for some usage.
3) Why should Canadians accept any sort of cap on the free flow of information, when we're always pushing other more repressive societies to free up more information and give unlimited access to their people? eg: Chinese government's attempts to limit internet access to its citizens. Keeping the population ignorant is one of the best tools an oppressive regime has.
4) Of course the CRTC ruling isn't the same as a dictatorial regime limiting access to the citizens. That's just one extreme example I used. However, the ruling does increase the split between economic backgrounds. The more money you have, the easier the access to unlimited information will be. In Vancouver, we have the highest cost of living but the lowest minimum wage in Canada. The amount of access to information should not be limited by your income. People are already limited to the type of education they can get since some can't afford to go to a prestigious university, so it's more important now than ever to allow unlimited access.
5) I don't care if the cap is 25GB or 250 GBs. The amount of the cap is a red herring. The real problem is that these guys can't be trusted. I don't trust the CRTC, I don't trust the corporations. Sure the cap may not be as low as 25GBs, but that doesn't mean they won't restrict it further later. This ruling gives them all the power in the world to do so. It's how it begins: You place a decent sized cap that most people won't even come close to reaching, then you start charging more and more for people who go over, and you start to reduce the cap little by little, finding any excuse to do so. If you don't think this will happen, you are hopelessly naive. We had the freedom of unlimited internet access for years. To start giving up that freedom now is not a positive thing.
6) I know most people probably just download junk. They watch porn, they steal music, they watch pirated versions of movies. I get it. But it's not my place to decide if it's right or wrong. (actually, downloading creative and artistic content that you didn't pay for is still wrong). My point is, even if I don't see value in downloading "Jersey Shore," it's not my place to tell someone they are wasting their time and bandwidth. I'm not going to tell someone what is quality and what isn't, because I will not accept someone telling me what I should be spending my time watching or reading or listening to.
End rant.
