Why the Sudden Changes with the Web?

These might be the waning days of the new economy created by the digital communications revolution. For the better part of the last three decades every aspect of our culture has been altered, accelerated, surpassed, and often destroyed by the Internet and most importantly, by the Internet’s favourite four letter F word, F-R-E-E. It’s been a wild ride but it was never really sustainable. Along the way, we’ve devalued our recent cultural creations and made it far harder for artists to scrape out a semblance of a decent living.

A recent story in The New Yorker magazine, “Who Owns the Internet?” outlined the experience of Levon Helm, drummer for the seminal rock group The Band. After The Band broke up and Helm retired from rock music, he was living a comfortable life on royalty cheques from the tens of millions of times The Band’s music was purchased, played on radio, or used commercially each year. In 1999, the same year Napster made all music files free, Held developed throat cancer. That was the year his income slipped from approximately $100,000 per year to almost nothing. When Helm died the next year, a benefit concert had to be held so his wife could continue to stay in their home, royalties from his previous work having completely dried up.

Helm, like many musicians of his generation, was simply overwhelmed by the speed music lovers adopted a technology that gave them rapid, free, and most importantly, unlimited access to a world of listening options. There have been several attempts made to legalize music and legitimize each file listened to by any given computer user, but most have failed. Spotify is arguably the most successful. It was introduced nine years ago and saw a period of mass adoption starting about five years ago. Even Spotify only pays artists a fraction of the royalty payments they used to receive, even though their work is available to a far greater number of listeners and is thus used more than ever before. The competition for users and the personal data behind them is fierce.

Music is still, for the most part, free. Think of a song and go to YouTube. There’s a far better than even chance that song will be there, a much better chance than you might have had trying to find more obscure titles at a record store thirty years ago. Artists now have to make their money on tour and selling merchandise and life for older artists is getting harder as payments for use of their art are fewer and smaller, even though more people are using their art than ever before. Somewhere along the way, it became even less financially feasible to be a professional musician.

This isn’t anywhere close to what Internet pioneers meant when they said data must be free. To ask what happened is to ignore the fact we all saw it happen and the vast majority of us eagerly participated. Now it’s television’s turn. Even though some of the greatest storytelling in human history is found on modern cable TV, the medium is becoming harder and harder to monetize while budgets for large productions grow as epic as the stories themselves. People are circumventing paid cable by using pirate streaming sites with URLs as long as the sentences their owners might draw if the world were a slightly different place. Bad actors make free data as much a liability as it is a critical necessity to a free flowing Internet. The argument about Net Neutrality is complicated enough but decimation of the creative economy is a component piece of the puzzle worth considering before grinding it into place.

We live in revolutionary times. It’s interesting and it’s messy. Often we’re realizing we can do things before fully understanding the effects of what we’re doing. While human history has always been like this, never before have we been able to record, remember, and recall our experiences instantly with the exacting clarity of empirical analytics. What is most frustrating is the technical fact we can end most data piracy altogether. The only thing stopping us is a nagging set of legal and philosophical problems.

Internet signals are made up of tiny packets. A packet is a small piece of a web document. When your computer makes a request of a file-server two hundred kilometers away, that request is returned in a number of individual packets, each of which contains a piece of the file you’ve requested. Much like the transporter on Star Trek, those packets are all delivered to your computer where they are reassembled on your monitor. That’s how the Internet can run so quickly and efficiently at the scale it does. Internet Service Providers can take any given packet out of the stream and instantly analyse its contents. This practice is called Deep Packet Inspection. Because an ISP could use Deep Packet Inspection to detect and throttle signals from rival networks, the practice is considered a direct violation of Net Neutrality provisions. But what if the ISPs only used it to target packets originating at IP addresses known to be bad actors or containing pirated materials?

Currently, the Internet is governed as a utility under Title II of the Federal Communications Act. Sometime in the next few weeks, the FCC is very likely to remove all Net Neutrality protections by declassifying the Internet. When that happens, Internet Service Providers will be free to implement a variety of pricing structures and technical practices that they currently can’t use. This is likely to push lawyers for large scale content creators such as the production companies behind Game of Thrones, or a musician with the legal clout of say, Taylor Swift, to push ISPs into using some of their newly granted powers to push pirates out of the pictures by seriously throttling their signals.

A few weeks ago, a conversation took place at the Telsec Business Centre about how to adapt to, and perhaps even make money off of the new Internet classification standards in a post Net Neutrality world. Developing software to help chase down and restrict the actions of the limited number of bad actors who steal from real actors (and singers and drummers too) might be a start.

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Hotels

1. Jennifer Smith
General Manager
The Omni King Edward Hotel
37 King Street East
Toronto, ON
M5C 1E9
Tel: 416-863-9700
Website: www.omnihotels.com/hotels/toronto-king-edward

2. Mark Perry
General Manager
Executive Hotels and Resorts (Boutique)
8 Colborne Street
Toronto, ON
M5E 1E1
Tel: 416-350-2419
Website: www.spazen.ca or www.cosmotoronto.com

3. Emeline Boul
General Manager
Hotel Victoria (Boutique)
56 Yonge Street
Toronto, ON
M5E 1G5
Tel: 416-363-1666
Mobile: 647-574-5832
Website: www.hotelvictoriatoronto.com

4. Omkar Sawant
Reservations Manager
One King West Hotel
1 King Street West
Toronto, ON
M5H 1A1
Main: 416-548-8100
Reservations: 1-866-470-5464
Website: www.onekingwest.com

5. Van Nguyen
General Manager
Cambridge Suites Toronto
15 Richmond Street East
Toronto, ON
M5C 1N2
Direct: 416-601-3757
Hotel: 416-368-1990
Website: www.cambridgesuitestoronto.com

Restaurants

1. Michael Pagliaro
Carisma (Italian)
15 Toronto Street
Toronto, ON
M5C 2E3
Tel: 416-864-7373
Website: www.carismarestaurant.com

2. Patti Shaw
Terroni (Italian)
57 Adelaide Street East
Toronto, ON
M5C 1K6
Tel: 416-203-3093
Website: www.terroni.com

3. Declan
Restaurant 20 Victoria – Michelin guide approved
20 Victoria Street
Toronto, ON
M5C 2A1
Tel: 416-804-6066
Instagram for reservations: https://www.instagram.com/twentyvictoria/

4. Mana
Nami (Japanese)
55 Adelaide Street East
Toronto, ON
M5C 1K6
Tel: 416-362-7373
Website: www.namirestaurant.ca

5. Restaurant Lucie
100 Yonge Street
Toronto, ON
M5C 2W1
Tel: 416-788-9054
Website: www.restaurantlucie.com

6. Niam H
Cantina Mercatto
20 Wellington Street East
Toronto, ON
M5E 1C5
Tel: 416-304-0781
Website: www.cantinamercatto.ca

7. Siva Sathasivam
Uncle Tony’s
38 Wellington St E
Toronto, ON
M5E 1C7
Tel: 416-455-6650
Website: https://uncletonys.ca/

8. Pizzaiolo
104 Yonge Street
Toronto, ON
M5C 2Y6
Tel: 416-860-0700
Website: www.pizzaiolo.ca

9. Robin Singh
Woods Restaurant and Bar
45 Colborne Street
Toronto, ON
M5E 1E3
Tel: 416-214-9918
Website: www.woodsrestaurant.ca

Health and Wellness

1. Thom Tullo
Morpheus8 by Inmode
47 Colborne Street
Toronto, ON
M5E 1E3
Tel: 416-863-6564
Website: www.amanspa.ca

2. Altitude Athletic Training
56 Colborne Street
Toronto, ON
M5E 1E3
Tel: 416-366-3838
Website: www.altitudeathletictraining.com

3. Physioheath Studios
33 Victoria Street, #130
Toronto, ON
M5C 2A1
Tel: 416-368-2525
Website: www.physiohealth.com

Our Amenities

We are by far the most experienced and best coworking team in the market – established in 1980

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      Toronto, Ontario   M5C 1C4 Canada

    • 18 King Street East is a boutique Class A building – East of Yonge: easy street parking, less traffic, excellent restaurants and lovely parks – St. James Park @ Church & King and Berczy Park @ Wellington East, Scott and Front Streets – Very high energy and engaging area
    • A few steps (a few seconds) to the Yonge Street subway/underground PATH network and streetcar available outside building
    • Building is located in Toronto's vibrant financial district
    • Plenty of parking available in the area including street parking and reserved parking in the 18 King building 
    • Adjacent to the building huge outdoor food courtyard - Beer Bistro www.beerbistro.com and Craft Beer Market www.craftbeermamrket.ca restaurants and bars with onsite catering services
    • Onsite amenities:  Tim Horton's, Beer Bistro, Convenience store and Starbucks across the street 
    • Nearby amenities:  underground PATH network, numerous restaurants, banking, Starbucks plus a wide array of nearby shops and services 
    • New modernized office layout fully furnished with meeting spaces and training rooms plus café lounge area
    • We are leaders in the service of training/meeting rooms with full conference facilities, high quality hot and cold catering
    • Largest training room and conference facilities accommodate up to 60 people classroom style
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    • Indoor Reserved Parking at the current building rental rate
    • Bicycle parking
    • Rent a space to accommodate your team for meetings, training sessions, corporate events or coworking space or flexible office space for one day, one week, one month or one year, or whatever term suits your business
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    • King Edward Hotel is located across the street - recently completed a $40 million renovation and boutique hotels close by within walking distance
  • Dining and entertainment at high quality restaurants only minutes away – Carisma, Terroni, Woods Restaurant & Bar and Michelin Rated - Restaurant 20 Victoria. Plus numerous lunch and takeout eateries nearby

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You are welcome to drop-in any-time, a quick call would be appreciated to ensure our availability Vanessa 416-574-1112 or Josie 416-606-4349 or e-mail josie@telsec.net.