Jason Koblovsky's blog

Rogers is supposed to be responding to the CRTC over evidence the CRTC found of throttling non-P2P applications tomorrow.  It is unclear whether if Rogers will in fact respond, and if so whether that response will be made public.  CGO was not directly notified by the CRTC’s last communication to Rogers, so here are some important links to follow.   We will be monitoring the CRTC’s twitter account and their Read more »

Sent today on behalf of the Canadian Gamers Organization

TO: Competition Bureau of Canada
50 Victoria Street
Gatineau, Quebec
K1A 0C9

SUBMITTED ELECTRONICALLY

RE: Activision Pre-Release Advertising on Call of Duty Elite Premium Services

This complaint comes as new official statements recently made by Activision staff, puts into question compliance with the competition act by Activision during its pre-release adverting campaigns around the sale and promotions of the Call of Duty Elite Premium service, and whether the public was deliberately mislead through this campaign. Read more »

January 20, 2012 - The Canadian Gamers Organization got word today that the CRTC's enforcement division has found Rogers to not be non-compliant with CRTC net neutrality policy, and that it's throttling software and hardware are actively misclassifying a wide range of applications and communication ports.  The CRTC has cited evidence obtained and published by Cisco Systems (the hardware and software vendor Rogers uses for throttling), and has threatened a show/cause hearing on this subject if Rogers' response is insufficient or fails to respond.  If it goes to a hearing, the CRTC cou Read more »

The Canadian Gamers Organization (CGO) got a phone call from the Canadian Competition Bureau this afternoon with the results of their investigation on the Call of Duty (COD) pact between Microsoft and Activision.  Basically XBOX users are receiving additional game content ahead of PS3 users.  This situation also applies to the Call of Duty Elite premium memberships in which Canadian consumers spend extra money for premium content.  CGO’s initial investigation found that this practise is calle Read more »

The Canadian Gamers Organization has asked the Canadian Competition Bureau to further investigate the pact between Activision and Microsoft allowing Xbox users to receive Call of Duty Elite Premium benefits earlier than other platforms. This move comes as many consumers around the globe who have purchased Elite Premium Memberships have had a reasonable expectation that additional paid downloadable content for Modern Warfare 3 would be released to premium members at the same time across platforms. Read more »

This past week has seen a lot of pressure mounting against a piece of US domestic legislation the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Game publishers this week are increasingly being asked to clarify their position on SOPA, while US politicians state that opposing this bill doesn’t matter and it will go through as is. Read more »