Digital Copyright Canada

The deadline for ideas and submissions on Canada’s digital economy strategy has been extended until midnight, Tuesday, July 13

I don't think I will have the time to make a formal submission. I have instead started to post to the ideas forum. If you agree with these ideas, please vote them up. Please also add comments.

• Protect end-to-end design principle in new communications technology.
  
• Regulate usage of technology in the correct laws
  
• Protect Information Technology property rights
  
• Adopt policy similar to 1991 EU directive on computer programs
  
• Improve competition policy, promotion and enforcement
  

I am a big fan of audio blogs. Some people call them Podcasts because Apple iPod users seem to claim responsibility for making them popular. Leo Laporte over at TWIT.tv, a large audio/video blogging network with a long history in broadcasting, tried to convince people to call them Netcasts as they were simply broadcasting over the Internet. While I'm a listener to a few TWIT.tv shows, and a few other non-Canadian shows, I have always been looking for Canadian shows that cover some of the technology and political stories from the uniquely Canadian perspective.

In an article for The Mark I suggest that we shouldn't blame Google when music blogs are shut down, since it’s the major record labels that are to blame.

According to a Hearst Seattle Media blog article, Mike Landreville, an advisor in the Intellectual Property Office of Environment Canada sent a letter to German Internet Service Provider (ISP) Serveloft requesting that the sites "enviro-canada.ca" and "ec-gc.ca" be removed. Without any judicial oversight of any alleged infringement claim (not that I can think of any legitimate claim for these spoof/paridy sites), the ISP shut off the range of IP addresses that served those sites as well as 4,500 other Web sites that had nothing to do with the spoof.

Whatever you think of the prank/spoof, this is obviously over-reaching by a Environment Canada bureaucrat and incompetence on the part of an ISP who removes websites due to random requests. This might be another Hoax given the claims originated from the Yes Men, but this would not have been the first time an ISP shut down an IP address range without judicial oversight based on a letter from someone alleging to be a lawyer.

Charlie Angus was in full force yesterday. He took his contribution to the debate on Bill C-27 (often called the anti-SPAM bill, although it still contains anti-malware and other provisions as well), and spoke about it as one part of a larger digital agenda.

The full debate is available via Hansard, but I wanted to highlight a specific section of Mr. Angus' contributions. (Note: Debate resumes after C-50, which may be today or later.)

A CRTC press release from the CRTC seems to indicate that they didn't understand the traffic management issue before them. While they separate retail and wholesale in name, they don't in policy. They did not separate the phone and cable companies which see the Internet as a competative threat to their legacy services from the ISPs who seek to offer Internet services.

The CBC article Marketers want anti-spam bill altered contains an interesting notes from the Liberal critic of consumers:

Liberal consumer affairs critic Dan McTeague told CBCNews he doesn't know what the position of his party is, but that he personally supports the Conservative bill, "warts and all."

The following is a reply I added on John Degen's blog to his article Industry News -- Google settles.

As always, there are multiple ways to look at the recent agreement.

You could think that Google settled (your idea), or that the publishing industry settled. It all depends on what you saw as the problem, and then what came out as a solution.

One after the other I read Elizabeth writing about her trust of Canadians, and then was sent by a different email to a site called VotePair.ca. A similar site existed in the USA during the 2000 election when people were worried about the effect of Nader. It is really flaws in their antiquated FPTP electoral system coupled with electoral colleges, and unaccountable electronic voting machines that incorrectly determines the US presidency.

A National Post article by Joseph Brean discusses a case before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal relating to online hate speech.

Whatever you think of the concept of "hate speech" (we don't all agree when we see it, so it is subjective), I am curious if people believe that operators of sites that allow other people to post should be held liable for posting? I feel that many of our laws, including defamation and hate speech laws, have not yet been updated for new-media. We need to ensure that it is the individual human that posted the material that is liable, not innocent third parties technology providers (called "enablers" by the legacy old-media copyright lobby).