Archive for October, 2010

Public Science Site Launch

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada has launched a new site at publicscience.ca to promote evidence-based policy making supported by scientific evidence.

October 21, 2010 — 1 comment — News

LAC-Lustre Leadership

Wendy Reynolds has a brief, must-read post on the need for Library and Archives Canada to show greater leadership in preserving Canada’s digital heritage.

October 21, 2010 — Comments are Disabled — News

Liberals To Launch Major Open Government Policy Initiative

For months, Canadians have been pointing with envy to open data/open government initiatives in the U.S., U.K., and Australia as those countries push forward with strong commitments to open data and Canada sits quietly on the sidelines. While the federal government has been very slow to move, sources say that the opposition Liberal Party will be unveiling its commitment to open government today. [update: policy posted] The four part commitment will include:

A commitment to make as many government datasets as possible available to the public online free of charge at opendata.gc.ca in an open and searchable format, starting with Statistics Canada data, including data from the long-form census;
A commitment to post all Access to Information requests, responses, and response times online at accesstoinformation.gc.ca
A commitment to make information on all government grants, contributions and contracts available through a searchable, online database at accountablespending.gc.ca
A commitment to immediately restore the long-form census

The open government/open data commitment is particularly noteworthy since it will apparently include a direction to all federal departments and agencies to adopt an open government principle where the default position is to provide information to the public. The plans for access to information would also be enormously helpful, including restoring the CAIRS database and following the recent UK lead by making all documents released under ATI available online.

October 21, 2010 — 15 comments — News

The Case for Flexibility in Implementing the WIPO Internet Treaties

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be placing the spotlight on the many contributions in From “Radical Extremism” to “Balanced Copyright”: Canadian Copyright and the Digital Agenda. My substantive contribution focuses on the legal requirements to comply with the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet treaties. With the treaties dating back to the 1990s the issue may seem dated, yet it still resonates today. Within a domestic context, the government has identified ratification of the WIPO Internet treaties as one of Bill C-32’s chief goals. Internationally, the 1990s WIPO debate was re-enacted this year during the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations, with the U.S. again failing to convince its negotiating partners to adopt its implementation approach for anti-circumvention.

My article examines the issue from four perspectives: the plain language of the statutory requirements, the legislative history behind the inclusion of anti-circumvention provisions within the treaty, state practice in implementing those requirements, and scholarly analysis of the treaty obligations.