Archive for December, 2010

U.S. Senators Introduce Bill For Mandatory Open Wifi in Federal Buildings

The Hill reports that U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe and Mark Warner introduced legislation on Friday that would require all public federal buildings to install WiFi base stations in order to free up cell phone networks.

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December 6, 2010 1 comment News

Mobilizing User Generated Content Study

University of Western Ontario’s Sam Trosow has posted the results of SSHRC funded research on mobilizing user generated content in Canada.

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December 6, 2010 Comments are Disabled News

Final Version of ACTA Posted

The final ACTA text [PDF] – now incorporating changes for a technical, legal drafting meeting last week in Australia – has been posted.

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December 6, 2010 1 comment News

NZ Govt Copyright Leak: Doubts Value of WIPO Internet Treaties, Supports Flexible Digital Lock Rules

New Zealand is one of several countries currently negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a regional trade deal that the U.S. would like to see include a major chapter on intellectual property (Canada has been excluded from the talks).  A new leak [PDF] of the New Zealand government’s position on the IP chapter is revealing on several levels, most notably for its criticism of the WIPO Internet treaties and the attempts to limit existing flexibilities on digital locks.  According to the leaked document:

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December 4, 2010 3 comments News

Putting Copyright Statutory Damages In Perspective

One of the more interesting exchanges during Wednesday’s C-32 Legislative Committee hearing involved questions on the bill’s reforms to statutory damages. The bill proposes to establish a maximum statutory damages penalty of $5,000 for infringement that the court considers to be non-commercial.  That contrasts with commercial infringement, which carries a $20,000 per infringement maximum.  Note that the minimums are roughly the same – non-commercial infringement has a $100 minimum, while commercial infringement’s minimum is $200.

Liberal MP Dan McTeague questioned the change, suggesting that it could send the wrong message about infringement and be viewed as a licence to steal.  I disagreed with his position, pointing out that $5,000 was still enormous cost for most Canadians and that it is potential multi-million dollar liability for non-commercial file sharing that sends a bad message about Canadian justice. 

I also made the point that statutory damages are relatively rare on the international scene, a point that I think is worth expanding upon.  Perhaps because both Canada and the U.S. have statutory damages, many MPs might be under the mistaken impression that most countries have them. In fact, the opposite is the case. 

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December 3, 2010 68 comments News