Pandora, the popular U.S. online music service filed for an initial public offering last week, provided new insight into hugely popular company that spends millions of dollars in copyright royalties. Pandora users listened to a billion hours of music in the last three months of 2010. Given U.S. laws, the […]
Archive for February, 2011
OC Transpo Backs Away From Open Data
OC Transpo has backed away from making GPS data available, expressing concern about potential lost revenues.
Weak Copyright Laws? Recording Industry Files Massive Lawsuit Against isoHunt
When the bill was first introduced last June, the Canadian Recording Industry Association stated that “stronger rules are also needed to rein in Canadian-based peer-to-peer websites, which, according to IFPI,have become ‘a major source of the world’s piracy problem’.”
Politicians have taken note of the concerns. Industry Minister Tony Clement said the new bill will target “wealth destroyers” and Liberal MP Dan McTeague has lamented that “the very existence of an isoHunt in Canada is problematic and is very much the result of what appears to be a legislative holiday for companies and other BitTorrent sites.”
While the notion of a “legislative holiday” appears to be the impetus for some of the provisions on Bill C-32, my weekly technology law column (homepage version, Toronto Star version) notes that what is left unsaid – and thus far unreported – is that 26 of the world’s largest recording companies launched a multi-million dollar lawsuit against isoHunt using existing Canadian copyright law just three weeks before the introduction of the bill [PDF of May 2010 claim, PDF of August 2010 amended claim].
B.C. Court of Appeal Upholds Internet Ad Keyword Decision
The B.C. Court of Appeal has upheld a lower court decision involving Google AdWords and claims of misleading keywords. I wrote about the decision last year.
TVO’s The Agenda on UBB
TVO’s The Agenda covered the usage based billing issue late last week. The debate is available here along with a commentary in support of overturning the CRTC decision.