Archive for March, 2013

Debating the State of Canadian Wireless Competition: The Present Isn’t So Friendly

Last week, I posted what I thought was a lengthy post on the state of Canadian wireless competition (and followed that with a condensed version in a column). This week, Telus’ Craig McTaggart showed what a long post actually looks like as he issued a 42 page response to my post as well as recent posts by Peter Nowak (here and here) and Open Media. While I won’t address everything in McTaggart’s post – Nowak responds here and Open Media can address the issues focused on their writing if they wish – a few responses are in order.

McTaggart is clearly passionate about these issues, going so far as to suggest that claims that Canada’s wireless market is uncompetitive is an “insult to TELUS’ team members.” Yet while he decries the use of older data, confusion of different issues, and cherry picking some statistics, he proceeds to do exactly that in his response. In fact, the oldest data I’ve seen in the myriad of recent posts on these issues can be found in McTaggart’s response as he relies 2005 data to argue that Canadians use their wireless devices more than most people in the world (page 16).

McTaggart starts his commentary on my post on page 11, going through each of my ten points. I’ll follow the same format:

Read more ›

March 21, 2013 47 comments News

Industry Committee Report on Intellectual Property: A Case of Policy Laundering for CETA and TPP

The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology released its report on the Intellectual Property Regime in Canada yesterday. The report is the result of lengthy hearings that focused on a wide range of IP issues including patent reform, trademarks, counterfeiting, and pharmaceutical protection. While most the recommendations are fairly innocuous – the committee identifies many issues for further study – there are essentially three main legislative reform recommendations. One involves limiting the scope of official marks, which appears to be the result of comments from Dalhousie law professor Rob Currie (echoed by CIPO’s Sylvain Laporte) expressing concern with governmental abuse of official marks in a way that may stifle innovation.

The other two are particularly interesting as they set the stage for the Canada – EU Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. First, the report recommends anti-counterfeiting measures similar to those required by CETA and found in Bill C-56.  Should criticism arise over Bill C-56 or CETA, the government will likely point to this report in support. 

The second involves a classic case of policy laundering as the government has manufactured support for CETA and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) provisions that were not even raised at committee.  The report recommends:

Read more ›

March 19, 2013 5 comments News

Debunking the Wireless Myth Busters, Redux

Peter Nowak has a great post that takes another look at the state of the Canadian wireless market. Nowak uses the latest data from Bank of America Merrill Lynch Wireless Matrix to find that the Canadian carriers’ ARPU ranks as the highest in the world, that profit margin is the […]

Read more ›

March 18, 2013 2 comments News

European Commission Study Finds Online Music Piracy Doesn’t Hurt Sales

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has released a report that finds that online music piracy does not harm sales. The report examined the browsing habits of more than 16,000 European consumers. It found that an increase in clicks on infringing sites led to a small increase in clicks on […]

Read more ›

March 18, 2013 2 comments News

Federal Librarians Muzzled Under New Code of Conduct

The National Post has a disturbing story on a new code of conduct at Library and Archives Canada, which appears to muzzle librarians, going so far as to describe teaching or speaking at conferences as “high risk”.

Read more ›

March 18, 2013 7 comments News