This week's Hill Times reports that intense lobbying may be delaying the introduction of a new copyright bill. The article says that a bill is unlikely to be introduced before the spring budget. It also suggests that a "fair use" provision is under consideration.
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Digitization Initiatives
The UK's Joint Information Systems Committee commits £12m for national digitization efforts, while the Canadian Council of Archives launches a new round of funding worth slightly more than C$1 million.
Vista’s Fine Print
With Microsoft's Vista set to hit stores tomorrow, my weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) looks at the legal and technical fine print behind the operating system upgrade. The article notes that in the name of shielding consumers from computer viruses and protecting copyright owners from potential infringement, Vista seemingly wrestles control of the “user experience” from the user.
Vista's legal fine print includes extensive provisions granting Microsoft the right to regularly check the legitimacy of the software and holds the prospect of deleting certain programs without the user's knowledge. During the installation process, users "activate" Vista by associating it with a particular computer or device and transmitting certain hardware information directly to Microsoft.
Even after installation, the legal agreement grants Microsoft the right to revalidate the software or to require users to reactivate it should they make changes to their computer components. In addition, it sets significant limits on the ability to copy or transfer the software, prohibiting anything more than a single backup copy and setting strict limits on transferring the software to different devices or users.
Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, an anti-virus program that actively scans computers for "spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software." The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software. Once operational, the agreement warns that Windows Defender will, by default, automatically remove software rated "high" or "severe,"even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted.
For greater certainty, the terms and conditions remove any doubt about who is in control by providing that "this agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights." For those users frustrated by the software's limitations, Microsoft cautions that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software." Those technical limitations have proven to be even more controversial than the legal ones.
von Finckenstein Named CRTC Chair
Mark Goldberg notes that Konrad von Finckenstein, a federal court judge and former head of the Competition Bureau, has been named chair of the CRTC. Notwithstanding the government's bio, many online observers best remember von Finckenstein for his decision [PDF] to block CRIA's attempt to unmask 29 alleged file sharers […]
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