The Liberals, NDP, and Bloc joined forces yesterday to support a non-binding motion that calls for the extension of the private copying levy to other media such as iPods. The Conservatives, who have labeled the proposal the iTax, opposed the motion.
News
Halifax Court Orders Newspaper to Name Anonymous Posters
The Canadian Press reports that a Halifax court has ordered a newspaper and Google to provide whatever information they have to help identify people who posted anonymous comments about Halifax's top firefighters.
Clement on Canadian Broadband
The Globe reports that Industry Minister Tony Clement has acknowledged that Canada's broadband leadership has "vanished."
U.S. Government Study: Counterfeiting and Piracy Data Unreliable
For several years, I have written about the lack of reliability of data on counterfeiting. The RCMP cited data without any factual basis, while other groups regularly made claims without support, such as reports from the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and the Conference Board of Canada. Of course, this phenomenon was not limited to Canada. The US Patent and Trademark Office relied on the same data to claim 7 – 8 % of world trade is counterfeit, while a report from the first Global Congress on Counterfeiting, which led to ACTA, pointed to FBI data it said showed counterfeiting at US$200 – 250 billion per year.
This week a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office concludes that estimates such as these are not reliable and cannot be substantiated to a data source. The U.S. GAO was required by Congress to try to quantify the impact of counterfeit and pirated goods. While concluding that counterfeiting exists and is a problem, the GAO could not find reliable data. Its review of commonly cited claims:
Copyright Secrets? Canadian Heritage Receives “F” On Access To Information Compliance
The Interim Access to Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault released a new report yesterday on government compliance with the Access to Information Act. The report concludes that the right to obtain federal documents is at risk of being "totally obliterated." For readers of this blog, three departments figure most prominently in […]
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