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Canadian Internet Use Survey 2005

Statistics Canada  has released the 2005 Canadian Internet Use Survey.  Of particular interest is the data on why Canadians go online with email, general surfing, information search, banking, health information, weather, bill payment, and government info all cited by 50 percent or more of respondents.  Ranking lower is access to […]

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August 15, 2006 1 comment News

Privacy Commissioner Launches SWIFT Investigation

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has announced that she has launched an investigation into the privacy issues related to SWIFT.  It is good to see that the Commissioner is willing to proceed on this issue, but frustrating that they have not taken the same approach with other privacy issues involving […]

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August 14, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

So Much for the Death of Radio

Statistics Canada reports that the Canadian private sector radio industry enjoyed its highest profits in recent history with the largest annual increase in revenue in 17 years.

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August 14, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

Canadian Online Learning Company Hit With Patent Suit

A Waterloo, Ontario company spends years developing new technologies that leverage the power of the Internet.  It develops a global following.  Then, seemingly out of the blue, it is hit with a patent infringement suit by a U.S. company, instantly facing the prospect of years of costly litigation in U.S. courts.  With limited resources, it must defend itself by arguing that the patents are invalid.

So begins my weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, BBC International version, homepage version) which does not discuss the RIM-NTP patent suit but rather the recent patent lawsuit launched by Blackboard, a learning management system company, against Desire2Learn, a Canadian competitor.  Both the patent and the lawsuit have generated enormous anger within the academic and open source software communities.

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August 14, 2006 4 comments Columns

Man Charged For Spoofing Premier’s Email

CBC is reporting that a Newfoundland man has been charged for spoofing Premier Danny Williams email. The government apparently briefly shut down their email system in response to the spoofing.

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August 10, 2006 Comments are Disabled News