Latest Posts

Canada to Launch Cybersecurity Task Force?

In April 2004, the Liberal government released a report on Canada’s National Security Policy that included plans to establish a public-private cybersecurity task force.  More than two years later, it appears that the Conservative government is preparing to follow through on that commitment by launching its own task force.  Although […]

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May 24, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

Canadian Students Speak Out on Copyright

The Canadian Federation of Students, which represents more than 500,000 university and college students across Canada, has released a public letter to Ministers Oda and Bernier on copyright reform. The CFS identifies five issues of concern.  Anti-circumvention legislation – the CFS recognizes the dangers associated with DRM and argues that […]

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May 24, 2006 2 comments News

European Commission Online Film Charter

The European Commission has released an online film charter to coincide with the Cannes Film Festival.  The Charter makes for an interesting read as it includes supportive comments for P2P distribution and non-commercial initiatives such as the BBC Creative Archive.

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May 24, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

The Rise of eMusic

Great article from ArsTechnica on eMusic, the DRM-free alternative that has grown into the second-largest online music seller behind Apple iTunes.

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May 22, 2006 1 comment News

Dot-XXX Decision Exposes Cracks in Net Governance System

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, BBC version, homepage version) looks at the recent ICANN decision to reject the creation of a new dot-xxx domain name extension. The year-long debate over whether to approve the adult-oriented domain may have long-term implications for Internet governance since it sparked enormous controversy and provided ample evidence of U.S. government intervention into ICANN matters.

With millions of dollars at stake, the Internet community has relied on ICANN to establish a transparent system for creating new domain name extensions.  The resulting process has left many observers unhappy.  They argue that it is too expensive (application costs alone are now estimated at US$250,000), too cumbersome (creation of the domain name extension may require months of negotiation after preliminary approval is granted), and too subjective (rather than establishing objective criteria, the decisions are fraught with subjective policy choices). 

The prospect of a dot-xxx domain name extension created an immediate firestorm in the United States. 

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May 22, 2006 16 comments Columns