The deadline for submissions to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's PIPEDA review consultation passed yesterday (given that I sit on the Commissioner's advisory board I did not enter a submission). The consultation raises a number of key issues including order making power, reporting mechanisms, and general strengthening of the national […]
Post Tagged with: "privacy"
Australia A.G. Releases Draft TPM Legislation
While Canada is still weeks or months from new legislation (hence the 30 Days of DRM project), Australia's Attorney General has just released draft anti-circumvention legislation. Australia faces different circumstances from Canada since its free trade agreement with the U.S. requires new laws by the end of the year. The […]
Privacy Commissioner Expresses Concern Over Lawful Access
Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart is expressing concern over potential lawful access legislation, stating that "as privacy commissioner, I want to have a lot of questions answered about why this is necessary because, up to now, I haven't been convinced."
30 Days of DRM – Day 08: Privacy (Circumvention Rights)
The approach in Bill C-60 was to limit (the government believed eliminate) the need for circumvention rights by creating a direct link between circumvention and copyright. Bill C-60 only made it an offence to circumvent a technological measure for the purposes of copyright infringement. In other words, if you had another purpose – for example, protecting your personal privacy – the anti-circumvention provision would not be triggered.
If the new copyright bill adopts a U.S. style approach, then a crucial part of the discussion will be whether the government has identified all the necessary rights to limit the harms associated with anti-circumvention legislation. While these rights might be characterized by some as exceptions, I think they are more appropriately viewed as circumvention rights, analogous to the Supreme Court of Canada's emphasis on user rights.
Privacy protection is an obvious example of a circumvention right.
Statscan Survey Shows Internet’s Potential and Pitfalls
My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) examines recent Statistics Canada data on Internet use. The survey found that nearly 17 million Canadians – 68 percent of the adult population – used the Internet for personal non-business reasons last year. Moreover, almost two-thirds of Canadian adults who […]