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Thursday December 27, 2012 |
From the remarkable battle over the Stop Online Piracy Act to the
massive public backlash against Internet surveillance in Canada, law and
technology issues garnered headlines all year long. A look back at 2012
from A to Z:
A is for Astral, the Canadian broadcasting giant that was to be sold to
Bell Media for over $3 billion. The CRTC blocked the sale on the grounds
that the companies failed to demonstrate the transaction was in the
public interest.
B is for Jean-Pierre Blais, the newly appointed chair of the Canadian
Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. Blais surprised the
industry by adopting a strong pro-consumer approach during his first
months on the job.
C is for the Copyright Modernization Act, the copyright reform bill that received royal assent in June 2012.
D is for Dean Del Mastro, the Peterborough Member of Parliament who raised the spectre of regulating online anonymity.
E is for the European Parliament, which voted overwhelmingly to reject
the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement after hundreds of thousands of
Europeans protested against it.
F is for FreeDominion.com, an online chat site that defeated a claim of
copyright infringement involving the posting of portions of newspaper
articles.
G is for GeoCoder, a small Ottawa company that created a crowd-sourced
database of Canadian postal codes. Canada Post objected to the database,
filing a copyright infringement lawsuit.
H is for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which seized
bodog.com, a domain name owned by Canadian online gambling tycoon Calvin
Ayre.
I is for Industry Minister Christian Paradis, who failed to unveil a
digital economy strategy, despite a commitment to do so by year-end.
J is for Jones v. Tsige, a landmark Ontario Court of Appeal decision that recognized a new tort for invasion of privacy.
K is for Keatley Surveying v. Teranet, a proposed class action lawsuit involving copyright claims over land surveys.
L is for levies on microSD cards. After a copyright collective asked the
Copyright Board of Canada to impose new fees on the cards, the
government issued a regulation effectively blocking the request.
M is for McMaster University, one of several Canadian universities that were hit by security breaches.
N is for Nexopia, a Canadian social media service that was found to have
violated privacy laws following a lengthy investigation by the Privacy
Commissioner of Canada.
O is for an open textbook initiative launched by the British Columbia
government that will support the creation of dozens of new freely
available online textbooks.
P is for the constitutionality of privacy legislation, which was thrown
into doubt in United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 401 v. Alberta
(Attorney General), an Alberta Court of Appeal decision.
Q is for the Queen v. Cole, in which the Supreme Court confirmed that privacy rights survive in the workplace.
R is for Rogers v. SOCAN, one of five copyright cases released by the
Supreme Court in July 2012 that shook up the Canadian copyright
landscape.
S is for the Stop Online Piracy Act, the controversial U.S. legislation
that sparked global protests including a Wikipedia blackout.
T is for TellVicEverything, the grassroots Twitter campaign protesting against Canadian Internet surveillance legislation.
U is for Untied.com, a gripe site about United Airlines run by Jeremy
Cooperstock, a McGill professor. United demanded that Cooperstock take
the site down due to trademark and copyright claims.
V is for Voltage Pictures, which launched proceedings to obtain personal
information on thousands of Canadian Internet users alleged to have
downloaded its films.
W is for a wireless code of conduct, which the major wireless carriers
asked the CRTC to establish after several provinces moved to create
provincial codes.
X is for dot-xbox, one of thousands of proposed new domain name extensions.
Y is for Yelp, the review site that hosted criticisms of an Ottawa
restaurant that ultimately led to a criminal libel conviction after the
restaurant owner sought revenge for the negative review.
Z is for Judge Russell Zinn, a federal court judge who confirmed that
the patent for Viagra was invalid days after the Supreme Court voided
the patent for failing to provide sufficient disclosure. 2012, a to z review, technology law Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareThursday December 27, 2012 |
