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Friday February 08, 2013 |
For the past two days I've called attention to the shocking demands
by business groups, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the
Canadian Marketing Association, and the Entertainment Software
Association of Canada, to legalize spyware by permitting the secret
installation of computer programs to monitor activities of Canadians
suspected a potential contravention of the law (including laws such as
copyright or any foreign law) or unauthorized use of a computer system (including wireless networks).
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce added its own submission
to the government's consultation on the anti-spam regulations. The Chamber's
key concern is the very foundation of the law: opt-in consent that
requires businesses to obtain consent before sending commercial
electronic messages (subject to a wide range of exceptions). The Chamber says:
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Thursday February 07, 2013 |
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Yesterday's post
on the coalition of business lobby groups support for a spyware
provision in the Canadian anti-spam law attracted considerable
attention, with many shocked at the breadth of the proposal. While the
post focused on how the provision could be broadly interpreted to permit
spyware to track copyright infringement, block websites, or to stop
attempts to access wireless networks without authorization, it did not
discuss yet another serious concern involving the jurisdictional scope
of the provision. As noted in the post, the lobby groups, led by the
Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Marketing Association, the
Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association and the Entertainment
Software Association of Canada, have asked the government to create an exception for the express consent requirement on software installation for:
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Friday June 10, 2011 |
Earlier this week, I posted
on how the Canadian IP Council, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce's IP
lobby arm, floated false claims about the scope of counterfeiting in
Canada in an attempt to bolster claims for increased border measures.
That was followed by a post yesterday
on Professor Edward Iacobucci's debunking
of the Chamber's report on Canadian patent law, which he found to be
deeply flawed. In response to my first post, the IP Council's Chris
Gray tweeted responses that the Chamber does
not want individual travellers searched and that its claim
of $30 billion in losses from counterfeiting in Canada comes from a
recent International
Chamber of Commerce report.
The retraction on border searches of travellers is good news, though
the Chamber should seek to publicly correct the Globe and Mail, which reported
otherwise. Moreover, given that some of its members have publicly
stated their opposition to the de minimis provision in the
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - GlaxoSmithKline has said
the exclusion of traveller's luggage "sends out an entirely
inappropriate message" - its position on the issue may not be cast in
stone.
Even more notable is the suggestion that the Canadian Chamber of
Commerce is now basing its $30 billion counterfeiting claim on the 2011
International Chamber of Commerce report.
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Wednesday June 08, 2011 |
This week the Canadian IP Council, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce's
IP lobby arm, issued a release
placing Canadian counterfeiting costs at $30 billion per year. That
figure is being used to lobby the government to enact new border
measure provisions that could lead to the searching of luggage as
travellers enter Canada. It is tempting to dismiss the claims on the
basis that the policy rationale makes no sense - if counterfeit
toothpaste is indeed "coming across the border in droves" as the Chamber
claims, searching traveller luggage won't address that issue.
Moreover, it should be noted that even the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement features an exception
for de minimis imports that an individual might carry as it recognizes
that addressing counterfeiting concerns does not involve targeting
individuals. Yet given the decision to resurrect the bogus $30 billion
figure, it is important to again call attention to its origins and how
it is simply a fabrication.
[Update: New
post with the Chamber's response and more fake figures]
Several years ago I examined the
source of the $30 billion claim, which has been repeated on many
occasions over the years. The review started with an Access to
Information request with the RCMP for the source of the $30 billion
claim, which was found in a 2005 report. The RCMP responded that the
figure was based on "open source documents found on the Internet." What
were these documents? The RCMP provided two:
First, a March 2005 CTV news story reported unsubstantiated claims by the
International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, a global
anti-counterfeiting lobby group made up predominantly of brand owners
and law firms, that some of its members believe that 20 percent of the
Canadian market is "pirate product." That 20 percent figure -
raised without the support of any evidence whatsoever - appears to have
been used by IACC to peg the cost of counterfeiting in Canada at $20
billion per year.
Second, a 2005 powerpoint presentation by Jayson Myers, then the Chief Economist
for the Canadian Manufacturing and Exporters, included a single bullet
point that "estimated direct losses in Canada between $20 billion and
$30 billion annually." The source for this claim? According to
Mr. Myers, it is simply 3 to 4 percent of the value of Canada's two-way
trade.
In recent years, the RCMP has backed away from the $30 billion claim.
In its August
2010 report on IP crime, it declined to set a figure, acknowledging
that the numbers "have been subject to debate in recent years."
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