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Monday February 01, 2010 |
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The UK Conservatives have promised 100 Mbps broadband service to the majority of homes in the country by 2017. broadband, conservatives, uk Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareMonday February 01, 2010 |
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Monday October 19, 2009 |
The Conservatives reversed course on plans to water down Bill C-27 in an aborted clause-by-clause meeting today that promises another 48 hours of intense lobbying on the anti-spam bill. Parliamentary Secretary Mike Lake opened this afternoon's meeting by putting the Government's proposed changes into the public record. Most notably, the Conservatives have dropped their support for exceptions for survey and marketing companies (a huge loophole), self-regulated organizations such as the Law Society of Upper Canada, and third party referrals. This brings the bill much closer to its original incarnation with some minor tweaking and clarifications. It has also unleashed a new round of intense lobbying with the Bloc moving for an immediate adjournment of today's meeting. The motion was supported by all opposition parties. The clause-by-clause review will now take place on Wednesday.
Assuming support for the Conservatives' changes, the remaining major issue is the spyware amendments promoted by copyright lobby groups such as the music and software industries. Lake indicated that the Conservatives were prepared to accept a change with respect to email addresses, but sources say that there is no support for the copyright lobby's demands for carve outs for DRM in the computer program definition and for collecting personal information without authorization from users' computer as part of investigations into alleged contractual or legal breaches (see this post for more detail). The question over the next 48 hours is whether the Liberals will reconsider their ill-advised motions and if all parties will resist the intense lobbying efforts to bring back changes that would water down the bill. c-27, conservatives, ecpa, spam Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareMonday October 19, 2009 |
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Wednesday September 16, 2009 |
As the CRTC gears up for yet another round of hearings later this fall that will address the fee-for-carriage issue, the most recent batch of submitted comments contains what may constitute an interesting shift in policy by the Conservatives. Earlier this year, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage conducted extensive hearings on the future of local broadcasting. Fee-for-carriage (ie. a requirement for broadcast distributors such as cable and satellite to pay for retransmission of over-the-air signals) figured prominently in the discussion. The Conservative members of the committee issued a dissenting opinion in the final report and offered up the following:
this dissenting report must now indicate our most fervent and rigorous opposition to any potential fee for carriage system, either negotiated or imposed, that would have a detrimental effect on the consumer. We believe it is fundamentally unfair to expect Canadian consumers to pay new and substantial charges each month to their cable or satellite distributor to reflect such a system.
Fast forward several months later and Conservative MPs Ed Holder (London West), Laurie Hawn (Edmonton Centre), Bruce Stanton (Simcoe North), Patrick Brown (Barrie), Gord Brown (Leeds-Grenville), and Lois Brown (Newmarket-Aurora) have each submitted comments to the CRTC public hearing process on the issue. Each MP sent roughly the same letter, suggesting that they all come from the same playbook. The new message:
conservatives, crtc, fee for carriage Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareWednesday September 16, 2009 |
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Friday May 29, 2009 |
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The Ottawa Citizen reports that the U.S. public affairs network C-SPAN has said that it will not sue the Conservatives over the use of its footage in the recent ads targeting Michael Ignatieff. c-span, conservatives, copyright Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Newsfeeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, TwitterTagsShareFriday May 29, 2009 |
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