Several people have written over the past week to repeat a question that arose regularly last December - "what do you think fair copyright reform looks like?" My 61 reforms to C-61 will address many needed changes to the Prentice bill, but it is simpler to point to the eight key principles that I outlined earlier this year. While I think the principles reflect a balanced approach that is consistent with the underlying values of copyright, only one is fully reflected in Bill C-61. The eight principles with commentary on the impact of C-61:
While there are great liveblogs and media coverage of my talk on digital advocacy at the Mesh Conference, I've posted a synced version of the presentation and an MP3 recording of the talk. The talk owes a lot to Ethan Zuckerman's exceptional presentation on the same subject at the ETech conference earlier this year. I begin with three stories - the experience of Fair Copyright for Canada, Stephen Taylor's challenge of a CBC report, and the Apple 1984 advertisement as a political mashup. I then consider ten things that make digital advocacy effective:
Several readers noted that the posting of my recent Osgoode Hall talk was in a limiting format. The organizers have now posted an embedded, flash version that should be more readily accessible.
The Canadian Library Association issued a statement
late last week on the Access Copyright lawsuit filed against York
University, urging it to abandon the lawsuit and pointing to several
legal concerns.May.21/13Comments (0)
The National Post reports
that the Competition Bureau of Canada plans to launch an investigation
into Google Canada. The scope of the investigation is unknown.May.21/13Comments (0)
The Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics has released its study on privacy and social media.
The report includes recommendations for new Privacy Commissioner
guidelines. The NDP supplemented those recommendations with nine
additional legislative proposals that include mandatory security breach
disclosure, order making power for the Privacy Commissioner of Canada,
and the inclusion of privacy issues as part of a national digital
economy strategy.Apr.23/13Comments (1)
The federal government has responded
to a question from MP Charlie Angus on privacy and security breaches by
revealing that there have been thousands of breaches over the past
decade. The stunning response acknowledges over 3,000 breaches that have
affected over a million Canadians.Apr.23/13Comments (0)
The debate over the state of wireless competition in Canada continues to rage. Last week, I appeared on CBC's The Current,
as part of a 30 minute segment devoted to the wireless industry. The
issue was also discussed during Question Period at the House of Commons,
with Industry Minister Christian Paradis focusing on competition and consumers:
We want to enhance competition and investment in this country, and
this is why we adopted this policy back in 2008 for the AWS spectrum.
Let me say that the price went down by an average of 11% since then, and
we will continue this way with the 700 megahertz spectrum. We launched
consultation with the industry to make sure that we enhance competition
and provide better choice and better rates for our consumers.
OpenMedia has an interesting post
that takes a close look at the claim that the large Canadian geography
is responsible for high cell phone prices. The post notes that coverage
actually focuses on as little as 20 percent of the country. Apr.22/13Comments (0)
Ted Menzies, the Minister of State for Finance, yesterday delivered a talk
on the Canada - EU Trade Agreement that marked an important shift in
the government's rhetoric on the agreement. Aside from a bizarre
reference to the value of the agreement being $17 trillion dollars
(total Canadian GDP is $1.8 trillion), the talk is most notable from the
move away from promising swift completion of the agreement. After years
of setting missed deadlines, Menzies now says there is no deadline for
completion, suggesting that the government is beginning to hedge on
whether there even will be a deal. I wrote about the prospect of the agreement dying altogether last month.Apr.11/13Comments (0)
Peter Nowak is back with another thorough debunking of many of the wireless myths about the competitiveness of the Canadian market. Apr.11/13Comments (0)
Peter Nowak has a great post
that takes another look at the state of the Canadian wireless market.
Nowak uses the latest data from Bank of America Merrill Lynch Wireless
Matrix to find that the Canadian carriers' ARPU ranks as the highest in
the world, that profit margin is the fifth highest in the world, and
that Canada's smartphone penetration is not nearly as strong as some
suggest.Mar.18/13Comments (2)
The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has released a report that finds that online music piracy does not harm sales. The report
examined the browsing habits of more than 16,000 European consumers. It
found that an increase in clicks on infringing sites led to a small
increase in clicks on authorized music sales sites.Mar.18/13Comments (2)
