A
is for antiterrorism legislation,which dominated public debate throughout the fall. The 171-page bill, known as Bill C-36, raised numerous cyberlaw concerns including its impact on privacy rights and cybercrime. Somewhat overlooked was the announcement that Canada will ratify an international cybercrime treaty, which will provide law enforcement with greater cross-border power to combat on-line criminal activity.
B
is for the Domain Name Baron,who lost 31 of 32 government-related Web domains after Ottawa successfully launched a cybersquatting action under the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers' uniform domain name dispute resolution policy (UDRP).
C
is for the copyright reform process,which was launched in early summer. A four-month public consultation drew hundreds of individual submissions expressing fears about the potential for a U.S.-style approach to digital copyright in Canada.
D
is for the dot-ca domain name dispute resolution policy,finalized in late November after nearly two years of drafting and public debate. The Canadian Dispute Resolution Policy is modelled on the ICANN UDRP, yet contains several provisions that distinguish it, including more clearly defined criteria for bad-faith registration and legitimate interest in a domain, express protection for Web site criticism, and the use of three-member panels to adjudicate disputes.
E
is for the expressvu.org domain name,the subject of litigation between Bell Expressvu and Ted Edmonds, a retailer of grey market direct-to-home satellite services. An Ontario court refused to transfer the dot-org domain to Bell, citing its prior ownership of the dot-com version of the expressvu domain.
F
is for the Fair Practices Branch of Canada's Competition Bureau,which in May released its perspective on Internet advertising in draft guidelines detailing the government's requirements for on-line advertising disclosures including the use of disclaimers, links, and the proximity of consumer information to product claims.
G
is for Guillot v. Istek Corp.,a Federal Court decision released in late July, involving a copyright infringement claim over articles and links posted on a Web site. Although the court acknowledged that the articles may have been copied, it declined to issue an injunction to force the material off the Web, ruling that material freely posted on the Internet may include an implied licence to make copies for personal use.
H
is for the harmonization of Canadian on-line consumer protection law. The Consumer Measures Committee, a federal-provincial-territorial body that works to develop harmonized consumer laws in Canada, approved the Internet Sales Contract Harmonization Template in May. The template will serve as a model for provinces across the country seeking to enact on-line consumer protection legislation of their own.
I
is for iTravel.ca,the first dot-ca domain name dispute to land in Canadian courts. The court proceeded to issue an injunction prohibiting the name from being transferred or sold, mistakenly fearing that the potential transfer of the domain to a foreign party would leave it beyond the reach of the Canadian legal system.
J
is for JumpTV,the Montreal-based Webcaster that angered the broadcasting community by promising to pick up where iCraveTV left off by retransmitting television programs on the Internet. Unlike iCraveTV, however, JumpTV first sought to establish an Internet retransmission tariff and promised to deploy "bordering" technologies that would ensure that only Canadians could access its broadcasts.
K
is for Kazaa,one of several new file sharing programs that filled the void left when Napster was ordered off the Web in the summer. The recording and movie industries proceeded to sue this new crop of services as well, ensuring that digital copyright litigation will continue to garner headlines next year.
L
is for on-line lotteries,whose creation led to litigation in Prince Edward Island after the province became the first to attempt to license a Web-based lottery. The move drew heated responses from other provinces, arguing that the license would violate the Canadian Criminal Code.
M
is for Manitoba,which became the first province to enact specific legislation designed to provide consumers with protection for on-line purchases. The new rules assist consumers by requiring on-line sellers to disclose a wide range of information to prospective purchasers before entering into a transaction.
N
is for Nutrisystem.com,which contested ownership of the sweetsuccess.com domain in an Ontario court and led to one of the more complicated Canadian cyberlaw cases of the year. The judge ultimately refused to rule on the matter, deciding that Ontario was not the proper forum.
O
is for the Office and Professional Employees' International Union, Local 378, a trade union that established a strike Web site, using both bcaaonstrike.com and picketline.com as its domain names. The site led to a landmark B.C. Supreme Court decision that upheld the union's right to maintain the sites and reassured those who use the Web for genuine consumer criticism or corporate protest that legal protections for critical speech exist on-line as well as offline.
P
is for Canada's Privacy Commissioner,George Radwanski. While the commissioner played an important role in the privacy versus security debate following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he was best known this year not for what he said, but rather for what he did not say. Despite a letter-writing campaign from dozens of Canada's leading privacy experts, the Commissioner only disclosed his decisions under the new federal privacy law in mid-December, leaving both companies and individuals in the dark for most of the year about their privacy rights and obligations.
Q
is for Quebec's language authorities,who fined a Quebec couple for maintaining a maple syrup selling Web site solely in English. A lawyer representing the couple claimed they sell only outside of the province and that the language charter should not apply to the Net.
R
is for Heather Robertson,a freelance writer who is suing Thomson Corp. and The Globe and Mail over the different copyright rights of publishers and freelancers in newspaper articles later made available by publishers through on-line databases. An Ontario court in October refused the freelancers' application for an early judgment in their favour, but ruled (in a decision that could be appealed) that they owned copyright in their articles. The court left for a later trial the issue of whether the publishers had obtained necessary consents from the freelancers for the database availability of the articles.
S
is for Sprint Canada,which found itself on the losing end of a domain name dispute involving SprintCanada.com. The Federal Court of Canada ruled that since the disputed domain was never used for a Web site, there was no public confusion and therefore no trademark infringement.
T
is for trademarks and territory,two subjects at the heart of the ProCD v. Computer City case. In September, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned a lower court decision that found a U.S. computer retailer liable for damages resulting from Web-based ads.
The appellate court ruled that the legislation required a "use" in Canada, and that it could not be extended to passive ads from an out-of-country Web site.
U
is for ICANN's UDRP, the target of intense criticism throughout the year. This stemmed from concerns about trademark holders' ability to select their desired arbitration provider. The consequences of this "forum shopping" hit close to home late in the year, when eResolution, the sole Canadian dispute resolution provider in the ICANN system, decided to stop providing its UDRP services, citing cost concerns and perceptions of bias.
V
is for vote,which is what thousands of dot-ca domain name owners did as part of the first Canadian Internet Registration Authority election in June. Conducted exclusively on-line, the election is widely regarded as a model for other domain names around the world.
W
is for the Weir case,an Alberta Court of Appeal decision in July that addressed issues such as reasonable expectations for e-mail privacy. The court upheld a lower court conviction of Dale Weir on charges of possession of child pornography.
X
is for Windows XP,the latest version of the popular Microsoft operating system, which critics argued was left generally untouched by a U.S. settlement of antitrust claims against the company. Despite considerable interest in the case among Canadian consumers and software companies, Canadian competition officials never established an official public position on the matter.
Y
is for yellowbusinessdirectory.com,a Web site scam that led the Canadian Competition Bureau to charge three individuals and two corporations with misleading advertising and deceptive practices arising from unsolicited mailings that billed 250,000 businesses for inclusion in the on-line directory.
Z
is for Zundelsite (http://www.lebensraum.org),a hate Web site subject to protracted litigation under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Provisions contained in Bill C-36 removed uncertainty over whether the Act applies to the Internet, since the bill clearly states that telephonic, Internet, and other communications tools are all covered.
