Archive for April 2nd, 2007

Canadian Photographer Claims Violation of Creative Commons License

Bill Patry calls attention to a dispute between photographer David Wise and MP Betty Hinton.  Hinton used one of Wise's photographers in a campaign newsletter in February. The photograph was posted on Flickr and licensed using a Creative Commons license. Wise says he would not have allowed Hinton to use […]

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April 2, 2007 6 comments News

Canadian Press on Counterfeiting

Canadian Press follows up on last week's counterfeiting hearings with a story that confirms that the committee is planning to move forward having heard just one side of the story.  Says committee chair Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz, "I think we've heard enough. . .this is a serious problem for the […]

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April 2, 2007 Comments are Disabled News

Privacy Commissioner Issues SWIFT Report

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has concluded that the United States did not break Canadian law in a post-Sept. 11 terrorism investigation, even though Canadians' personal banking information was likely handed over to U.S. authorities. Privacy Commissioner Stoddart also found that SWIFT, the European financial co-operative that provides messaging services […]

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April 2, 2007 Comments are Disabled News

The EMI DRM Announcement

EMI and Apple jointly announced today that EMI will be making virtually its entire music catalog available without DRM.  Their plan is to offer a higher priced version without DRM and with higher quality sound.  This is obviously an important development – there is lots of DRM-free music available from independent labels, but the addition of the world's third largest music label is a game-changer.  A few random comments:

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April 2, 2007 7 comments News

Internet Video, Internet Regulation, and Canadian Content

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) focuses on the growing push from the Canadian broadcasting community to revisit the CRTC's 1999 New Media decision, in which Canada's broadcasting regulator took a hands-off approach to the Internet.  The support for greater regulation is often couched in Canadian content terms, but I argue that the current changes have the potential to dramatically alter Canadian content production from one mandated by government regulation to one mandated by market survival.

The issue began to percolate last June, when Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda asked the CRTC to conduct a six-month consultation on the effects of changing technology on the radio and television industries.  The CRTC report, which was quietly released in mid-December, went almost unnoticed, yet submissions from broadcasters, copyright collectives, and labour unions all point to an increased regulatory role for the CRTC.

The underlying theme of many stakeholder submissions is that unregulated new media represents a threat to the current regulated Canadian content model. 

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April 2, 2007 7 comments Columns