For the past two months, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has been publishing an exceptionally important series on the problems with Trans Pacific Partnership. I was pleased to participate in this initiative and yesterday the CCPA posted my contribution. The Trouble with the TPP’s Copyright Rules draws on my earlier Trouble with the TPP series to highlight several of the copyright concerns associated with the agreement, including copyright term extension, the limited applicability of Canada’s notice-and-notice rules, and the expanded criminalization of copyright law.
Archive for July, 2016
Canada’s National Digitization Plan Leaves Virtual Shelves Empty
Imagine going to your local library in search of Canadian books. You wander through the stacks but are surprised to find most shelves barren with the exception of books that are over a hundred years old. This sounds more like an abandoned library than one serving the needs of its patrons, yet it is roughly what a recently released Canadian National Heritage Digitization Strategy envisions.
Led by Library and Archives Canada and endorsed by Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, the strategy acknowledges that digital technologies make it possible “for memory institutions to provide immediate access to their holdings to an almost limitless audience.”
Yet it stops strangely short of trying to do just that.
Why Canada’s National Digitization Plan Falls Short
Appeared in the Toronto Star on July 25, 2016 as Ottawa Should Commit to Digitizing Canadian Heritage Imagine going to your local library in search of Canadian books. You wander through the stacks but are surprised to find most shelves barren with the exception of books that are over a […]
Pokémon Go Craze Brings New “Augmented Reality” Legal Issues Into Light
Unless you’ve been offline or focused on a distorted national anthem rendition for the past week, you know that Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm with millions of people wandering around searching for virtual Pokémon characters. The game was officially released in Canada on the weekend – it started first in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand – with millions of people already playing it.
My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that Pokémon Go provides a first peek at the potential of widespread use of “augmented reality”, which combines real space places such as parks or buildings with virtual characters or objects that appear on a computer or smartphone. In this case, the app uses GPS on smartphones to identify players’ physical location with the goal of collecting and training virtual Pokémon characters located there.
It’s All Fun and Games Until We Lose Our Digital Privacy
Appeared in the Toronto Star on July 18, 2016 as It’s All Fun and Games Until We Lose Our Digital Privacy Unless you’ve been offline or focused on a distorted national anthem rendition for the past week, you know that Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm with millions […]
Recent Posts
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 211: Carlos Affonso Souza on the Unprecedented Brazilian Court Order Blocking Twitter/X and VPN Use to Access the Service 
New Academic Year Requires New Approach to Combat Campus Antisemitism 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 210: Meredith Lilly on the Trade Risks Behind Canada’s Digital Services Tax and Mandated Streaming Payments 
Abandoning Institutional Neutrality: Why the University of Windsor Encampment Agreements Constrain Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 209: Peter Menzies on Why the Canadian News Sector is Broken and How to Fix It
