Articles by: Michael Geist

Canada’s First Street View Service Launched

IT Business reports that Canpages.ca has launched Canada's first street view serivce, with photos of Vancouver, Whistler, and Squamish, B.C.

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March 18, 2009 1 comment News

The CRTC New Media Hearing – What Comes Next?

With the conclusion of the CRTC New Media hearing last week, the Commission will now digest the many hours of testimony and thousands of pages of documents with the goal of reaching a decision on the future of new media exception/regulation later this year (day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).  While no one knows what the CRTC will do, this posting contains my best guess. 

The hearings highlighted that there are several new media broadcasting platforms and that the potential solutions differ for each.  I think three in particular will garner attention – fixed Internet, wireless/mobile Internet, and Internet radio.

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March 18, 2009 10 comments News

Canadian Privacy Rights Buried in the Fine Print

Scott McNealy, the former CEO of Sun Microsystems, has achieved considerable notoriety for having warned Internet users ten years ago that "you have no privacy, get over it." Recent headlines suggest that the Ontario courts have adopted those sentiments, as two recent decisions involving the disclosure of subscriber information by Internet service providers confirmed that revealing personal information to law enforcement without a warrant is permitted under Canadian privacy law.

While some view these cases as providing conclusive evidence that Canadians enjoy little privacy in identifying data such as customer name and address information, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) argues that a closer look at the decisions and industry practices reveal that the issue is not entirely settled.

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March 17, 2009 9 comments Columns

WIPO’s Misleading Release

The World Intellectual Property Organization put out a release yesterday trumpeting an eight percent increase in domain name disputes handled by WIPO.  In 2008 there were 2329 complaints filed with WIPO, the most ever.  WIPO uses the increase to raise questions about the possible increase in the number of available […]

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March 17, 2009 Comments are Disabled News

Canadian Privacy Rights Buried in the Fine Print

Appeared in the Toronto Star on March 16, 2009 as Canadian Privacy Rights Buried in the Fine Print Scott McNealy, the former CEO of Sun Microsystems, has achieved considerable notoriety for having warned Internet users ten years ago that "you have no privacy, get over it." Recent headlines suggest that […]

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March 16, 2009 Comments are Disabled Columns Archive