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Ottawa Foregoes Bold Vision on Telecom

After months of delay, Industry Minister Christian Paradis unveiled the government’s telecom strategy last week, setting out the details of the forthcoming spectrum auction and tinkering with longstanding foreign ownership restrictions. Spectrum allocation and auctions, which focus on the availability of frequencies used to provide wireless services, involves fairly technical questions that few outside the industry follow closely. Yet the impact of spectrum policy has far reaching effects on consumers, since the right policies can foster greater competition, better services, and lower prices.

While the headlines have focused on changes to the foreign ownership rules, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) echoes my initial post on the decision by arguing the government’s policy choices are rather timid.

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March 22, 2012 — 7 comments — Columns

Does Bill C-11 Create Barriers to Network PVRs and Cloud Services in Canada?

Bill C-11 has passed the committee stage last week and now seems slated to become law before the summer. The Bill C-11 legislative committee recently posted the remaining committee submissions (C-32 submissions here, C-11 here), which confirm that the government rejected the intense efforts of some groups to undo many of the user-oriented provisions. Some of the demands included:

  • remove the user generated content provision
  • create a new fair dealing test
  • remove new statutory damages limits for non-commercial infringement
  • remove a new exception for educational use of publicly available materials on the Internet
  • add an iPod tax
  • add statutory damages to circumvention of digital locks
  • force ISPs to keep subscriber data for 3 years after an alleged infringement

While the extreme demands were rejected, the government also decided against proposed amendments from many groups such as those representing the visually impaired, documentary film makers, and librarians. One of the more notable decisions was to leave untouched a provision that could create some legal risks for cloud computing based services such as network-based PVRs. Both Rogers and Shaw raised concerns with the approach in Bill C-11, yet the government did not amend the provision in question despite a proposal on point from the Liberals.

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March 21, 2012 — 18 comments — News

The Math Behind Copyright Math

Rob Reid has posted further details on the numbers behind his $8 Billion iPod TED Talk.

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March 21, 2012 — 6 comments — News

Penske File No More? The Canadian Digital Economy Strategy Inches Forward

The lack of progress on the Canadian digital economy strategy has been a source of frustration for many as the still-unreleased strategy has been largely missing in action. Late last year I dubbed it the government’s Penske File, a reference to the Seinfeld episode involving a non-existent work project. While Canada is still without a comprehensive strategy, elements have begun to emerge in recent weeks.

On the legislative and policy front, Bill C-11 has passed the committee stage and seems likely to race toward royal assent by the summer, last week’s unveiling of the telecom policy (including policies on the forthcoming spectrum auction and foreign ownership) puts to rest a major issue associated with the digital economy strategy, the CRTC recently published its final anti-spam regulations with Industry Canada expected to follow with theirs shortly, the open government initiative has been making considerable progress, and Government House Leader Peter Van Loan told the House of Commons on Thursday that Bill C-12 (the PIPEDA reform bill) may finally move forward next week.

Industry Minister Christian Paradis yesterday took another positive step by convening a federal – provincial ministerial meeting on the digital economy.

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March 20, 2012 — 2 comments — News

Halifax Police on Refusals to Provide Subscriber Data: None

Among the government’s primary justifications for its lawful access/online surveillance bill (Bill C-30) is that since Internet providers have not been required to disclose subscriber information during an investigation, their assistance is inconsistent. For example, the Public Safety backgrounder on the bill states: Basic subscriber information is often required at […]

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March 19, 2012 — 12 comments — News
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