Columns

RIM’s Woes Partly Based on Canadian Telecom Policy

The past year has not been kind to Research in Motion Ltd., Canada’s leading technology company. The Waterloo-based maker of the BlackBerry smartphone has seen its share price nosedive in the wake of less than stellar launches of new products such as the Playbook, disappointing earnings guidance, and plans to cut its global workforce.

The company is still profitable – it earned $695 million on revenue of $4.9 billion in its last quarter – yet some have begun to speculate on whether the Canadian government should step in to “save” RIM from the fate that befell Nortel Networks Corp., the last great Canadian technology company which filed for bankruptcy two years ago.

Given that RIM remains profitable, it seems premature to suggest that the government can or should do much of anything to assist it. The company faces mounting criticism over its product lines and its failure to address the competitive threats from Apple Inc. and Google Inc., business issues that lie beyond the expertise or mandate of government policy makers.

While RIM’s current problems can’t be solved by government policy, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) some of its shortcomings may be a product of Canadian policy [note not all – there is lots of blame to go around]. Indeed, RIM is the quintessential Canadian technology company, reflecting the market’s strengths and weaknesses [note that I recognize that Canadian revenues are a small part of the RIM’s overall revenues. However, the majority of its executives and workforce are Canadian. It is a company born out of a Canadian culture and market environment].

August 23, 2011 — 39 comments — Columns

Telecom Giants Lure Ex-Cabinet Ministers to their Boardrooms

Telecom policies, particularly Internet and wireless issues, have generated enormous public interest over the past year. Politicians have evidently taken note with all political parties expressing concern over Internet data caps, net neutrality, and the competitiveness of Canadian wireless services.

The political shift toward consumer-focused telecom concerns has unsurprisingly attracted the attention of the large incumbent telecom providers such as Bell and Telus, who have found their regulatory plans stymied by political intervention and the admission by some Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission commissioners that the current policy environment has failed to foster sufficient competition.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes the incumbent telecom providers recently served notice that they are gearing up to fight back, with Bell adding former Industry Minister Jim Prentice to its board of directors and Telus doing the same with former Public Safety Minister and Treasury Board President Stockwell Day. The addition of two prominent, recently departed Conservative cabinet ministers makes it clear that Bell and Telus recognize the increasing politicization of telecom policy.

August 16, 2011 — 12 comments — Columns

Dot-ca Domain Dispute Rules Changes Coming This Month

Domain name disputes emerged as one of the first Internet legal issues in the mid-1990s as speculators recognized the value of domain names and the potential to resell them to the highest bidder. The growth of “cybersquatting” led to several unsuccessful attempts to establish a dispute resolution system. Finally, in 1999, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the agency responsible for administering the domain name system, created the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which has since resolved tens of thousands of disputed domains.

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), which manages the dot-ca domain, adopted its own dispute resolution policy, the CIRA Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (CDRP) in 2002. My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that using the UDRP as a model, CIRA developed a Canadian version that borrows much of its structure and content from the international approach, yet reflects Canadian law and policy.

August 9, 2011 — 5 comments — Columns

Ontario Court Grapples With Legalities of Anonymous Online Postings

The Internet has given rise to thousands of online chat forums, where participants can sound off on the issues of the day often shielded by the cloak of anonymity. Anonymous speech can be empowering – whistleblowers depend upon it to safeguard their identity and political participants in some countries face severe repercussions if they speak out publicly – but it also carries the danger of posts that cross the line into defamation without appropriate accountability.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that striking the balance between protecting anonymous free speech on the one hand and applying defamation laws on the other sits at the heart of a new Ontario Superior Court decision released last week. The case involved postings about Phyllis Morris, the former mayor of Aurora.

In 2010, the website auroracitizen.ca featured an online chat forum where participants discussed a local election campaign. Morris, who was defeated in the election, launched a legal action during the campaign against the site, the chat forum moderators, its lawyers, and website host to order them to disclose the identity of three anonymous posters. Morris did not identify the specific defamatory words, but claimed that six posts were defamatory.

The court was therefore not asked to determine whether the posts at issue were in fact defamatory. Rather, it simply faced the question of whether it should order the disclosure of personal information about the posters themselves so that Morris could proceed with a defamation lawsuit.

August 3, 2011 — 38 comments — Columns

York Latest To Opt-Out of Access Copyright as Schools Seek Flexibility

Canadian university and college campuses are quiet at this time of year, but in recent weeks many have been making noise by transforming the way professors and students access and license course materials. For years, schools paid an annual per student fee to Access Copyright, a copyright collective that licenses photocopying and the creation of print coursepacks. Starting in September, many of Canada’s top universities will no longer use the Access Copyright licence, opting instead for a more flexible, tech savvy alternative. The latest to announce that it is opting out is York University, which sent a notice to faculty yesterday.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes the shift away from Access Copyright marks the culmination of years of technological change within Canadian education that has resulted in new ways for professors to disseminate research and educational materials as well as greater reliance by students on the Internet, electronic materials, and portable computers.

July 26, 2011 — 25 comments — Columns