Earlier today I provided links to some of the coverage from Thursday's file sharing decision. A small article from Dose, the free Canwest daily paper, was not included (it isn't online) but merits some attention.The article features brief Q & A's with Alex Cameron, who argued the privacy issues for CIPPIC, and with Graham Henderson, CRIA's President. In response to an open-ended question on his thoughts on the decision, Henderson responds:
News
Media Coverage of File Sharing Decision
Not surprisingly, the media jumped all over yesterday's file sharing decision. Among the stories:
Federal Appeals Court Upholds File Sharing Decision
This morning the Federal Court of Appeal issued its much-anticipated decision on music file sharing. The court upheld the lower court decision by denying CRIA's request for the identities of the 29 alleged file sharers. The reason for upholding the decision was straightforward – CRIA's evidence contained a wide variety of shortcomings and the appellate court was not about to issue a disclosure order in the face of bad evidence.
Culture Imports and Exports
Statistics Canada this morning released its annual report on Canada’s culture goods trade balance. This data covers cultural goods such as books, CDs, films, and art (royalty payments are included in the numbers).
CRTC Adopts Strong Regulatory Approach in VoIP Decision
The CRTC issued its much anticipated VoIP decision earlier today. Much to the chagrin of the major telcos, the Commission has adopted a strong regulatory approach. While it exempts P2P VoIP providers such as Skype, the traditional providers face a VoIP framework that looks a lot like the current local regulatory framework.
The Commission reasons that for consumers, local VoIP service looks a lot like (and is marketed like) traditional local phone service. Accordingly, the Commission has set a regulatory framework that addresses everything from reseller registration to phone directory listings to privacy protection.
Up to this point, I’d argue that Commission is on solid ground. Robust competition requires a level playing field and ensuring that all providers can offer equivalent services that consumers rely upon may require regulatory intervention of this kind.
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