News

Over-Dose

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:

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May 20, 2005 Comments are Disabled News

Media Coverage of File Sharing Decision

Not surprisingly, the media jumped all over yesterday's file sharing decision. Among the stories:

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May 20, 2005 1 comment News

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.

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May 19, 2005 1 comment News

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).

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May 19, 2005 1 comment News
CRTC Adopts Strong Regulatory Approach in VoIP Decision

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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May 12, 2005 Comments are Disabled News