Not surprisingly, the media jumped all over yesterday's file sharing decision. Among the stories:
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.
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.
Five Months
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada yesterday released the summary of her finding in my spam case launched against the Ottawa Renegades. My case is now Finding #297 and, true to form, the Renegades are now just an unnamed sports organization. While I am pleased with the outcome of the case […]
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