Latest Posts

Supreme Court Denies Leave in Bangoura Case

The Bangoura case, the much-discussed Canadian Internet jurisdiction case, has come to a close as the Supreme Court of Canada today denied Bangoura’s request for leave to appeal the Ontario Court of Appeal decision.  Still working its way through the courts is the appeal of the Burke v. NewYork Post […]

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February 16, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

The Sony Rootkit Effect

While the blogosphere is understandably focused on the revelation that the RIAA now says that "creating a back-up copy of a music CD is not a non-infringing use" (after telling the U.S. Supreme Court in the Grokster hearing that "it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."), I think two other stories out today merit attention. 

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February 15, 2006 1 comment News

The Slippery Slope of Two-Tier Email

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, BBC Version, webpage version) examines America Online and Yahoo!’ s recent announcement of a new fee-based system for commercial email. I argue that certified email will do little to address spam and may not attract a large client base.  Rather, its more significant impact lies in the fact that it is yet another step toward the two-tiered Internet that will ultimately shift new costs to consumers.

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February 12, 2006 Comments are Disabled Columns

CCTA To Shut Down

The Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association, Canada's leading cable association, announced today that it plans to shut down after 50 years of operations.  The CCTA had been hit by several major defections in recent years (Shaw and Videotron being the most prominent) as the key industry players seemingly agreed on less […]

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February 10, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

The CBC as a Role Model

I’ve been critical of the CBC over the past few months, emphasizing the need for Canada’s public broadcaster to do more to embrace the potential of new technologies and the Internet.  To that end, there are signs that the CBC is moving in the right direction.  In addition to a […]

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February 8, 2006 3 comments News