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The Sony Effect

One of the most important aspects of the ongoing Sony rootkit story has been its impact on musicians.  As I noted in a previous post, Business Week has demonstrated how the controversy has had an unmistakable negative impact on music sales for artists with the DRM-infected CDs.  A new Business […]

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December 3, 2005 2 comments News

WiFi Visions

After several years of little movement, Industry Minister David Emerson focused on the broadband agenda during the fall, obtaining new funding for high-speed connectivity nationwide.  While Emerson deserves kudos for focusing on this issue, developments elsewhere suggest that other jurisdictions are even more ambitious.  Municipal wifi continues to attract attention […]

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December 3, 2005 4 comments News

LaForest Rejects Merger of Privacy and Information Commissioner Offices

Overshadowed by the launch of the election campaign this week was the public release of the LaForest report on the potential merger of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Office of the Information and Access Commissioner.  Although these offices are merged in some provinces, it was […]

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December 1, 2005 Comments are Disabled News

Staying on the Sidelines of the Sony Story

The Sony rootkit story continues to be remarkably resilient as new developments emerge a full month after the story first began circulating in the blogosphere.  I covered developments up until about a week ago in a recent column.  Three Business Week stories now shed additional light, raising several points that […]

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November 29, 2005 4 comments News

Canada’s Privacy Wake-Up Call

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, freely available version) focuses on the recent Maclean’s cover story in which a reporter obtained the personal phone records of Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart.  I argue that in a year dominated by almost daily privacy and security violations that have placed the […]

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November 27, 2005 2 comments Columns