Michael Geist

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United Nations of smartphone operating systems by Jon Fingas (CC BY-ND 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/goVRFZ

Canadian Cellphone Freedom Day: Wireless Consumer Protections Now Apply to All

Today is “Cellphone Freedom Day”, the day that most Canadian consumers can say goodbye to three year cellphone contracts. With the Federal Court of Appeal recently rejecting an attempt by the major carriers to stop the retroactive applicability of wireless code as of June 3rd (the two year anniversary of the code), consumers with cellphones that have run for more than 24 months can now cancel their contracts without penalty. That includes consumers with three years contracts that still have time left on their contract. As the CCTS notes:

three-year contracts which have run for more than 24 months can be cancelled without payment of cancellation fees, as the Code requires such fees to be reduced to zero within 24 months. Cancellation of three-year contracts in which the customer received a device subsidy but which have not yet run for 24 months (those entered into between June 3 and December 2, 2013) may still require payment of a cancellation fee.

Since the wireless companies switched to two-year contracts soon after the CRTC’s wireless code decision, there will be relatively few consumers with three year contracts that have not run for 24 months and those will hit the two-year mark within the next few weeks or months.

June 3, 2015 — 8 comments — News

TPP rally. Ottawa, Canada, June 10 2014 by SumOfUs (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/o8zqnJ

Why Canadians Have Good Reason to Be Wary of the TPP

Canada’s business community has mobilized in recent weeks to call on the government to adopt a more aggressive, engaged approach with respect to the biggest trade negotiations on the planet – the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. The TPP involves 12 countries including the United States, Australia, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Vietnam, Brunei, Japan, Peru, and Chile.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that negotiators insist that progress is being made, but some in the business community are concerned that Canada may be left out of the deal unless it makes significant concessions on market access (including the dismantling of supply management in several agricultural sectors), restrictive intellectual property protections, and investor-state dispute settlement rules that allow companies to sue governments and potentially trump national courts.

June 2, 2015 — 12 comments — Columns

System Lock by Yuri Samoilov (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/mjhubJ

You’re on Your Own: How the Government Wants Canadians To Sacrifice Their Personal Security

Another week, another revelation originating from the seemingly unlimited trove of Edward Snowden documents. Last week, the CBC reported that Canada was among several countries whose surveillance agencies actively exploited security vulnerabilities in a popular mobile web browser used by hundreds of millions of people. Rather than alerting the company and the public that the software was leaking personal information, they viewed the security gaps as a surveillance opportunity.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that in the days before Snowden, these reports would have sparked a huge uproar. More than half a billion people around the world use UC Browser, the mobile browser in question, suggesting that this represents a massive security leak. At stake was information related to users’ identity, communication activities, and location data – all accessible to telecom companies, network providers, and surveillance agencies.

May 28, 2015 — 2 comments — Columns

Anti Doping by Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious (CC BY-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/5ZWsUT

Government’s Expansion of PIPEDA in Budget Bill Raises Constitutional Questions

The government’s omnibus budget implementation bill (Bill C-59) has attracted attention for its inclusion of copyright term extension for sound recordings and the retroactive changes to the Access to Information Act. Another legislative reform buried within the bill is a significant change to PIPEDA, Canada’s private sector privacy law. The bill adds a new Schedule 4 to PIPEDA, which allows the government to specify organizations in the schedule to which PIPEDA applies. Bill C-59 immediately adds one organization: the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which is based in Montreal.

The change to PIPEDA is designed to address European criticism that WADA is not subject to privacy laws that meet the adequacy standard under EU law. WADA is currently subject to Quebec’s private sector privacy law, which meets the “substantial similarity” standard under Canadian law, but has not received an adequacy finding from Europe. In June 2014, the EU Working Party that examines these issues released an opinion that raised several concerns with the provincial law. The goal of the criticism appears to be to deem Montreal unfit to host WADA and transfer its offices to Europe. The Canadian government wants to stop the privacy criticisms by deeming PIPEDA applicable to WADA. Since PIPEDA has received an adequacy finding, presumably the hope is that the legislative change will address the European concerns.

May 27, 2015 — 1 comment — News

Assignments of copyrights photostat copies by mollyali (CC BY-NC 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/5JbsPE

Why The Copyright Board Decision Affirms Canadian Education’s Approach to Fair Dealing

The Copyright Board of Canada delivered a devastating defeat to Access Copyright on Friday, releasing its decision on a tariff for copying by employees of provincial governments. Yesterday’s post provided a detailed review of the decision, including the Board’s findings on the limits of Access Copyright’s repertoire, the scope of insubstantial copying, and the proper interpretation of fair dealing.

The decision focused on copying within provincial and territorial governments, but much of the analysis can be easily applied within an education context. Indeed, since the Supreme Court of Canada 2012 copyright decisions, there has been a very public battle over the validity of fair dealing guidelines that have been widely adopted by the Canadian education community. I’ve written several posts on the education consensus (here and here) and there are no shortage of the fair dealing guidelines readily available online.

May 26, 2015 — 2 comments — News