Michael Geist

Latest Posts

The Daily Digital Lock Dissenter, Day 34: Public Interest Advocacy Centre

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre has been one of Canada’s leading consumer rights organizations, representing the public interest on consumer issues concerning telecommunications, energy, privacy, the information highway, electronic commerce, financial services, broadcasting, and competition law. PIAC submitted comments to the national copyright consultation that included the following on digital locks:

Consumers enjoy certain rights to use content without infringing copyright. The presence of technological measures doesn’t change that, and neither should anti-circumvention laws. Consumers must be able to circumvent technological measures, like DRM, providing that their access to the underlying content does not infringe copyright. These consumer rights fulfil important public policy goals, preserving consumer welfare, free speech, and innovation. The use of technological measures already threatens these values. Anti-circumvention laws shouldn’t statutorily undermine them as well.

November 21, 2011 — 1 comment — News

Brown on Canadian Wireless Competition

Jesse Brown comments on the state of wireless competition, focusing on the barriers to foreign investment.

November 21, 2011 — 2 comments — News

Wind Mobile Founder: No Political Will For Telecom Competition

Wind Mobile founder Naguib Sawiris is in the news today for comments about his regret of investing in Canada and frustration with the government’s commitment to competition. Sawiris says “there’s no real political will here to introduce competition into this closed market” adding that he won’t bid on in the […]

November 18, 2011 — 3 comments — News

Lawful Access Could Close Smaller ISPs

IT World Canada reports on ISP regulation at the Canadian ISP Summit (I was panelist) where Chris Tacit, who acts from the Canadian Network Operators Consortium, indicated that the costs associated with implementing lawful access could cause some smaller operators to close up shop.

November 18, 2011 — 5 comments — News

The Daily Digital Lock Dissenter, Day 33: City of Vancouver Archives

The City of Vancouver Archives is the oldest municipal archives in Canada. Included in their holdings are over 2,100 linear metres of textual records, 1.5 million photographs, 36,000 maps, plans and architectural drawings, and tens of thousands of digital records. The City of Vancouver Archives stated the following on digital locks in its copyright consultation submission:

Archives frequently need to undertake actions that could be considered infringing in order to preserve works, conserve a damaged work, and otherwise manage their holdings. This is particularly relevant in the case of digital works, where the inherent fragility of these works makes it regularly necessary to create back-up copies of works, to migrate works to new physical media because of hardware obsolescence, and to migrate works to new logical formats because of software obsolescence in order to prevent them from being lost or becoming inaccessible.

If a work is protected by encryption or other technical protection measures (TPMs) it may be necessary to circumvent these measures in order to be able to back-up, conserve or preserve a work. Circumvention of TPMs for these purposes should not be an infringement. Finally, it is not only archives and cultural institutions that need to undertake these actions, but all persons who own these types of works. Because of this, this exception should not be limited to only archives, libraries and museums – it should be a general exception.

November 18, 2011 — 4 comments — News