Michael Geist

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The Anatomy of Lawful Access Phone Records

Christopher Parsons has a great post that unpacks lawful access phone records and explains why lawful access requires far more than simple phone book records.

November 22, 2011 — Comments are Disabled — News

Daily Digital Lock Dissenter, Day 35: Cdn Assoc of Edu Resource Centres for Alt Format Materials

The Canadian Association of Educational Resource Centres for Alternate Format Materials is an informal organization that promotes and facilitates the sharing of educational materials amongst eleven Educational Resource Centres across Canada. Each centre has a mandate to provide alternate format resources to students with perceptual disabilities who are enrolled in Kindergarten to Grade 12 and/or Post-Secondary education programs in their respective province or region. In its submission to the 2009 national copyright consultation, the CAER recommended:

Provide an exception that permits the circumvention of digital rights management and technological measures for purposes of creating an alternate format. Permit the use of circumvention devices for the purposes of preparing materials for alternate format production.

November 22, 2011 — 1 comment — News

The CRTC’s Declaration of Independent ISP Independence

Last week, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission released its much-anticipated usage based billing decision. While the ruling only focused on the use of data caps (or UBB) as between Internet providers, the issue garnered national attention with over 500,000 Canadians signing a petition against Internet data caps and the government providing clear signals that it would overrule the Commission if it maintained its support for the practice.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes the resulting decision seemed to cause considerable confusion as some headlines trumpeted a “Canadian compromise,” while others insisted that the CRTC had renewed support for UBB. Those headlines were wrong. The decision does not support UBB at the wholesale level (the retail market is another story) and the CRTC did not strike a compromise. Rather, it sided with the independent Internet providers by developing the framework the independents had long claimed was absent – one based on the freedom to compete.

November 21, 2011 — 13 comments — Columns

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