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Rogers Admits New Net Throttling, Slow to Disclose to the Public

Rogers has been hit with a complaint about its throttling practices but has been very slow amend its public disclosure documents as required by the CRTC.  Complaints began appearing online earlier this fall, with users noting that Rogers was degrading P2P uploads and downloads.  Torrent Freak details what happened next […]

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December 14, 2010 15 comments News

CRTC Issues Call for Comments on Digital TV Transition

The CRTC has issued a call for comments on the regulations associated with the digital television transition. The regulations include required public service announcements and information posted on broadcaster websites.  The transition is currently set for August 31, 2011.  The deadline for comments is January 11, 2011.

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December 14, 2010 2 comments News

C-32 Legislative Committee Discussion Marked By Copyright Confusion

Today’s Bill C-32 Legislative committee hearing, which featured only two witnesses, may have marked a new low given the amount of confusion and misinformation coming from MPs and witnesses.  The panel should have delivered a good debate on C-32 and fair dealing given the presence of the Canadian Teachers Federation […]

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December 13, 2010 18 comments News

More Schools Backing Away from Access Copyright

As the fight over the proposed Access Copyright interim tariff heats up (Howard Knopf offers links to must-read submissions from many objectors), more Canadian schools are gearing up for life without the copyright collective.  Medicine Hat College posted a notice about leaving on Friday, while Ryerson has advised faculty that […]

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December 13, 2010 Comments are Disabled News

Location Matters Up in the Cloud

The Wikileaks disclosure of hundreds of U.S. diplomatic cables has dominated news coverage for the past two weeks as governments struggled to respond to public disclosure of sensitive, secret information.  My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) noted that one of the most noteworthy developments in the first week was Amazon’s decision to abruptly stop hosting the Wikileaks site hours after U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman exerted political pressure on the company to do so.  

Amazon is best known for its e-commerce site, yet it is also one of the world’s leading cloud computing providers, offering instant website hosting to thousands of companies and websites. In recent years, the combination of massive computer server farms in remote locations and high speed networks have enabled cloud computing to emerge as a critical mechanism for offering online services and delivering Internet content.

After Amazon pulled the plug, Wikileaks quickly shifted to a European host, demonstrating how easily sites can shift from one cloud provider to another. Although it seems counter-intuitive to consider the physical location of cloud computing equipment when discussing services that by their very definition operate across borders in the “cloud”, the Wikileaks-Amazon incident provided an important reminder that location matters when it comes to cloud computing.

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December 10, 2010 24 comments Columns