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The Electronic Commerce Protection Act – The Competition Act Provisions

Having reviewed the Electronic Commerce Protection Act provisions on anti-spam, enforcement, and do-not-call, the other major section in the bill are the provisions involving reforms to the Competition Act.  The ECPA makes several important amendments to the statute to better ensure that false or misleading representations in electronic messages are captured by the law.  This will mean that the Competition Bureau will have the power to investigate and take action against the use of false headers, false locator information, or the presence of false or misleading content in electronic messages.

The changes focus on parallel reforms to the false or misleading representation provisions and the deceptive marketing provisions.  The Competition Act will now include a lengthy new provision on false or misleading representations in an electronic message.  The three main offences, contained with Offences Related to Competition, are:

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April 30, 2009 Comments are Disabled News

Consumers International Releases IP Watch List

With the U.S. Special 301 Report set for release today, Consumers International has released its own IP Watchlist.  This list of 16 countries found that consumers benefit most from the laws in India and South Korea, while the UK is the most restrictive.  It also noted that the U.S. applies […]

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April 30, 2009 3 comments News

BBC Film Critic on Movie Piracy

Techdirt points to a recent video from a BBC film critic who argues that movie piracy is an industry problem (screener leaks) rather than a consumer issue.

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April 30, 2009 Comments are Disabled News

Better Late Than Never

The Department of Foreign Affairs has sent requests to people who submitted comments on the first ACTA consultation to ask their permission to post their comments online.  I previously posted the summary of those comments obtained under ATIP.

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April 30, 2009 Comments are Disabled News

The Electronic Commerce Protection Act – The Privacy Provisions

The Electronic Commerce Protection Act includes a noteworthy change to Canada's private sector privacy legislation (earlier posts on anti-spam provisions, enforcement, do-not-call). PIPEDA includes specific provisions dealing with the issue of consent for the collection of personal information, including the possibility of collecting personal information without knowledge or consent in certain circumstances.  The ECPA adds a new provision that effectively overrides this exception – ie. it requires consent.  The provisions are designed to target both spyware and the harvesting of email addresses or other collection of personal information without consent (a practice known as dictionary attacks).

The new PIPEDA Section 7.1(2) states:

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April 29, 2009 1 comment News