The Globe’s Derek DeCloet has a terrific piece on the fat profit margins for Canadian cable giants – bigger than those in the U.S. due to massive price increases and no foreign competition.
Post Tagged with: "canada"
Same As It Ever Was: Canada’s New Open Data Portal and Restrictive Licence Terms
That too is good news, but I think it is important to identify the source of the licensing language and the larger issue at play. First, the licensing terms, including the disrepute provision, have been used by the government for several years. The licence terms at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, which has offered open data for several years, features the same language on a webpage that was last modified in 2008. In fact, the GeoConnections program, which disseminates geographic data, published a 184 page best practices guide in 2008 (and that was version 2) that discusses licensing terms in great detail and includes several samples. In each case, the licence includes the disrepute provision. While it may be true that few people ever read the licence – Transport Canada published the new GC Open Data Portal licence weeks before yesterday’s launch and no one seemed to notice – the terms are important both because they can be used to later restrict activities and because they reflect the government’s view of the rights of Canadians to their data.
The government may revise the licence by removing the disrepute term, but I think a larger issue will remain.
Pandora: High Costs Keeping Us Out of Canada
The National Post posts a letter from Pandora’s Tim Westergren, in which he notes that: “I think it’s very important that Canadian listeners understand that Pandora is eager to launch in Canada, but the rates that have been proposed by the Canadian music rights societies are simply uneconomic.”
Japan Wanted Canada Out of Initial ACTA Group
Arai stressed that we should move as fast as possible and keep in mind that the intent of the agreement is to address the IPR problems of third-nations such as China, Russia, and Brazil, not to negotiate the different interests of like-minded countries. The new agreement could serve as a yardstick for measuring the market economy status of countries such as China and Russia.
Another cable includes commentary on specifically excluding other international organizations, with the USTR stressing that the G8 or OECD “might make it more difficult to construct a high-standards agreement.”
From a Canadian perspective it is worth noting that the Japanese proposed keeping Canada out of the initial negotiating group.
Leaving Millions on the Table: Pandora and Canadian Music
Pandora, the popular U.S. online music service filed for an initial public offering last week, provided new insight into hugely popular company that spends millions of dollars in copyright royalties. Pandora users listened to a billion hours of music in the last three months of 2010. Given U.S. laws, the […]
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