With news this week of a Canadian settlement of the Sony rootkit case, it is worth revisiting the admonishment that case elicited from Stewart Baker, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary of policy. As noted earlier this series, Baker reminded the recording industry that "it's very important to […]
Post Tagged with: "security"
30 Days of DRM – Day 10: Security Research (Circumvention Rights)
Given the priority currently accorded to security concerns, it is difficult to understand how any government would be willing to undermine security in the name of copyright. That is precisely what has occurred in the United States, however, where computer security researchers have faced a significant chilling effect on their research due to legal threats from the DMCA. The U.S. cases are fairly well known: they include Princeton professor Edward Felten facing a potential suit from the RIAA when he planned to disclose his research findings in identifying the weaknesses of an encryption program and Dmitri Sklyarov, a Russian software programmer, spending a summer in jail after presenting a paper at a conference in Las Vegas that described his company's program that defeated the encryption on the Adobe eReader.
Even more compelling are recent comments from Professor Felten at a conference at the University of Michigan.
30 Days of DRM – Day 09: Reverse Engineering (Circumvention Rights)
The inclusion of a reverse engineering circumvention right is another obvious necessary provision. Reverse engineering is described by the Chilling Effects site as follows:
Reverse engineering is the scientific method of taking something apart in order to figure out how it works. Reverse engineering has been used by innovators to determine a product's structure in order to develop competing or interoperable products. Reverse engineering is also an invaluable teaching tool used by researchers, academics and students in many disciplines, who reverse engineer technology to discover, and learn from, its structure and design.
The need for a reverse engineering provision therefore follows from some of the discussion last week – it is pro-competitive as it facilitates the creation of compatible devices as well as greater competition in the marketplace.
While there may be general agreement on the need for a reverse engineering provision, it is essential that Canada avoid the U.S. DMCA approach which has been widely criticized for being too limited in scope and thus woefully ineffective.
Statscan Survey Shows Internet’s Potential and Pitfalls
My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) examines recent Statistics Canada data on Internet use. The survey found that nearly 17 million Canadians – 68 percent of the adult population – used the Internet for personal non-business reasons last year. Moreover, almost two-thirds of Canadian adults who […]
Privacy Commissioner Issues PIPEDA Review Discussion Paper
The much-anticipated PIPEDA review is scheduled for later this year and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has kicked things off with a discussion/consultation paper. The Commissioner’s comments on the effectiveness of the law will be very important and this paper is presumably an attempt to gauge public opinion on several […]
Recent Posts
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 231: Sara Bannerman on How Canadian Political Parties Maximize Voter Data Collection and Minimize Privacy Safeguards 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 230: Aengus Bridgman on the 2025 Federal Election, Social Media Platforms, and Misinformation 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 229: My Digital Access Day Keynote – Assessing the Canadian Digital Policy Record 
Queen’s University Trustees Reject Divestment Efforts Emphasizing the Importance of Institutional Neutrality 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 228: Kumanan Wilson on Why Canadian Health Data Requires Stronger Privacy Protection in the Trump Era
