My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) focuses this week on the new CIRA whois policy that is scheduled to take effect on June 10, 2008. The whois issue has attracted little public attention, yet it has been the subject of heated debate within the domain name community for many years. It revolves around the whois database, a publicly accessible, searchable list of domain name registrant information (as in "who is" the registrant of a particular domain name).

Wiertz Sebastien - Privacy by Sebastien Wiertz (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/ahk6nh
Privacy
Kerr on Searching for the Privacy Balance
My colleague Ian Kerr has a great op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen on last week's Supreme Court of Canada privacy-related decisions.
New Canadian WHOIS Policy Balances Privacy With Public Access
Appeared in the Toronto Star on April 28, 2008 as Domain Name Policy Puts Us in Internet Vanguard Earlier this month, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, the agency that manages the dot-ca domain, celebrated its one millionth domain name registration. While that represents an important milestone, a far more noteworthy […]
Security Breach Disclosure Bill May Fall Short
Canwest reports that the federal government plans to introduce new security breach disclosure legislation that will provide considerable discretion for when businesses disclose instances of security breaches. There are apparently no penalties for failure to disclose. Given the potential impact of identity theft and the incentives to keep breaches secret, […]
B.C. PIPA Review Released
David Fraser notes that a special committee has released its recommendations for reforms to the B.C. privacy legislation.