Wiertz Sebastien - Privacy by Sebastien Wiertz (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/ahk6nh

Wiertz Sebastien - Privacy by Sebastien Wiertz (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/ahk6nh

Privacy

The Letters of the Law: 2010 in Tech Law from A to Z

The past twelve months in law and technology were exceptionally active, with the passage of anti-spam legislation, record penalties for violating the do-not-call list, and relentless lobbying on new Canadian copyright legislation. A look back at 2010 from A to Z (Toronto Star version, homepage version):

A is for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which concluded in October with a watered-down treaty after the U.S. caved on several controversial Internet issues.

B is for Black v. Breeden, an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling involving postings on the Hollinger International, Inc. website that Conrad Black claimed were defamatory.

C is for Crookes v. Newton, the high-profile Supreme Court case that addressed the liability hyperlinks between websites.
                        
D is for the do-not-call list, which gained new life when the CRTC pressured Bell into paying $1.3 million for multiple violations of the list rules.

E is for the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, the initial name of Canada’s anti-spam legislation that received royal assent in December, six years after a task force recommended new Canadian spam laws.

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December 28, 2010 12 comments Columns

Federal Court Awards PIPEDA Damages

Slaw reports that a federal court judge has awarded $5,000 in damages to a self-represented applicant for violations of PIPEDA, relating to an inaccurate credit report.

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December 21, 2010 Comments are Disabled News

Anti-Spam Bill Receives Royal Assent

On May 11, 2004, the Government launched Canada’s Task Force on Spam.  I was honoured to participate on the Task Force, which unanimously recommended anti-spam legislation its report issued on May 17, 2005.  Yesterday – 2038 days after the release of the report – Bill C-28, the anti-spam bill, received […]

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December 16, 2010 2 comments 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

Location Matters Up in the Cloud

Appeared in the Toronto Star on December 5, 2010 as Location Matters Up in the Cloud The Wikileaks disclosure of hundreds of U.S. diplomatic cables dominated news coverage last week as governments struggled to respond to public disclosure of sensitive, secret information. One of the most noteworthy developments was Amazon’s […]

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December 9, 2010 1 comment Columns Archive