Legal Commentary

Consumer software licences under fire

Posted on March 17, 2008
For the London Free Press - March 17, 2008 Read this on Canoe In the United Kingdom, the National Consumer Council recently filed a complaint with the Office of Fair Trading stating that consumer software licences contain an imbalance of...

Celebrate Pi day today

Posted on March 14, 2008
I almost forgot - today is Pi day, because it is March 14, or 3.14. If you want to be more precise, Pi second comes this afternoon at 1:59.26 (3.1415926). I suppose we could honour that 24 times today -...

Let My Video Go

Posted on March 14, 2008
That's the title of an article in this month's Wired magazine. Its an article that those interested in the copyright debate should take a look at. The article basically makes the argument that the music industry blew it by trying...

Canadian Lawyer In-house article on cybersmearing

Posted on March 13, 2008
The February edition of Canadian Lawyer In-house magazine has a good article on cybersmearing, and how business should react to it. I'm quoted in the article. I was also quoted in an article in an article on virtual worlds in...

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Luminaries of the Canadian blawgosphere

Posted on March 12, 2008
Thanks to Canadian Lawyer magazine for including me in their list of top 10 law related blogs in their March edition. Read the Luminaries of the Canadian blawgosphere article See page 24 Go to the Canadian Lawyer web site...

Greenspan - TTC camera surveillance flawed

Posted on March 11, 2008
Edward Greenspan wrote a piece that appeared in several Sun newspapers yesterday about the plan to instal cameras on the TTC and the privacy comissioner's approval and conditions. Its worth a read as he takes the position that: Video cameras...

Information stewardship still open to breaches

Posted on March 10, 2008
For the London Free Press - March 10, 2008 Read this on Canoe There is a troubling worldwide trend to increased government surveillance and collection of personal information on individuals. Does it enhance public safety and law enforcement or is...

Privacy commissioners release video surveillance guidelines

Posted on March 07, 2008
David Fraser points out that the Federal, British Columbia, and Alberta privacy commissioners have just released new guidelines for private sector video surveillance. This is hot on the heels of the Ontario Privacy Commissioner's thoughts on public sector surveillance in...

Get Your Business Online!

Posted on March 04, 2008
That's the title of a seminar I spoke at today for the London Small Business Centre. Jayme Cousins of In House Logic talked about how to develop a web presence. David Ciccerelli of Voices.com talked about search engine optimization and...

File-sharing programs allow breaches

Posted on March 03, 2008
For the London Free Press - March 3, 2008 Read this on Canoe File-sharing programs are being installed on personal computers both in the home and at the office. A recent incident in Newfoundland involving the file-sharing program Limewire on...

London's 2nd annual IT Week is coming March 31

Posted on February 26, 2008
TechAlliance has announced the events for IT Week. Last Year's events were a great success - enough so that TechAlliance has to have one of the events in a larger venue this year. The week has several events that will...

Moves on to sour domain tasting

Posted on February 25, 2008
For the London Free Press - February 25, 2008 Read this on Canoe If you've never heard of domain tasting, you're not alone. To many looking to obtain Internet domain names, however, it's a serious problem that is finally being...

Is file sharing theft?

Posted on February 21, 2008
Mike Masnick of Techdirt has a post worth reading for anyone interested in copyright issues. The entertainment industry always equates file sharing with the theft of physical property, and takes the position that copies not explicitly authorized by the creator...

IOC dragged into the '90's on blogging

Posted on February 20, 2008
While I do have some sympathy for the IOC's desire to maximize TV revenue from the Olympic games, the IOC always strikes me as being about a decade behind in their rules about things like event video on Web sites,...

Free downloading has privacy catches

Posted on February 19, 2008
For the London Free Press - February 18, 2008 Read this on Canoe A company called QTrax recently announced it had arrangements with major labels to allow free music downloading. The labels would make their money from ad revenue --...

Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright doesn't want Canadian DMCA

Posted on February 14, 2008
Michael Geist has a post about a new coalition that has written a position paper against the proposed Canadian copyright reform bill. The list of members is impressive, including Canada's largest cable companies, retailers, broadcasters, Internet companies, and most of...

Act blocks Olympic ambushes

Posted on February 11, 2008
For the London Free Press - February 11, 2008 Read this on Canoe In preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics, Bill C-47, the Olympic and Paralympic Marks Act came into force on Dec. 17. The Act protects the Olympic brand....

The million dollar "s"

Posted on February 07, 2008
Cnet reports that: A British travel company has paid $1.1 million for the domain name cruises.co.uk, a price that is effectively $1 million just for the letter "s" since it already owns the address cruise.co.uk. Read the CNet article...

Do-not-call list won't bar everyone

Posted on February 04, 2008
For the London Free Press - Febrary 4, 2008 Read this on Canoe Canada's do-not-call list for telemarketers is to be in place by Sept. 30. Don't expect the phone to stop ringing at dinner time, though, because the legislation...

security & privacy - not a zero sum game

Posted on February 01, 2008
Privacy is often diminished or downplayed when people are lead to believe that privacy and security cannot exist together. Privacy concerns are often portrayed as anti law and order, or pro-criminal/terrorist. The reality is that we do not have to...

Illicit trade-mark fee solicitations

Posted on January 30, 2008
I often get calls from clients I am registering trade-marks for asking me if an invoice they have received is legitimate. These are so common that CIPO (Canadian Intellectual Property Office) prints a warning on their trade-mark approval notices that...

QTrax raises privacy issues

Posted on January 29, 2008
There has been a huge controversy over the last day or so regarding the QTrax announcement that it has deals with major labels to allow free music downloads. The catch was that those deals areapparently not in place yet. There...

Opposition grows to proposed copyright law

Posted on January 28, 2008
For the London Free Press - January 28, 2008 Read this on Canoe At the end of 2007 the Canadian government stood poised to introduce a new copyright law that many feared would amount to a sell-out to the demands...

DDoS attacks on Scientology

Posted on January 25, 2008
Th Register has an article with details about an attack on the church of Scientology by a group calling itself Anonymous. The attack apparently consists of not only a ddos (distributed denial of service) attack on their web site, but...

DC government employees fired for viewing porn at work

Posted on January 24, 2008
The Washington Post has an article that says 9 employees were fired, and many more sent warnings and reprimands. They had clicked on the sites thousands of times per year. There was a policy in place that prohibited such conduct....

How to avoid buying new stuff

Posted on January 22, 2008
Lifehacker points to an amusing post on the Put Things Off blog that bills itself as The laid-back prodcutivity blog. entitled Think Different ? Buy a Bigger Envelope!, subtitled How to Tell if You Really Need New Hardware. Its a...

Tort of Invasion of Privacy in Ontario

Posted on January 22, 2008
A recent article in the Canadian Privacy Law Review entitled Tort of Invasion of Privacy Recognized in Ontario talks about a case where a court awarded damages for breach of privacy. (Caltagirone v Scozzari-Cloutier) To put it in perspective though,....

Establish ownership of intellectual goods before creation

Posted on January 21, 2008
for the London Free Press - January 21, 2008 Read this on Canoe The failure to document the ownership of intellectual property is one of the most common mistakes made by organizations. It can be difficult to correct after the...

Fair copyright principles

Posted on January 18, 2008
Michael Geist has published a post entitled Fair Copyright for Canada Principles that summarizes what he thinks fair copyright reform looks like. The list is a good read for anyone trying to understand the issues. Read Michael's post...

Apple Macworld thoughts

Posted on January 16, 2008
Steve Jobs' "reality distortion field" was in full force at yesterday's MacWorld. Even if one is not an Apple fan, or does not use any Apple products, you have to admire the way they design, announce, and sell their products....

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