Legislation

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Google's policies around licensing certain patents and suing other companies that it claims infringe on them.

Alex Cameron, a lawyer with Faskens, recently obtained his doctorate in law from the University of Ottawa (I served on the examination panel at his defence).

Last month, I reported that Association of Canadian Community Colleges had received a legal
opinion concluding that the Access Copyright model licence had "little value" for educational institutions.

Last week, Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart released the results of a disturbing
new study conducted by her office that found many leading websites "leaking" personal information.

The Publishers Weekly reported yesterday that “The Association of American Publishers (on behalf of five named publisher plaintiffs) and Google today announced they have settled their long-running litigation over Google’s library book scanning.

A B.C. man has filed a lawsuit against Google over the scanning of emails sent to Gmail users. Similar lawsuits have been filed in the U.S., though experts are skeptical about whether automated scanning amounts to a privacy violation.

UNESCO held the World Open Educational Resources Congress in Paris last
week with delegates releasing a declaration
in support of OERs and open licensing frameworks.

Twitter has issued a transparency
report that discloses government requests for user information
along with copyright takedown demands.

The reverberations from yesterday's Supreme Court of Canada
copyright decisions will be felt for years (good coverage of the
decisions include posts from Mark Hayes, IP
Osgoode, Barry
Sookman, Howard
Knopf, the Toronto
Star, and the CBC).

The implications of last week's Supreme Court of Canada copyright
decisions seem readily apparent to just about everybody - other than
Access Copyright.

I've posted several pieces on the recent Supreme Court of Canada copyright decisions, including an immediate overview, a piece on why Canada has shifted to fair use, an analysis of the inclusion of a technological neutrality principle, a discussion...

As public concern over Internet privacy has grown in recent years,
one of the first responses is invariably to focus on the need for
improved disclosure through easily accessible website privacy
policies.

The recent federal budget was a hefty 498 pages, but my weekly technology law column (Ottawa Citizen version, homepage version) notes it still omitted disclosing the decision to eliminate funding for the Community Access Program, Canada's...

The Economist focuses on new copyright rules for the digital age, rightly pointing to Bill C-11 as "setting a new standard of permissiveness" (though it neglects to mention the restrictive digital lock rules).

Earlier this month I suspected that the US copyright lobby might soon mount a new attack on Canada’s copyright law. It turns out that the attack had begun that very same day. Here’s the written testimony of the IIPA from Sept.

Judge Richard Posner, one of the best regarded judges in the world, has a blog post in which he expresses concern about the potential for patent and copyright law to restrict competition and creativity.

The Information Commissioner of Canada has launched a public consultation on access-to-information legislation.

The Canadian government is planning a pilot project that will permit online access to information
requests. The current system requires paper based requests.

Given the enormous popularity of social media, establishing a foothold on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other popular websites has become a top priority for most organizations.  The same is true for the federal government, which last year...

Dozens of civil society groups have issued a Declaration of
Internet Freedom that focuses on five principles: expression,
access, openness, innovation, and privacy.

Professor Michael Carrier has published
the results of a remarkable initiative on copyright and
innovation that uses the music industry and Napster as the case
study.

Last week, I posted
on the significance of the Supreme Court of Canada's five copyright
decisions with an emphasis on the shift from fair dealing to fair
use.

I have posted several pieces on the recent Supreme Court of Canada copyright decisions (an immediate overview, a piece on why Canada has shifted to fair use, an analysis of the inclusion of a technological neutrality principle, and a discussion on...

Last week, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications
Commission announced
that it is terminating the Local Programming Improvement Fund
(LPIF).

Access Copyright and the Association of Universities and Colleges of
Canada announced
an agreement yesterday on a model licence.