Legal Commentary

Copyright - Tell Me Lies by Michael Geist

Posted on March 19, 2009
Michael has a must read post entitled  Tell Me Lies  that is the text of his remarks at a copyright conference yesterday. He starts with a quote from a recent article by Clay Shirky ( another must read) on the future of newspapers that says: “When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, [...

iPhone 3.0 debuts

Posted on March 18, 2009
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.   It reads as follows: The big tech news yesterday was Apple?s preview of the new iPhone 3.0 software that is available now for developers, and this summer as a free upgrade for iPhone users. The Apple mystique and reality distortion field continue despite Steve Jobs? absence from the [...

Ignored contract is still in force, top court says

Posted on March 16, 2009
For the London Free Press - March 16, 2009 Read this on Canoe The Supreme Court of Canada recently rejected a lower court’s decision that you can’t enforce a contract that you’ve demonstrated no intention to comply with. In Jedfro Investments (U...

Happy Pi Day

Posted on March 13, 2009
Tomorow, being March 14, or 3.14, is Pi Day.    (Lets face it, the Pi approximation days are a bit of a stretch).   Or to get more precise, Pi minute is 3.14159, or March 14 at 1:59 p.m. (Lets ignore the fact that it should be at 1:59 am.) Take a look at Pi Day’s “official web [...

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Touchscreen restaurant tables

Posted on March 12, 2009
The Wired Gadget Lab blog has an article about a restaurant in London (the other London, unfortunately) that projects touchscreens on its tables.  You order your food by selecting menu items off the touchscreen projections, and view and pay your bill the same way...

Hope for balanced copyright reform in Canada?

Posted on March 10, 2009
Howard Knopf points to a Canwest article talking about how Heritage Minister James Moore uses PVR’s and iPods.  That’s important because under current law, and the last proposed copyright reform bill, some of the things we all routinely do with those types of device technically violates copyright laws...

Peers question British surveillance

Posted on March 09, 2009
For the London Free Press - March 9, 2009 Read this on Canoe George Orwell’s depiction of state surveillance in 1984 is beginning to look less like science fiction and more like reality in the United Kingdom, where successive governments have created one of the most extensive and advanced surveillance systems in the world...

CNN on Kindle - quotes London’s Voices.com

Posted on March 06, 2009
The Kindle text to speech feature has created a controversy on both the legal issue of copyright, and the business/consumer issue of the merits of computerized text to speech vs. audio books using voice actors. Those on the voice actor side say that a computer generated voice just can’t match a human voice for subtlety, tone and [...

Health sector data leaks

Posted on March 05, 2009

Canada Declines in International ICT Rating

Posted on March 04, 2009

Happy Square Root Day

Posted on March 03, 2009

Employment contracts require care

Posted on March 02, 2009

IT exec’s like cloud computing - but wary over security/control issues

Posted on February 27, 2009

Amazon Kindle text to speech a copyright violation?

Posted on February 26, 2009
The Authors Guild is upset with the new Kindle, claiming that its text to speech feature violates copyright.  Several comments have been made about the dubiousness of the claim.  See the New York Times op-ed by the president of the Authors Guild called The Kindle Swindle...

CRTC net neutrality comments

Posted on February 25, 2009
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today. It reads as follows: Connie wrote a couple of days ago about the submission deadline for the upcoming CRTC network neutrality / network management / traffic shaping hearings. Since then, some submissions have been made public that illustrate how important this hearing will be, and how it will [...

Battle over Toronto police data brings landmark access ruling

Posted on February 23, 2009
For the London Free Press - February 23, 2009  Read this on Canoe The Ontario Court of Appeal recently handed down what is being hailed as a landmark decision in terms of openness and transparency in electronic records. A complaint by James Rankin, a journalist at the Toronto Star newspaper, led to an adjudicator’s decision, an appeal to [...

Barcelona GSMA 2009

Posted on February 19, 2009
The annual event in Barcelona where the cell phone manufacturers and carriers announce their new offerings is underway.  More details can be found on the tech press, such as CNET.  Android based phones have been announced for Europe.  Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6...

Follow the CRTC new media hearings

Posted on February 18, 2009
The CRTC started its new media hearing yesterday.  It will consider whether the CRTC should regulate the Internet in some way - the thought being that it is just another form of broadcasting. Its an important issue that will no doubt garner a lot of press...

Happy 1234567890 day!

Posted on February 13, 2009
Unix and other systems count time by using a 32 bit field to count the seconds starting from January 1, 1970 (known as the Unix epoch).  So at 6:31 Eastern time today Unix time will be 1234567890.  There are actually a few events planned around this milestone...

Sirius-XM solution - IMHO

Posted on February 12, 2009
There are rumours in the press about possible bankruptcy/restructuring for Sirius-XM satellite radio.  It seems that one of the problems is their rather pricey deals with content providers. Another problem, in my view, is that the service simply costs too much for consumers...

IP law in 30 minutes

Posted on February 11, 2009
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows: I just got back from giving a presentation on IP law to a group of accountants, in which I gave a high level view of various forms of intellectual property. I have been asked to give this presentation several times over the years, [...

House of Lords: Surveillance society undermines fundamental freedoms

Posted on February 10, 2009
The British House of Lords just released a report that expressed concern over the UK’s extensive CCTV surveillance network (4 million cameras) and its growing DNA database containing information even on innocent people. Read a Guardian article about the report.

Computer tinkering can pay dividends

Posted on February 09, 2009
For the London Free Press - February 9, 2009 Read this on Canoe In 2007, the Ontario government blocked its employees from accessing Facebook. This is common in many companies and organizations where YouTube, MySpace and various other networking and online applications are also banned...

Piracy’s effects on movies and TV

Posted on February 06, 2009
Techdirt comments on a New York Times article that talks about the hardship caused to the industry by the downloading of movies and TV shows.  Techdirt’s position (and i tend to be more on the Techdirt side on this one) is that the arguments and stats used by the industry just don’t add up...

Photographers treated as terrorists

Posted on February 04, 2009
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows: There has been a disturbing trend towards authorities in various countries stopping, questioning, and even arresting people who are simply taking photographs of public places. Somehow taking a photo equates in some people?s minds to gathering information for terrorist purposes...

Copyright - derivative vs transformative works

Posted on February 03, 2009
Techdirt has a post that refers to a Wall Street journal article entitled Color This Area of the Law Gray  that talks about artists being inspired by the works of others.  It explores the concept of how different something has to be to be from an existing work to be non-infringing...

Foresight key to protecting names, brand - Twittersquatting

Posted on February 02, 2009
For the London Free Press - February 2, 2009 Read this on Canoe Almost everyone has heard about people who register website domain names, such as “mcdonalds.com,” with no legitimate claim to them. The same thing may now be happening with usernames on social networking services such as Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook...

retailcommon is live - check it out

Posted on January 28, 2009
retailcommon is a new concept in online retailing that is worth a look.  Click on the graphic at the top for a brief introduction to its features. It will offer the sale of fashion/clothing to consumers, but with some unique twists.  Products are provided by retailers local to the consumer...

Today is Data Privacy Day

Posted on January 28, 2009
From my Slaw post for today: Fellow Slawer David Fraser points out that today is Data Privacy Day, being celebrated in the United States, Canada, and 27 European countries. Intel?s privacy day page says: Designed to raise awareness and generate discussion about data privacy practices and rights, Data Privacy Day activities in the United States have included privacy [...

Location awareness - the good, the bad, and the disturbing

Posted on January 27, 2009
Wired magazine has an article written about a man’s experiment with a location aware lifestyle.  He used an iPhone and various applications to see what would happen when location aware tools were used.  He used them to find things, to feed his location into social networking sites, and to see what info he could find [...

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