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The Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, today announced that 11 organizations will be awarded a total of $388,319 through her Office’s Contributions Program for research into emerging privacy issues, including surveillance technologies, privacy policies aimed at children and the use of DNA in the criminal justice system.“The rapid advancements of technology and greater demands for personal information make it imperative for Canadians to be provided with sound analysis of privacy challenges and issues,” says Ms. Stoddart. “The research carried out through our Contributions Program is helping to create a stronger privacy knowledge base and to foster public dialogue.”This is the third year that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has run its Contributions Program since its launch in mid-2004. The Program was designed to support non-profit research that furthers the development of a national research capacity in Canada in the broad spectrum of issues impacting privacy. Research under this year’s Program will touch on a variety of other interesting topics, including the certification of privacy professionals, digital rights management technology, health privacy and the de-identification of personal information. This is the largest amount of funding that has been awarded to researchers in the Program’s history and twice as many institutions are being funded in comparison with last year.
Hearings that could dramatically alter the way labels and publishers share online music revenue in Canada begin September 6.The proceedings, before the Copyright Board of Canada in Ottawa, will mark the first time the federal-appointed tribunal considers rates for the online sale of music.CSI seeks tariffs in three categories of online music use: permanent downloads, limited downloads as provided by subscription services and on-demand music streamsFor permanent downloads, CSI proposes a rate of 15 percent of the retail price with a maximum of 10 cents Canadian (9 cents) per track. For subscription services offering limited downloads, CSI proposes 8 percent of gross revenue.CSI further proposes that services authorizing copying of musical works onto portable devices pay a minimum fee of $1.40 Canadian ($1.24) per subscriber per month, while services that do not allow portability pay a minimum of 60 cents Canadian (53 cents) per subscriber.On-demand streaming services will be asked to pay 5.8 percent of gross revenue with a minimum monthly fee of 45 cents Canadian (40 cents) per subscriber.
Following CRIA’s decision that it would no longer represent certain of its members (“the B Class members”) before the Board in this proceeding, the Board ordered CRIA to send a notice to its members saying that it had been instructed by the Board to advise them that it would not be representing the B Class members in the proceeding before the Board and that this was CRIA’s decision, not the Board’s."Who are these "B class" members? Perhaps the most well known examples were the 6 major Canadian labels that left. In essence, the "A class" would be the big four multinational record labels. The 6 labels that left in April were Nettwerk Records, Aquarius Records, the Children's Group, Linus Entertainment, Anthem Records and True North Records. For a better understanding of how big these labels were, Nettwerk housed major acts like Billy Talent, Sum 41, Avril Lavign, Broken Social Scene, and Barenaked Ladies. These labels left on the basis that CRIA is not representing their interests, but merely representing the interests of the multi-national labels.
As reported by Michael Geist, it all started with a comment made by the NDP Heritage Critic. Charlie Angus said, "Mr. Speaker, next week, the heritage minister is holding a major fundraiser and, for the price of a ticket, one gets access not just to the heritage minister but to the industry minister. The woman who is flogging the tickets for the minister just happens to be Charlotte Bell who is head of regulatory affairs for CanWest. She just happens to be the go-to gal for industry trying to influence the upcoming regulatory review affecting both heritage and industry.The broadcast review happens in two weeks. The cash grab happens next week. Why is the minister using her office to trade political access for political contributions?" Bev Oda responded, "Mr. Speaker, I have observed every rule existing right now. I concur with the President of the Treasury Board that we need to get the accountability act enacted, which we could, in fact, do this afternoon, but I would still be adhering to the laws next week."During the exchange, it sounded like she was going to go ahead and have a fundraiser with lobbyists interested in new broadcast policies. This was despite the idea of introducing legislation that would stop this from occurring. Would history repeat itself as it did with Sam Bulte? No. Hours after the revelation that a fundraiser was being organised by a someone lobbying Bev Oda's department, the event was cancelled. According to the article "The minister was not aware Charlotte Bell was registered to lobby Canadian Heritage," [Ms. Oda's spokesman, Chisolm Pothier] said, "To avoid any negative perception, she decided to cancel the event."
Heritage Minister Bev Oda has recently confirmed that her government's "intent and plan so far" is to introduce a copyright bill this fall. If this happens, and the bill satisfies certain special interest expectations, it would be a dramatic departure from the Conservatives' promising March 19, 2005 policy declaration and very controversial indeed. I fear that the government has been misinformed and even misled by some lobbyists, and may not realize what lies ahead. The bill could contain two main thrusts that would be deeply divisive and likely be seen as unnecessarily pro-American and contrary to Canada's interest. The most obviously contentious problem would be excessive anti-user digital rights management and technical protection measures (DRM + TPM).These could serve to strangle much new technology and threaten basic access, the public domain, fair dealing and other users' rights.
Project Cleanfeed Canada, based on a similar campaign in the United Kingdom, stops child pornography websites from loading, making it seem as if they don't exist. Only the big ISPs have signed on so far -- Bell, Bell Aliant, MTS Allstream, Rogers, Shaw, SaskTel, Telus, and Videotron -- and are only blocking between 500 and 800 websites, but it's an excellent start for a project that will surely grow, said RCMP Supt. Earla-Kim McColl. "Those that are looking for these types of sites will not be able to access them once they've been reported," she said, adding that the service will also prevent web surfers from unintentionally loading child pornography. The system could go online for some ISPs within weeks and may take as long as three months for others, said Lianna McDonald, executive director of Winnipeg-based Cybertip.ca, the national child sexual exploitation tipline that spearheaded the program.
Mr. McTeague's article contains the same controversial statistics we are constantly needing to refute from the BSA/CAAST. The BSA counts the number of computers shipped, over-estimates the demand for people running their member software, subtracts the number of boxes they actually shipped, and declares the difference as "software theft". In reality that difference also includes everyone who is legally using Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) which does not have a per-unit cost (marginal cost) and thus are not counted the same way as BSA member software. What the BSA is really fighting against isn't "software theft", but their major FLOSS competitors which represent the fastest growing part of the software industry.Mr. McTeagues confuses controversial copyright issues with the largely separate issue of counterfeiting. Nobody has a problem with the government enacting laws to deal with commercial counterfeiting where someone is making money by illegally pretending someone elses work is their own. What we are critical of is enacting legislation based on things such as the 1996 WIPO treaties which are aimed not at reducing harmful commercial copyright infringement, but at reducing competition for the incumbent industry association members. If Canada is to become more competitive we need to support innovation and competition, not tie ourselves to an ever increasing trade deficit with the United States by outlawing Canadian competition to incumbent US companies
Under the heading "Canada's about to have a copyright disaster," Cory Doctorow - boingboing.net's Toronto-based co-founder - warned that the new legislation would "plunge Canada into the dark ages" and "[outdo] the USA for sheer boneheaded lunacy." Including contact information for Heritage Minister Bev Oda and her opposition critics, Doctorow called on the site's readers - more than two million unique visitors a month, according to one estimate - to send in their "cool-headed objections" to any bill that failed to balance user rights with corporate interests. After discovering that Bulte - then the parliamentary secretary for heritage - had been the guest of honour at a pre-election fundraising event hosted by lobbyists for the Canadian Recording Industry Association, online activists dubbed her "Hollywood's Member of Parliament" and drew attention to the thousands of dollars in campaign donations she had received from leading players in the copyright lobby. Now, Doctorow is threatening to make Oda's life equally difficult - already noting that she's similarly been backed by rights owners. "We kicked Oda's predecessor out of office because she sold out the public on copyright," he wrote. "Oda's not far behind. MPs should represent the public. They shouldn't take money from giant corporations and then hand those companies laws that grant them windfall profits at public expense."
As much as 50 per cent of the world's pirated movies come from Canada, prompting the film industry to threaten to delay the release of new titles in this country.According to an investigation by Twentieth Century Fox, most of the illegal recording, or "camcording," is taking place in Montreal movie houses, taking advantage of bilingual releases and lax copyright laws.In Quebec, it is much more advantageous because you get both English and French. You cover a bigger part of the world," said Ellis Jacob, chief executive of the Cineplex Entertainment theatre chain. "They are using Canada because they can have the movie out on the street in the Philippines and China before it even releases there."
von Finckenstein Named CRTC ChairMark Goldberg notes that Konrad von Finckenstein, a federal court judge and former head of the Competition Bureau, has been named chair of the CRTC. Notwithstanding the government's bio , many online observers best remember von Finckenstein for his decision [PDF] to block CRIA's attempt to unmask 29 alleged file sharers armed only with faulty evidence.
The new movement comes a little less than a week after an Access to Information Act request from Michael Geist revealed that CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association), one of the major proponents to anti-circumvention and restricting copyright laws in Canada, was found to have private meetings with the minister of Heritage on a monthly basis - a recent one to discredit the start-up of the CMCC.The press release continues: “The CMCC sees the 2006 sales numbers – and the continuing success of the private copying scheme – as a sign that there’s no need to change Canada’s copyright laws to enable record companies to sue our fans,” explained Barenaked Ladies front man and CMCC co-founder Steven Page. “Our music download market is growing faster than those in the US and Europe. To us, that seems like evidence that the Canadian government should focus on empowering Canadian musicians and protecting Canadian consumers from potentially harmful technology.”Changes to Canada’s copyright laws should reflect where our music business is going rather than looking back to where it has come from. Propping up old business models that favour multinational record companies’ interests ahead of those of Canadian artists just doesn’t make sense.”
In recent weeks, Canadians have been subjected to a steady stream of reports asserting that Canada has become the world's leading source of movie piracy. Pointing to the prevalence of illegal camcording – a practice that involves videotaping a movie directly off the screen in a theatre and transferring the copy on to DVDs for commercial sale – the major Hollywood studios are threatening to delay the Canadian distribution of their top movies.While the reports have succeeded in attracting considerable attention, a closer examination of the industry's own data reveals that the claims are based primarily on fiction rather than factOver the past two weeks, reports have pegged the Canadian percentage of global camcording at either 40 or 50 per cent. Yet the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a U.S. lobby group that includes the MPAA, advised the U.S. government in late September that Canadians were the source for 23 per cent of camcorded copies of DVDs. As of August 2006, the MPAA documented 179 camcorded movies as the source for infringing DVDs since 2004. During that time, its members released about 1,400 movies, suggesting that approximately one in every 10 movies is camcorded and sold as infringing DVDs. According to this data, Canadian sources are therefore responsible for camcorded DVD versions of about 3 per cent of all MPAA member movies.
Over eight months after the initiative started, it appears that the initiative has already come to an end. Access Copyright announced on the official Captain Copyright website that "in the face of continuing opposition, the [Captain Copyright classroom] materials will not be used in the classroom." Access Copyright explained, "Under these circumstances there is no point in our continuing to work on this project." Slyck takes a look at the 8 month initiative that ultimately fell apart and became officially shelved."Despite the significant progress we made on addressing the concerns raised about the original Captain Copyright initiative, as well as the positive feedback and requests for literally hundreds of lesson kits from teachers and librarians, we have come to the conclusion that the current climate around copyright issues will not allow a project like this one to be successful. It is difficult for organizations to reach agreement on copyright issues at this time and we know that, in the face of continuing opposition, the materials will not be used in the classroom. Under these circumstances there is no point in our continuing to work on this project."
