The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa has just released a study into the privacy implications of digital rights management technologies (DRM) currently used in the Canadian marketplace:

“Our assessment of the compliance of these DRM applications with PIPEDA [Personal Information Protection and
Electronic Documents Act] led to a number of general findings:

• Fundamental privacy-based criticisms of DRM are well-founded: we observed tracking of usage habits, surfing habits, and technical data.
• Privacy invasive behaviour emerged in surprising places. For example, we observed e-book software profiling individuals. We unexpectedly encountered DoubleClick – an

There’s a good article in the Economist on the new scheme, Peer to Patent, recently adopted for a trial by the U.S. Patent Office and also placed under evaluation by Britain’s Intellectual Property Office and the European Patent Office. Devised by New York Law School faculty member Beth Simone Noveck (let’s hear it for law profs!), the process has the patent office submitting about 250 applications in various computer fields to the scrutiny of the public, the thought being that the relevant communities will know more than the patent examiners about such critical matters as “prior art.”

The relevant page . . . [more]

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner is concerned that street level photography, as currently deployed in the United States, may not meet the basic requirements of Canadian privacy laws.

The Privacy Commissioner has written to Google and Immersive Media to seek further information and assurances that Canadians’ privacy rights will be safeguarded if their technology is deployed in Canada.

Privacy Commission, Sept. 11 2007

Although Google Street View hasn’t come to Canada yet, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart has written expressing concern to Google and to Immersive Media Corp, a Calgary company whose large database of photos gathered with high resolution . . . [more]

At times lawyers need to learn a little medicine, and the NCBI Resource Locator might help. First of all, NCBI stands for the U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information, which is part of the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine, and the institution that manages PubMed, the likely the destination for a legal researcher.

PubMed has a fantastic search page, offering you all manner of ways of focusing your search into the medical literature. As well, there are tutorials to help you figure out how to do what you want.

Which brings us to the . . . [more]

The Washington Post reports in the Sept. 7/07 article Judge Invalidates Patriot Act Provisions that a judge has declared portions of the U.S. Patriot Act to be unconstitutional: . . . [more]

The Ontario Court of Appeal’s first webcast is taking place right now (12:50pm EDT). You can see the argument in the case of Frohlick, Melanie et al. v. Pinkerton Canada Ltd. et al. by clicking here, and agreeing to abide by certain terms. At the moment there doesn’t appear to be any provision for archiving and streaming videos of hearings. . . . [more]

Everyone should have a look at the latest issue of the American Bar Association Journal – Law in the Age of Terror

. . . [more]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced yesterday he has asked Governor General Michaëlle Jean to prorogue the current session of Parliament. The session was originally supposed to start again on September 17th. This means the Parliament would not sit again until October 16th, starting the Second Session of the 39th Parliament. See the Prime Minister’s Sept. 4th announcement.

According to a report by the CBC:

the move sets the stage for a non-confidence vote that could trigger an election campaign — a vote and election campaign that could turn on Canada’s commitment in Afghanistan.

Opposition parties must decide whether

First We … AACS*… The Lawyers

* AACS is pronounced, for present purposes, access.

Here are some links for those of you who have been following the HD-DVD movie decryption key gufuffle resulting from the posting one of the keys on Digg.

Blame the Digg revolt on lawyers? See Slashdot for links to a number of articles. One is on Market Watch where the writer (John Dvorak), under the heading “Digg’s DVD-decoder fiasco Commentary: Lawyers’ efforts can be counterproductive” pens gems such as “lawyers can be idiots and have no sense of public relations” and “the episode reemphasizes the new . . . [more]

A post in the Law.com blog summarizes a theory put forth by Ned Snow, assistant professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law, who found a 250-year-old common law tradition granting copyright protection to authors of personal correspondence and now claims that forwarding an e-mail is a violation of copyright law… Here is the paper: A Copyright Conundrum: Protecting Email Privacy.

I am of the opinion that, if no means are taken to protect the copyrights, it is not an infringement to forward the email. In fact, unless the sender uses IRM (Information Rights Management), that . . . [more]

Necessary reading for Slawyers 

This just posted on Michael Geist’s Blog

The Hill Times reports this week (issue still not online) that the Conservative government will introduce copyright reform legislation this spring provided that there is no election. The paper points to two main changes from the Liberals Bill C-60 – tougher anti-circumvention legislation (ie. DMCA-style laws that ban devices that can be used to circumvent as well as provisions that block all circumvention subject to the odd exception) and an educational exception that will provide for free access to web-based materials.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1875/125/

 

This is just a footnote to our former thread, but the Court of Appeal’s judgment is now available in full.

The preposterous claims about copyright in ideas have now been rejected. . . . [more]