Question of the Week (Class 7): Will your mobile phone bills decrease?
This past week the Liberal government issued a Direction to the CRTC to emphasize competition, affordability, consumer interests, and innovation in its decisions. The hope, plainly, is that mobile phone bills which as we have previously seen are on average second highest in the world, will decrease. Stories (click on to read) and the Direction […]
Russia wants to unplug its internet from the rest of the world. Is that even possible?
Russian lawmakers want to tighten the screws on Russia’s internet access by creating an “sovereign” network that the Kremlin could shut off from the greater World Wide Web. Proponents of a bill now working its way through the Russian parliament say passing the measure will protect the country’s internet from foreign cyberattacks or other threats. […]
GDPR and Techdirt: Thomas Goolnik Gets Google To Forget A Story About Him Getting Google To Forget Stories About Thomas Goolnik
Building upon some of the issues discussed in our group presentation on Tuesday. Google v Costeja González (C-131/12 (2014)) declared Google was a “data controller.” As a result of this declaration, Google is required to remove data on a person which is “inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant.” This articulation of the law created a […]
Question of the Week (Class 6): Do you believe Facebook?
On February 20, 2019 Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain and Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a long and very interesting conversation on the subject of Facebook’s roles, responsibilities, and legal obligations. The video is below. You can easily find a fair number of articles about the event as well. Facebook’s deeds and misdeeds have certainly […]
Importance of the European Union GDPR
In May 2018, the European General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) came into force, which accelerated the European Union into a new era of having the world’s strongest data protection laws. The European Data Protection legislation was the basis of the famous Google v Costeja González (C-131/12 (2014)) case, in which it was ruled that […]
EU Article 13 Copyright Law/Youtube.
In September 2017 the European Parliament voted on an amended version of the EU copyright law. Overall, the directive intended to find a balance between rights holders (record companies or publishers) and platforms such as YouTube. Article 13 of this EU’s new Directive on Copyright is very controversial. The fact that platforms will be liable […]
Question of the Week (Class 4): Should there be “should’s” in S. 3 of the Broadcasting Act?
As we started discussing last week, S.3 of the Broadcasting Act (S.C. 1991, c. 11) is bit different from most other statutory provisions you might have come across. It is rather full of the word “should”. This is in stark contrast to most statutory drafting norms and, interestingly for our purposes, quite different in style if not […]
Netflix’s Rising Popularity
This week Netflix was nominated for 15 Oscars – demonstrating that it is a serious competitor to the traditional cinema industry. It comes in the same week that they announced that they were increasing prices for their subscribers. Furthermore, Netflix has recently claimed that their non-US subscribers have risen dramatically over the past month. However […]
Results of today’s “One Word Poll” on your policy priority for the communications system
Results Freedom = 4 Privacy = 4 Security = 3 Access = 2 Open = 2 Balance = 1 Consumer Protections = 1 Creativity = 1 Fact-based = 1 Innovation = 1 Net-neutrality = 1 Transparency = 1 Thanks to everyone who played… Jon
Question of the Week (Class 3): Should Canada ban Huawei from our 5G Networks?
Thanks to Mishaal for doing the heavy lifting in the post just below. Will add a couple of more articles for you to consider (click on the screen-captures). So our Question of the Week is simply: Jon
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