The “cloud” has come to mean the storing and accessing of data (including programs) over the internet rather than on on our device (computer, phone or otherwise). The official definition of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology is: “Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of […] Read More
Some recent news here. Rogers Communications has agreed to buy Shaw Communications in a deal valued at $26 billion, which would make Rogers the 2nd largest cell operator in Canada behind BCE Inc., overtaking Telus. Currently, the deal is waiting on 2/3rds majority shareholder approval. Also, the deal will be scrutinized by the Competition Bureau of Canada; the Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development; and the CRTC.
Rogers said it will invest $2.5 billion in the development of 5G networks over the next 5 years in Western Canada and create a $1 billion fund for improving the connection to high-speed internet in rural, remote, and Indigenous communities. The two companies also said this merger will create $1 billion in synergies.
The Minister of Innovation, François-Philippe Champagne, said the review will focus on “affordability, competition, and innovation”. Surely, the CRTC will be looking to Canada’s telecommunications policy, especially ss. 7(b), (c), and (g) of the Telecommunications Act, when it will review this deal. Hopefully, this won’t lead to an increase in Canada’s already high prices!
Davies J of the ONSC has ruled in favour of a Charter s. 2(b) challenge to s. 91 of the Canada Election Act. That provision made it an offence to make or publish certain false statements about political and public figures with the intention of affecting election results. Examples of statements captured by the provision are accusations of a criminal record, or alleged dishonesty regarding citizenship or qualifications.
The Privy Council Office has acknowledged the decision but it’s unclear whether the decision will be appealed.
Online free speech is an early frontier of law. Another development to watch is Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s work on legislation targeting hate on social media.
Earlier this week, Google announced that it intends to move away from third-party cookie trackers in response to an “erosion of trust”. This move will fundamentally impact digital advertising. Where current practices allow companies to track a user’s online activity to the extent of collecting their personal information, Google now strives to achieve a balance between providing relevant advertisements to users and respecting the privacy of users. Google attempts to utilize a “Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) API” system which preserves user privacy while enabling interest-based advertising. From what I understand, this new development aims to generate cohorts based on similar interests, thus hiding an individual’s information or online activity by inserting their data into a group of individuals with similar interests. Enclosed you will find Google’s announcement by David Temkin, Google’s Director of Project Management, Ads Privacy and Trust as well as Google’s research into FLoC API.
Above you will find my presentation. My apologies for the delay in posting my presentation. I had intended to post this earlier but came across technical difficulties in the recording process. I had to record my presentation without pause, so you may hear me clear my throat a few times.
I did review my presentation, in an effort to fact check myself and did find a few errors I would like to correct. Around the 1 minute, 28-second mark, I misspoke on the percentage. I said 12% but meant 25% instead. Another correction occurs on the 10 minute, 44-second mark where I stated the caricature used was made by Mark Poster. The caricature was actually made by Ben Garson; Mark Poster was the author of the article that reported the use of the caricature during a protest in Edmonton.
I also realized that my presentation does not include a bibliography and while I did cite some sources I used, in an effort to avoid plagiarism, enclosed are the sources I used for this presentation.
Thank you for your patience and I hope you enjoy the presentation!
Christine I.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ben Epstein, “Why is it So Difficult to Regulate Disinformation Online,” Cambridge University Press, October 2020, [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/disinformation-age/why-it-is-so-difficult-to-regulate-disinformation-online/A7613D7394F18AAE8F241894E8DA064A/core-reader] Accessed February 2021
Canadian Security Intelligence Service, “Who Said What: The Security Challenges of Modern Disinformation,” February 2018
Chris Tenove, “Protecting Democracy from Disinformation: Normative Threats and Policy Responses,” Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, June 2019
Claire Wardle & Hossein Derakhshan, “Information Disorder: Toward an interdisciplinary framework for research and policymaking,” Council of Europe Report, September 2017
Daniel Van Boom & Queenie Wong, “Australia passes new law forcing Google and Facebook to pay news publications,” CNET, February 24, 2021
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, “Canadian researchers analyse the spread of Covid-19 misinformation online,” December 16, 2020, [https://www.ideas-idees.ca/blog/canadian-researchers-analyse-spread-covid-19-misinformation-online] Accessed February 20, 2021
House of Commons, “Democracy under Threat: Risks and Solutions in the Era of Disinformation and Data Monopoly: Report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics,” December 2018
Library of Congress, “Initiatives to counter fake news” [https://www.loc.gov/law/help/fake-news/canada.php] Accessed February 20, 2021
Nanos Research “A strong majority of Canadians say that search engines should be forced to remove search results when they are inaccurate and that fake news is making it more difficult to find accurate sources of information,” Canadian Journalists for Free Expression May 2018
Shira Ovide, “The Internet is Splintering,” The New York Times, February 17, 2021
Tomoko Nagasako, “Global Disinformation campaigns and legal challenges,” International Cybersecurity Law Review, October 2020, 125-136
Yale Law School & Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression, “Fighting Fake News,” March 7, 2017
Hi Everyone,
Saska and I (Hellen) are doing our presentation on censorship of sexually explicit content by online platforms. Saska’s presentation will be on how internet platforms have treated nipples differently based on assumptions about the person’s gender identity; Hellen’s presentation will be on Only Fans.
In preparation for our presentations please read these two New York Times article:
Paige, Jared and I are presenting on the emergence of Deep Fake Technology. Our presentation will be added up shortly. Audio will already embedded in each slide, just click the grey speaker icon on each slide to start it.
Before we upload the presentation, please take a few minutes to listen to the two resources linked below. They both provide a great high-level overview of Deep Fake technology and of how it has been used in the past. They feature some pretty prominent people, so it would be a worthwhile listen:
Thanks everyone, and we look forward to sharing the presentation with you shortly!
Soundcloud announced today its new ‘fan-powered royalties’ model. Unlike the current industry model which pools revenues and pays based on total number of streams, the new fan-powered model distributes royalties based on revenue from fans/users directly to the artists that they streamed. Prior to reading about this I was not aware that there was such a large gap in royalties paid between the two models. I was also surprised and saddened to learn that streaming services was not paying on a per-stream basis already (Spotify pays royalties calculated from percentage of streams out of total global streams), which results in niche and indie artists being at a disadvantage.
Building on the earlier post on this topic, I wanted to keep talking about this because it is interesting and will probably influence Canadian legislation.
For context, some highlights from the c net article linked below:
– Following a new Australian bill, “Google and Facebook are required to negotiate licensing agreements with publishers for the news articles that appear on Google search and Facebook’s feed.”
– “This legislation will help level the playing field and see Australian news media businesses paid for generating original content,” said Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg
– In response, Facebook pulled all of their news from their platform for 5 days
– Collateral damage: “When Facebook blocked news from its Australian platform, pages for official agencies like Queensland Health and the Bureau of Meteorology also went blank. ”
– “After Facebook cut news from Australian users, the country’s treasurer continued negotiations with Zuckerberg. That lead to Facebook committing to reversing its news blockade on Monday in exchange for amendments to the code.”
– “Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he intends to “ensure the revenues of web giants are shared more fairly with creators and media.” Ministers in the UK and EU have cited Australia’s example as inspiration for potential future legislation.”
I see several issues at play here, including competition policy, industry self-regulation and quality of reporting. While I like that news companies will be better compensated for their work, I worry that this gives companies like Facebook even more power to influence what is written because journalists will be incentivized to write the articles that those companies are willing to pay for. In addition, should we be supporting the old journalism model / media companies to this extent?
Communications Law
