Parliament May Be On Break….
But your local Member of Parliament‘s office should still be available to receive letters and emails in regards to the digital locks provisions in Bill C-11 and Lawful Access until Parliament resumes in late January.
Over 80 thousand Canadians signed the OpenMedia.ca petition against Lawful Access, including yours truly.
Please consider signing this petition. Thank you.
Megaupload To Sue Universal Music ?
Billboard reports that the above commercial has sparked a lawsuit in-between Megaupload and Universal Music Group.
The file sharing service claims that Universal Music Group had filed a takedown notice with Youtube for copyright infringement to have this video removed.
“Let us be clear: Nothing in our song or the video belongs to Universal Music Group,” said MegaUpload CEO David Robb. “We have signed agreements with all artists endorsing MegaUpload.”
RIAA and the artists featured on the video could not be contacted for comment by Billboard by the printing of their article.
Attention Bell Customers
Bell has announced price “updates” on their home phone and internet services, effective January 1st, 2012.
Rogers Video Direct Closes
Rogers Video Direct has closed and the mail rental service’s customers have been re-directed to Zip.ca.
The Rogers Video Direct site was operated by Zip anyway so there are only a few minor changes to the service.
Canadians To Pay For Music Previews ?
Starting tomorrow the Supreme Court of Canada will hear appeals in regards to royalty payments for music previews and music in video games.
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada wants royalties every time someone clicks on one of those short previews when they Shop on iTunes, eMusic
, etc, and had appealed an October 18th, 2007 Copyright Board of Canada decision stating that these qualifies as “fair dealing”.
Unfortunately for the consumer many retailers have decided to drop previews because of this case, including Amazon.ca, and if the Supreme Court rules in their favor previews might be removed on most sites because the royalties would be quite prohibitive.
A ruling establishing royalties on previews could also set a precedent that could hinder film previews and trailers in Canada. But I am hoping the previous Copyright Board of Canada decision will stand.
Previews are not purchases but research to which the end result might be a legitimate purchase. And without previews, people will think twice about making a purchase, so it is counterproductive.
Then there’s the fact that this ruling would not apply to foreign sites, where previews are accessible by Canadians. And any attempt to collect royalties for previews from these foreign sites would be problematic because of their national “fair dealing” exemptions.
Apple and Canada’s largest telecom companies are of course fighting this appeal. The Canadian Recording Industry Association had also opposed royalties on previews so I am guessing that their modern counterpart, Music Canada, also oppose them.
Cloud Computing & The Patriot Act
It appears that some non-American cloud services are warning people to avoid US based cloud services because of the Patriot Act.
According to Politico.com, some companies have been claiming that this anti-terrorist legislation may enable the US government to access data stored on U.S. cloud computing providers like Google and Microsoft. And this is hindering the adoption of these services in some countries.