Lawful Access = Higher Internet Fees
There’s no way around it. Lawful access will be costly to consumers in Canada.
The internet providers do not have the necessary technology and manpower to give law enforcement in Canada real time access to internet communications, especially the smaller internet providers. And these extra expenditures will be passed on to Canadians.
We are talking about technology used to distinguish criminal activity from normal internet traffic and according to Statistic Canada‘s Canadian Internet Use Survey, 79% of Canadian households accessed the internet in 2010.
The task is not only overwhelming but could possibly be open to abuse and security breaches.
After all, we are talking about individual internet providers here, some of which use different technologies to secure their networks. And I’m sure there are plenty of identity thieves that would love to access the weaker of these networks, some of which are probably tied to the criminal organizations our law enforcement is trying to expose with this legislation.
The 2011 Canadians and Privacy Survey conducted by Harris/Decima for The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada found that 8 out of 10 Canadians opposed this legislation because of numerous concerns about privacy and security. And in 2009, Statistics Canada found that 48% of Canadian consumers were concerned about credit card purchases online.
Is this really the time to make consumers nervous about security and privacy online ?
2011 Holiday Season Suggested Mailing Dates
Canada Post has added their suggested mailing dates for the 2011 Holiday Season to their site. Click here for details.
Delays, Delays, Delays
I had planned to start doing more on the blog side of this site last week but unfortunately I was sidetracked by family illness, pain from dental surgery and a cold. And now my Windows 7 machine, which had worked fine since I purchased it in late 2009, is starting to get buggy.
The Desktop Window Manager issue has appeared. This program randomly shut of causing my monitor to flicker and the Aero window transparency to turn off and on, randomly.
This is rather annoying and I’ve tried all of the fixes, including forcing Aero by editing the registry. In the end the best solution for me was to just go with a “Basic and High Contrast Theme” on personalization, which isn’t a big loss really. It looks fine and it appears to be better on the resources.
If I ever get another Windows 7 machine I’ll probably drop Aero. But then I digress.
I’m hoping to get back into posting more regularly here by November, especially about Bill C-11. The debate is on and the opposition is multiplying to the digital lock provisions.
CRTC Will Not Regulate Online Film Rentals
The CRTC will not regulate online film rental companies and broadcasters.
These online broadcaster will not be forced to subsidize Canadian TV content, the CRTC having found no evidence that their activities hurt conventional broadcasters.
Bill C-11’s Digital Locks Provisions – Why ?
The digital lock provisions included in Bill C-11 are meant to curb the circumvention of “technological protection measures“, to halt piracy. But unfortunately many consumers currently circumvent digital locks to perform private copies of music recordings or to view films that are unavailable in their region.
At the moment Canadians are able to purchase music on iTunes and use this
program to convert their legally purchased ACC files to the mp3 format.
These consumers can also purchase region free DVD or blu-ray players from Amazon.com
Neither of the above acts result in the unauthorized, uncompensated distribution of copyrighted works to third parties yet these acts could technically be forbidden by Section 41 of the Copyright Act if Bill C-11 passes.
Private Copying, as defined in Part VIII of our Copyright Act, is not exempt in Bill C-11. And Section 41 explicitly forbids the manufacturing, importation, sale or rental of technologies, devices or componants whose primary function is the circumvention of copy protection.
It appearently doesn’t matter that the copyright owners were compensated when the recordings were legally purchased from legitimate vendors and that if it weren’t for copy protection that these acts would be considered private copying in law.
The authors of Bill C-11 insist on labeling these acts “piracy”, even when consent is implied by the sale of these recordings to law abiding Canadian consumers.
The American entertainment industry has yet to specify what losses are incured in the private copying of copy protected works. They also failed to specify how they are loosing funds on legally purchased foreign recordings they refuse to sell in Canada.
Why are we allowing this undue, unjustified foreign influence on our Parlamentary processes ?