Security News

The past twelve months in law and technology were exceptionally active, with the passage of anti-spam legislation, record penalties for violating the do-not-call list, and relentless lobbying on new Canadian copyright legislation. A look back at 2010 from A to Z:

A is for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which concluded in October with a watered-down treaty after the U.S. caved on several controversial Internet issues.

B is for Black v. Breeden, an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling involving postings on the Hollinger International, Inc. website that Conrad Black claimed were defamatory.

C is for Crookes v. Newton, the high-profile Supreme Court case that addressed the liability hyperlinks between websites.

D is for the do-not-call list, which gained new life when the CRTC pressured Bell into paying $1.3 million for multiple violations of the list rules.

E is for the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, the initial name of Canada’s anti-spam legislation that received royal assent in December, six years after a task force recommended new Canadian spam laws.

F is for Facebook, which settled several privacy complaints with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

G is Adam Guerbuez, a Montreal-based spammer who was ordered by a Quebec court to pay Facebook $1,068,928,721.46 arising from a U.S. anti-spam judgment.

H is Howard Maker, the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services. The CRTC renewed the CCTS mandate in November, requiring all telecom providers to become members.

I for Internet service providers, who emerged victorious in a federal court case that addressed the question of whether they are “broadcasters” according to the Broadcasting Act. The court ruled they are not.

J is for Donna Jodhan, who won a website accessibility lawsuit that will force the federal government to make key websites accessible to the visually impaired.

K is for Internet keywords, the subject of a B.C. case involving questions about trademarks in the context of Internet keyword ads.

L is for the return of lawful access legislation, which was re-introduced for the third time in November.

M is for Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, the co-author of Bill C-32, the copyright reform bill.

N is for Netflix, which launched a Canadian movie download service in 2010.

O is for Orascom, a major backer of Wind Mobile, one of the new wireless services that attracted tens of thousands of new customers.

P is for Pridgen v. University of Calgary, a case in which an Alberta court ruled the University violated two students’ Charter rights when it sanctioned them for posting critical comments about a professor on Facebook.

Q is for the Queen v. Gomboc, the Supreme Court decision that ruled there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in data on electricity usage.

R is for Randall v. Nubodys Fitness Centres, a federal court decision that set an exceptionally high bar for awarding damages under Canadian privacy legislation.

S is for State Farm, which challenged the constitutionality of Canadian privacy law.

T is for the $45 per student tariff that Access Copyright, a copyright collective, proposed for Canadian universities. The Universities largely rejected the plan, setting the stage for a Copyright Board of Canada showdown in 2011.

U is for usage based billing, an Internet provider practice that generated many complaints to the CRTC.

V is for vertical integration, which emerged as the key concern after Bell and Shaw bought up two leading Canadian broadcasters. The CRTC is scheduled to conduct hearings on the issue in June 2011.

W is for Wikileaks, which was alternately lauded or vilified for making thousands of previously secret government cables available online.

X is for the X on online ballots, which were used in several municipal elections in 2010.

Y is for director Tony Young, one of hundreds of film directors whose work was made openly available on the National Film Board’s website.

Z is for Federal court judge Russell Zinn, who ordered TransUnion, a credit agency, to pay a man $5,000 for violating Canadian privacy law.

Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can reached at mgeist@uottawa.ca or online at www.michaelgeist.ca.

Source: Montreal Gazette


MONTREAL - A Montreal man who became the first Canadian to be jailed for pirating and distributing Hollywood films, died on Sunday night of a suspected drug overdose, just a few weeks after being released from jail.

Gérémi Adam, 27, dubbed one of North America’s biggest movie pirates by the FBI and the RCMP, died at the Pointe-aux-Trembles home he shared with his girlfriend, Cynthia Laporte.

Laporte told a Montreal newspaper that Adam began taking morphine and she believes he took drugs just prior to his death.

The Quebec coroner’s office confirmed Adam’s death today, but said the exact cause has not been determined.

On March 17, Adam received a two-and-a-half month jail sentence for bootlegging Hollywood films he secretly recorded from the back of Montreal theatres with his digital camera. He was also sentenced to perform 100 hours of community service and prohibited from entering a movie theatre for two years.

"He had a small addiction and got an adrenaline rush from pirating films," prosecutor Josée Bélanger said in court.

Adam only served one week of the sentence because at the time of his sentence, he was already in jail on a charge of attempted robbery.

Adam became the poster boy for the federal government's tougher copyright legislation adopted in 2007, which made it illegal to use a camcorder to record movies in theatres. The legislation was adopted to address Canada's reputation in Hollywood for being lax on such copyright infringement.

Adam recorded the children's film How to Eat Fried Worms and Invincible, a sports drama starring Mark Wahlberg, in or about late summer 2006. He was arrested in September 2007 and charged with two counts of violating Canada's Copyright Act. His laptop was seized along with his camcorder.

In 2008, he was arrested again after illegally recording the movie Street King.

Movie pirates can make $300 to $1,000 for a movie that ends up being distributed over the Internet, the R.C.M.P. has said.

Adam was recognized in pirating circles for doing good quality work. He used his sophisticated computer skills to get the films to a small group in Canada, the U.S. and Pakistan who either made copies or passed them on electronically.

He was known online as MaVen - the Yiddish word for expert.

Between July 2004 and July 2006, 41 pirated films have been traced to a Montreal source, Gary Osmond, head investigator for the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, testified during Adam’s recent court trial.

Richard Brouillard, Adams lawyer during his recent trial, said in court that his client “did not make money (from the pirating) - only a few crumbs.” Adam was from a dysfunctional family; he never knew his father and his mother was a drug addict, Brouillard testified.

Adam lived in group homes between the ages of 12 and 18 and became a computer whiz despite only having a high school education, his lawyer said. "He was only looking for some recognition," he added.


© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Source: Windsor Star

Each April, the United States issues the Special 301 Report, which examines the intellectual property laws of its main trading partners. For the past 15 years, Canada has been included on the watch list of countries the U.S. believes need reform.

As the U.S. prepares its 2010 edition, for the first time it invited the public to provide their comments on the process and the link between intellectual property and trade policy. Among the hundreds of submissions, one from the Computer and Communications Industry Association stands out as critically important to Canada.

The CCIA represents a who's who of the technology business world, with a membership roster that includes Microsoft, Google, T-Mobile, Fujitsu, AMD, eBay, Intuit, Oracle, and Yahoo. While critics of Canadian policy might expect these business heavyweights to chime in with their own criticisms, they took the opposite approach.

Rather than building on the tired narrative that the current law is an embarrassment, the message from the technology world was that Canada is actually doing just fine. The CCIA warned that including Canada on the list of countries that need reforms undermines the credibility of the process, adding "Canada's current copyright law and practice clearly satisfy the statutory 'adequate and effective' standard. Indeed, in a number respects, Canada's laws are more protective of creators than those of the United States."

The CCIA based its conclusion on four main criteria. First, it challenged claims that Canada's delayed implementation of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Internet treaties are grounds for inclusion on the list, stating there is "no basis for USTR to conclude that any country does not provide adequate and effective protection based on non-ratification of any treaty." Moreover, given that the majority of the world has yet to ratify the treaties, the CCIA noted that watch-listing one nation for non-ratification would seem to require watch-listing everyone that finds themselves in the same position.

Second, it disputed the oft-repeated claim that the absence of legal protection for digital locks -- known as anti-circumvention legislation -- should be the basis for watch-list placement. In fact, the very companies that are called upon to develop products compliant with digital lock systems argue that "neither Canada nor any other country is required to implement any particular means of preventing copying, and most assuredly not a right once removed from copying: circumventing a technological lock.''

Third, the CCIA challenged claims that the Canadian approach to Internet provider liability for alleged infringements of their subscribers is sub-standard when compared to the United States. The Canadian approach is described as "thoughtful" and "potentially superior" and the submission maintains that using the Special 301 process to pressure other countries to adhere to U.S. standards is inappropriate, emphatically stating that the process "is not a vehicle to remake the world in the image of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

Fourth, it reminded officials that Canadian copyright law is more protective of creators than the U.S. in some respects, including the existence of moral rights and the limitations of fair dealing when compared to the U.S. fair use provision.

The defence is precisely the kind of response that Canadian officials should be making when confronted with unfounded claims denigrating the state of Canadian copyright law.

That the world's leading technology companies are speaking out on this issue should send a strong signal to Industry Minister Tony Clement and Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore about how Canadian law is actually viewed by leading companies that sit at the heart of a Canadian digital strategy.

Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can reached at mgeist@uottawa.ca or online at www.michaelgeist.ca .