Why gamers should love copyright bill Calgary Herald
On June 2 federal Minister of Industry Tony Clement and Minister of Canadian Heritage James Moore introduced Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act. While it’s not perfect, Bill C-32 offers the video game industry a strong starting point toward safeguarding the rights and the economic viability of game creators and investors. In turn, strong copyright will also mean more choice for Canadian gamers — in the range of creative and innovative video games that can be put on the market, choice for parents through settings that allow them to control what and how much their kids play, and new ways for consumers to access games. As the name of the bill suggests, modernizing Canada’s copyright regime and bringing it into the digital age is crucial to growing a successful market-driven digital economy in this country. For content creators, the absence of protection of intellectual property means operating on a pirate island. The growing video-game industry and other creative sectors need assurances about Canada’s business climate to encourage them to take risks, to make investments in the development of new, quality content and earn a return on their hard work and ingenuity. Canada needs a legal framework to support an increasingly competitive and innovative “new” economy where e-commerce, iPhones and social media are transforming the rules of how and when we do business. We need strong copyright.

Rogers customers paid $30 million too much Toronto Star
Admit it. You always thought you were getting ripped off even though you bundled your cellphone with your Internet and added cable and a home phone to boot. Well, you’re right. Rogers Communications on Friday announced about 300,000 customers never received the correct discounts for all of their bundling.

What’s Intrusive? – slaw.ca
I was reading an interesting article in the Lawyer’s Weekly today on the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Morelli, [2010] SCC 8. In his article, ‘Reforming Search & Seizure’ (sadly, not available online), Professor Benjamin Goold makes the following comment that I tripped over while reading: “Although Justice Fish almost certainly went too far when he claimed that it is ‘difficult to imagine a search more intrusive, extensive or invasive of one’s privacy than the search and seizure of a personal computer,’ the fact remains that such a search represents a serious infringement of an individual’s right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure under s. 8 of the Charter.” I have to say I’m with Justice Fish on this one. He didn’t go too far in making that statement, and I’m glad to hear it. A personal (emphasis on the ‘personal’) computer is more than just a container of wires, chips and magnetic media. A huge amount of highly personal data resides on home computers. Think about what’s on your personal computer. Probably years worth of e-mails, scanned documents, tax returns, photos, home videos. If a person already has a lawyer, the computer almost certainly contains privileged correspondence. Your browsing history shows what ailments you were looking into on WebMD . In this day and age, the personal computer has become the shoeboxes of photos on the shelf in a closet. It is the equivalent of the bundle of letters in a desk drawer. An order for the police to seize your computer is akin to an order that all of your family records should be taken.

Toronto’s approaching racket QMI
Can you hear that approaching racket? The clamour outside the gates? For weeks now, Canadians – especially those living around Toronto – have braced for the G20 on June 26-27 and the G8 summit a day earlier.Tension builds. The cost of security rises to at least $930 million. Almost daily, there are glimpses of possible calamity. We’ve learned to fret the “Black Bloc” – anarchists who promote violence and destruction. We’re told even small trees may be used as weapons, so they’ve been removed. We’re reminded of past riots – including last September’s melee during the G20 in Pittsburgh’s Little Italy and a confrontation with a police officer during the London summit earlier in the year that took the life of an innocent U.K. newspaper seller. So we prepare for the hordes. But a look at the unofficial roster finds the vast majority of the thousands who will descend on downtown Toronto – and north to Huntsville for the G8 – are far from threatening. They include established relief organizations, peace protesters and religious charities hoping to be heard.

Ottawa teen facing child porn charges CBC
An Ottawa teenager has been charged with possessing and making child pornography, police said in a news release. Police say they searched a home in the East End on Tuesday, where they seized computers and other digital media containing images, video, and text documents of child pornography.

RCMP admits mistakes in Dziekanski case CTV News
The head of the RCMP acknowledged for the first time on Friday that the organization mishandled the situation that lead to the death of Robert Dziekanski more than two years ago. This follows the release of Thomas Braidwood’s final report on Dziekanski’s death on the same day. “I apologize unconditionally for the role the RCMP, including individual RCMP members, played in his tragic death,” RCMP Commissioner William Elliott said. “It’s clear our policies and training in place at the time were deficient. We acknowledge the actions of the members who dealt with Mr. Dziekanski also fell short.”

Googlegate: Mapping a scandal of global proportions The Register
While the rest of us have generally been enjoying the sunshine and warm weather for the past few weeks, there has been a permanent cloud over Mountain View, as the storm over Google’s capturing of Wi-Fi content with its Street View cars has developed. That storm now threatens significant reputational damage to Google, not least because dozens of countries are considering initiating criminal prosecutions against it and indeed a number of police investigations have already begun. On April 22nd 2010, news broke that Google’s Street View cars had been surreptitiously collecting Media Access Control (MAC) addresses and Service Set Identifiers (SSID) from Wi-Fi networks as they roamed the planet taking photographs of our houses. Street View has been contentious enough from a privacy perspective, with many people concerned about the dangers such activity presents, and has been in the headlines frequently. But once it was discovered that Google was capturing Wi-Fi identifiers as well, the controversy snowballed. Some people don’t see the problem – they contend that the data Google was collecting is harmless and that the fuss is all about nothing. As a privacy advocate, one does not have the liberty to be restricted to such a narrow field of vision. We all need to understand that Google already has an overwhelming quantity of data on a significant percentage of the global population, so having the ability to now marry that existing data with geo-location data gives the search giant even more insight into who and where we are.

Nonresidents can be sued over Florida Internet posts Associated Press
Nonresidents can be sued for defamation under Florida law over their Internet postings if that information is accessible and accessed in Florida, the state Supreme Court ruled today. That applies even to bloggers such as Tabatha Marshall, who lives in Washington State and has no ties to Florida other than taking a vacation in the Sunshine State.
Previous rulings have determined phone calls and e-mails constitute “electronic communications into Florida,” but this is the first time a court has included blogs and other website postings. Marshall owns and operates a website that includes postings by herself and others on consumer-related issues.

Martha Lane Fox to get elderly and rural dwellers online Telegraph
Millions of elderly people and residents of rural areas will be helped to join the internet age by Martha Lane Fox, the Government’s ‘digital champion,’ it has been announced. The founder of the successful travel website lastminute.com was initially appointed by the previous Labour administration, and has now been given an expanded role by the new Coalition Government. [Oh Joy!]

Swedes falling out of love with monarchy The Local
Support for Sweden’s monarchy has dipped below 50 percent while a quarter if the population is opposed to the institution, according to a poll published a day before Crown Princess Victoria’s wedding. Since 1996, the number of Swedes who consider the monarchy a good thing has dropped from 70 percent to 46 percent, the FSI poll published in the Dagens Nyheter daily showed. At the same time, the number of Swedes saying they think the monarchy is a bad thing has soared from just 10 percent 15 years ago to 25 percent today, according to the poll of 1,800 people aged 18 to 79 conducted in March and April.

Your Browser in Five Years PC World
The next big computing platform won’t be Apple’s Mac OS, Google’s Android, or Microsoft’s Windows. It’s already here–and it’s the Web. Aurora concept Web browserWhat will your Web browser look like in 2015? Five years doesn’t always bring dramatic change to some technologies–today’s desktop PC, for instance, isn’t that different from its 2005 predecessor–but browsers are undergoing major changes that will alter our day-to-day computing lives. Not only will Web browsers become commonplace in cars, but they’ll also incorporate voice recognition, text-to-speech, and touchless gesture controls for applications where keypads, touchpads, and even touchscreens can be either inconvenient (smartphones) or downright dangerous (when driving). Browsers will stream Internet radio to our cars, and perhaps even adopt a 3D-style interface–only without the clunky glasses.

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