YouTube, an extremely popular video-sharing site that was created in 2005, is rapidly increasing concerns over video-sharing online free of charge. Right-holders of the videos argue that they are being unfairly deprived of the profits that are due to them. These concerns have actualized into legal actions. Recently, music publishers have joined a group of […]
Being an enthusiastic fan of J.K Rowling’s Potter novels I was infuriated to hear the French student arrested for publishing his own translation of the seventh chapter of the Potter tale would not be prosecuted. An agreement was made with J.K Rowling not to seek damages from the student for violation of intellectual property rights. […]
Our ability as a society to transmit vast amounts of information has grown exponentially over the last decade. Volumes of encyclopedia, books, magazines, newspapers—let alone music—have become almost instantly downloadable and retrievable, further feeding the frenzy of electronic consumption. While to downloaders and users it may seem that there is little or no real […]
Advances in technology facilitating dissemination of digital files inevitably poses challenges on enforcement of existing copyright laws. Prince’s lawsuit, if filed, would be of significance in setting the standard of care to which file-sharing providers (YouTube), indexing services (The Pirate Bay) and online trade forums (EBay) should exercise to prevent making copyright-infringing works available […]
It seems that hassle-free entertainment at the movie theatre is truly becoming a thing of the past. The film industry has taken some aggressive measures to combat pirating in Canada, as evidenced by increased security patrol in the theatres, knapsack searches and the use of metal detectors and night-vision goggles. As foreign lobby groups and […]
The ever-growing world of online social networking is a creature with many faces. From organizing events to finding companionship, programs such as Facebook offer something for everybody. But as the recent fiasco involving Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers shows, beneath the superficial glitter lies a dark and potentially dangerous side to the technology. […]
In the early days of the dot.com boom, internet commerce presented opportunities for information providers (websites) to sell inexpensive digital goods to web-users and have the benefit of reaching a far larger consumer base than just a local market. But with the growing free-rider ethos of the World Wide Web and the increasingly burdensome […]
In Canada, it has been a long-standing policy to place a levy on recordable devices such as tapes and blank CDs and redistribute those proceeds to recording companies and the artists that they represent. The core purpose of this practice is to compensate artist for private copying that these blank media enable. However, technology has […]
Popular Russian online music store Allofmp3.com announced its plans to reopen following a ruling by a Moscow district court acquitting its former head of copyright violation. After persistent pressure and attempts by an angry U.S. recording industry to smother the site, the plug was finally pulled on the site earlier this year by the […]
The murkiness of the legality of unlocking the iPhone was highlighted recently by an AppleInsider article which suggested that actions of the ‘iPhone Dev Team’, hackers who are offering the solution to unlocking the iPhone for free online, may be illegal. The iPhone is locked to one service provider, AT&T, meaning another wireless carrier‘s SIM […]