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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 3 declined, 2 accepted (5 total, 40.00% accepted)

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Canada

Submission + - ISPs are Not Broadcasters, In Canada (michaelgeist.ca)

m.ducharme writes: Michael Geist has just posted news to his blog that the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal has handed down a decision of key importance to ISPs and net-neutrality advocates. The Court ruled that ISPs could not be considered broadcasters (and therefore not subject to levies that may be established under the Broadcast Act (to fund Canadian Content programming, for example). The Court also ruled that this was true only insofar as an ISP treated all traffic neutrally.

What does this mean for net neutrality advocates? It means that in Canada at least, the ISPs now have strong incentive to side with them, and not with content-providers looking to enforce their copyrights. Deep-packet inspections that single out video or audio data would tend to make the ISPs more "broadcaster-like", and put them at risk of having to conform to the rules and levies that currently apply to traditional broadcasters.

Submission + - Canada's Top Court Quashes Child Porn Warrant (www.cbc.ca)

m.ducharme writes: The CBC is reporting that the Supreme Court of Canada has handed down a decision quashing a search warrant used to obtain the computer of a man accused of possession of child porn."

"Urbain P. Morelli maintained his charter rights were violated when police searched his computer for child pornography after a technician who had visited his home to work on the machine expressed concerns to police."

What the Slashdot community may find notable about this decision is the distinction drawn between "accessing" and "possessing" digital images, most particularly the recognition that a user does not "possess" cached data. From the decision:

[35] When accessing Web pages, most Internet browsers will store on the computer’s own hard drive a temporary copy of all or most of the files that comprise the Web page. This is typically known as a “caching function” and the location of the temporary, automatic copies is known as the “cache”. While the configuration of the caching function varies and can be modified by the user, cached files typically include images and are generally discarded automatically after a certain number of days, or after the cache grows to a certain size. [36] On my view of possession, the automatic caching of a file to the hard drive does not, without more, constitute possession. While the cached file might be in a “place” over which the computer user has control, in order to establish possession, it is necessary to satisfy mens rea or fault requirements as well. Thus, it must be shown that the file was knowingly stored and retained through the cache.


Music

Submission + - Geist Deconstructs the Canadian Copyright Lobby

m.ducharme writes: Michael Geist has posted a detailed description of the major players in the Canadian Copyright lobby, and shows how different, seeminly independent groups use each other's reports to imply a greater consensus on tough copyright laws than actually exists. Techniques used by these groups include more plagiarism, referencing each others' reports to build an appearance of authority, and buying Polls.

This lengthy post seeks to unravel the effort further by demonstrating how there has been a clear strategy of deploying seemingly independent organizations to advance the same goals, claims, arguments, and recommendations. Over the past three years, this strategy has played out with multiple reports, each building on the next with a steady stream of self-citation.

Media (Apple)

Submission + - New IPod Line confirms Apple a Monopolist? (wired.com)

m.ducharme writes: "An article at Wired reports that class action lawyers claim Apple is a monopolist because the new iPods don't support WMA. Of course last time I checked, they did support mp3, so I don't know how far they think this claim is going to go, but the lawyers do offer a solution, namely to license Windows Media from Microsoft for "less than 2 cents per iPod." How generous. I wonder who's paying these particular lawyers?"

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