dakohli - Slashdot User

Submission + - Canadian Newspaper charging $150 license fee to publish excerpts (huffingtonpost.ca)

Submitted by dakohli on Thursday March 07, 2013 @06:57PM

dakohli writes: Michael Geist, Canada's tireless Digital Rights Crusader has pointed out an interesting development at a major Canadian Newspaper Website:

If you try to highlight the text to cut and paste it, you are presented with a pop-up request to purchase a licence if you plan to post the article to a website, intranet or a blog. The fee would be $150.

He points out that even if you are highlighting a 3rd party quote inside an article a pop-up asking if you want a license will appear. I have tried highlighting Associated Press, or Canadian Press articles and this does not appear. But try it on any of the Post's articles or commentary it will. Even if it happens to be a 3rd party quote.

The Copyright service provider is iCopyright. This appears to be a US company, and as Mr Geist points out it might be contrary to Canadian Copyright Law's fair use provisions.

Many Canadian Newspaper sites are moving to pay to view models, The Globe and Mail and Sun Papers included. Since it is harder to make money publishing the news, is this the way of the future? I hope not.

Submission + - Canadian Government scrapping Internet Predators Act (winnipegfreepress.com)

Submitted by dakohli on Monday February 11, 2013 @05:59PM

dakohli writes: The Conservative Goverment of Canada is scrapping the controversial bill C-30 They will instead make "modest" changes to the existing Warrantless Wiretap bill. This bill was widely panned by Privacy Critics and members of the opposition. Another victory for online privacy!

Submission + - Royal Canadian Air Force sees more sims in the future of Fighter Pilot Training (thechronicleherald.ca)

Submitted by dakohli on Monday February 04, 2013 @08:22PM

dakohli writes: Currently, Canadian Fighter Pilots spend about 20% of their "stick" time in Simulators. RCAF General Blondin states that this will rise to 50/50 in the future. The article goes on to state that the US Army is moving in this direction, although the US Air Force is a little more skeptical. Aircraft are expensive to fly, and if the fidelity of a simulator is good enough then perhaps real pilots will spend even less time actually in the air. Slashdotters, do you think that this will actually make recruiting pilots more difficult, or is it a sign of the things to come beyond Military Aviation?

Submission + - Facebook faces the Canadian Privacy Commish

Submitted by dakohli on Sunday August 16, 2009 @07:21PM

dakohli writes: Canwest's Sarah Schmidt writes that Facebook has until monday to find a way to fix its "serious privacy gaps."
And if the Canadian Privacy Commissioner isn't happy with the Web Company's response, then she has two weeks to push it to the Canadian Federal Court in Ottawa.
"A spokeswoman for the commission said it's premature to say whether the feud will end up in court. This would be an international first for Facebook, which has grown to more than 200 million users since its launch in 2004."
http://www.canada.com/technology/Facebook+must+satisfy+Canada+privacy+commissioner+Monday/1899277/story.html
So, what does all this mean? Do young people even care about their privacy these days? Do they need protecting?
I find the implications far reaching, who knows how their personal pictures, information might be used/exploited down the line.

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