The last few weeks have been terrible set backs for personal privacy, and the privileges ordinary people enjoy when they buy and use music, video and other forms of media.
Today’s guest was Dr. Michael Geist, an internationally recognized expert in these areas. We discussed Bill C-61 the Canadian copyright law tabled last week, as well as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement leaked in late May which seeks to enable border searches of computers and music players, and require ISPs to cooperate to provide information about suspected copyright infringers without a warrant.
Michael gave us a brief overview of what the legislation is and how close it is to the DMCA. Bill C-61, far from being a made in Canada solution, appears to be a clone of the worst parts of the DMCA, with all kinds of negative implications for consumers, and privacy. It has generated massive amounts of commentary here as a result.
We speculated that the reason for introducing the bill now was simply to let it lie over the summer and get it out of the public consciousness.
We also talked about ACTA, which is an international treaty designed to apply the same rules between countries. Affecting the European Community, Australia, New Zealand, and North America, ACTA purportedly will have far reaching implications, including an enforcement group. Michael cautioned, however, that the treaty is still not visible to the public, and counseled the government to engage in a more transparent process.
On the call: Michael Geist, Dan York, Jim Courtney, Craik Pyke, Dave Brown, Jeb Brilliant, James Body, Peter Childs, Randall Howard and Dale Gass.
Everything cellular is hot right now, driven in part the enormous market pressure being created by Apple around iPhone. In addition to the hoopla over iPhone, in the last few days, we’ve seen stories a whole bunch of stories.
There has also has been an unprecedented volume of new video, including the Garmin Nuviphone and that blurry little video of the BlackBerry Javelin. We discussed whether Nuviphone had a chance, given their delays and strong focus on GPS. Does it really have a chance after the iPhone 3G ships with GPS built in?
It’s more than a decade after Mark Andreeson made his famous comment that the browser was the new OS. You know, the one that led to the browser wars of the 1990’s, and Microsoft’s antitrust trial? Today we discussed browsers and browser technology.
First, there’s the release of Firefox 3.0, and today is the day that the Mozilla Foundation has declared “download Firefox day”. Everyone on the call planned to download Firefox 3.0, and we had a fairly detailed feature dump from Dan York.
On the call: Jeanette Fisher, Hudson Barton, Dan York, Jeb Brilliant, Ian Hood, Bill Volk, James Body, Jonathan Jensen, Sheryl Breuker, Frank Abrams, and Alaa Ali
Today we discussed the Associated Press‘ decision to issue “guidelines” for bloggers on what consitutes acceptable use of their stories. AP recently sent a C&D to the Drudge Retort, and then backed down. Some blogs, like TechCrunch, have announced a boycott of AP stories until they change their position. We talked about what AP’s bonehead stance would mean for bloggers, and their motivations for taking such an extreme position. What next? The NIAA (Newspaper Industry Association of America) suing children for bootleg papers?
We also talked about Olga Kharif’s story about how the iPhone will impact rivals. A year after it’s introduction, it has completely turned the mobile industry on its head, and now other manufactures and carriers who don’t have access to iphone are scrambling to compete.
On the call: Jeanette Fisher, Daemeon Welch-Abernathy, Dan York, Jim Courtney, Dave Brown, Jeb Brilliant, Ian Hood and Bill Volk.
Last Wednesday evening I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion at the Ottawa Network on Social Networking as a marketing strategy. It was great fun, and my fellow panelists Linda Moran, Bob Ledrew, Peter Childs and Luc Levesque participated in a lively discussion. Much has already been written. My contribution is a recording of the event, attached.
