The US Supreme court heard the Grokster appeal this week.

Is Grokster style peer-to-peer file sharing a blatantly illegal copyright theft device that ought to be banned?

Or is it merely technology that is no different than a VCR or photocopier that some people misuse, and if banned, would put a serious chill on product innovation?

I subscribe to the latter – we will have to wait and see what the court says.

Read a Washington Post article that summarizes the issues
Read a Wired article summarizing the hearing

The Canadian government recently released a statement outlining its proposed copyright reforms.

Many, including myself, were concerned that changes suggested by parliamentary committees did not consider an appropriate balance between rights owners and consumers. Nor did they learn from the problems created by the DMCA in the U.S.

The good news is that they now appear to be headed in the right direction. The proposed changes are indeed more reasonable. The real test will be in how the amendments are actually drafted.

Read an ITBusiness.ca article
Read Prof Geist’s Toronto Star Article
Read the Federal government’s statement

David Fraser has a posting in his PIPEDA and Canadian Privacy Law blog called Putting together the pieces. It brings together two practical issues.

Stores should not print full debit/credit card numbers on receipts – or indeed on their own copies. (The transaction has already been approved – so they don’t need to keep it – and those numbers should not be available to anyone.)

And stripping out personal information to anonymize information has always been fraught with the risk that the information could be recreated by combining it with other information.

Businesses that print only partial numbers don’t consistently print the same portions – thus receipts can be combined to re-create the full number.

As David concludes: Perhaps the debit terminal manufacturers and distributors could get together and figure this out. Perhaps the credit/debit card suppliers should take some action on this as well.

Read David Fraser’s post

DAVID CANTON – For the London Free Press – March 26, 2005

Read this on Canoe

Anyone selling over the Internet has just four months to prepare for the effects Ontario’s new Consumer Protection Act 2002 (CPA 2002) will have on Internet sales transactions with consumers.

Several years ago, Canadian federal and provincial governments realized consumer protection legislation did not reflect the realities of our evolving digital economy.

The implications of the Internet were not considered when the current version of the Consumer Protection Act was drafted.

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VoIP (Voice over IP) telephone service is a new hot technology. It essentially replaces traditional phone service with phone service over the Internet.

VoIP has many advantages over traditional phones – but it has one significant disadvantage – lack of 911 service. The problem is being worked on, but so far the solutions are not perfect.

The Texas Attorney General recently sued Vonage – a popular VoIP provider – over the issue.

Read a ZDNet article on the Texas suit
Read a NewTelephony article on the Texas suit
Read a September Slate article that describes the technical problems

Info-Tech Research Group released a report entitled 2005 IT Priorities.

One of its findings is that 95% of information technology (IT) departments are not delivering some projects on time or to the full satisfaction of the business executive.

The top 3 reasons projects fail are:

1. Unrealistic time frames (68%)
2. Lack of number of staff (64%)
3. Poorly defined project scope (62%)

Read the Info-Tech press release
Read a Globe and Mail article
Get the report from Info-Tech

Groklaw reports that: You know how in almost every FUD article about the GPL, they always say that the GPL has never been tested in a US court?
That isn’t actually true. There have been cases where it played a role and the judges took it seriously even if they didn’t directly rule on it. Now there is a case in Michigan, which just settled, where the GPL not only stood its ground, it came off victorious, and this time it was very much a part of the case. I had a chance to interview the attorney that represented the GPL side, Eric Grimm.

The case involved software written in part by Drew Technologies, Inc., to which others contributed, in reliance upon the GPL. DrewTech, an engineering firm in Michigan, develops custom vehicle communications solutions for the automobile industry. DrewTech released the software at issue on SourceForge, under the GNU General Public License (“GPL”).

Read the Groklaw article

DAVID CANTON – For the London Free Press – March 19, 2005

Read this on Canoe

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, governments began looking for solutions to identification problems that had plagued them for decades.

The United Kingdom and the United States suggested introducing national identification cards and driver’s licences respectively with “smart card” radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies. Canada has also considered the idea.

Such cards would combine all government-issued documents onto one card. When they were used, they would be authenticated by means such as a photo or biometrics stored in a government-created database.

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In his blog – The Open Society Paradox - Dennis Bailey says that the focus should be on dealing with those who wrongfully steal and use data, not on those who have the data.

I agree there should be serious consequences to those wrongfully using information for things like fraud and idendity theft.

But at the same time, those who have data should be under a high duty of care to protect it from misuse.

We would not leave the doors of our house open with cash on the hall table and a sign saying we will be back at 5:00 – and get much sympathy when the cash went missing.

An ounce of prevention…

Read Dennis Bailey’s post

Slashdot and Computerworld report that a software ownership dispute between software developers and the State has cost an extra $10,000,000. Seems that the developer that created the initial software refused to give the source code to the State or the developer that was awarded the 2nd phase software development contract.

The lesson is not to always get the source code – developers often have legitimate reasons to retain that.

The lessen is that anyone involved in a significant software project should consider this issue up front and sort out a solution before it becomes a problem.

Read the Slashdot entry
Read the Computerworld article