I wrote an article for the Canadian Privacy Law Review discussing the Federal Privacy Commissioner’s recent “Incident Summary” on the CIBC junkyard fax matter. This was widely reported in the press. The CIBC inadvertently sent faxes containing personal information to the wrong fax number on an ongoing basis.

The article sumarizes the facts and the Commissioner’s decision, contains some thoughts from the Commissioner in response to questions I posed, and most importantly, some lessons learned.

Read the Canadian Privacy Law Review article
Read the Privacy Commissioner’s Incident Summary

DAVID CANTON – For the London Free Press – May 28, 2005

Read this on Canoe

London’s DRN Commerce Inc. recently won a domain name dispute.

DRN provides collection processing and debt recovery services to various financial institutions, insurance companies and their service providers.

In February, DRN filed a complaint under the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) dispute resolution policy regarding “drn.ca.” DRN had discovered a competitor had registered the domain name drn.ca and used it to point to its own website.

The arbitration panel recently released its decision ordering the transfer of the domain name, drn.ca, to the complainant, DRN. The full text of this decision can be found as decision No. 30 on the CIRA website, www.cira.ca, in the decisions under the dispute resolution policy link.

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The Detroit News reports that a radio DJ won a $10 million judgement from her former employer after she was fired for complaining about a co-workers excessive perfume use.

Not exactly technology law news, but too strange to ignore. File this one under either “you’ve got to be kidding” or “there must be more to the story than that”.

Read the Detroit News story
Read a comment on the law.com blog

David Fraser’s Pipeda and Canadian Privacy Law blog (a great source for privacy issues) refers to an article in Business Week entitled The Spy Under the Hood. It talks about privacy concerns over the data recorded by black boxes in our cars.

I noticed recently a Canadian insurance company is offering discounts to customers who add a device to their cars that provide details to the insurance company about your driving habits. Personally, I find that a bit disturbing.

Read David’s post
Read a Free Press article I wrote on the topic
Read another post I made on the topic

A couple of recent Techdirt posts are worth a read. About TV networks and the broadcast flag they refer to the industry’s position as: We are so ossified and resistant to change that we’d rather inconvenience, alienate, and anger consumers and stifle technological innovation than give up some control over our content and figure out new ways to grow our business.

About the MPAA: So, rather than making the movie industry an industry people love and cherish, he wants to make them hated and feared.

Read the Techdirt network post
Read the Techdirt MPAA post

DAVID CANTON – For the London Free Press – May 21, 2005

Read this on Canoe

If they fall into the wrong hands, your debit or credit card numbers can be used to run up charges at your expense.

Businesses should not print debit or credit card numbers on receipts or other documents. Printing them increases the chances of misuse of credit and debit card numbers and is a violation of privacy obligations.

Some people go to the trouble of searching through garbage to steal copies of credit card receipts or other documents. If these records fall into the wrong hands, criminals can control accounts and assume your identity.

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The Federal Court of appeal did not allow the appeal in this case. They refused to order the ISP’s to release the names of the alleged file sharers so they can be sued.

I doubt we have seen the end of this, however, as the refusal was based on the facts and the way the request was made – not as an absolute principle.

The court did not decide the issue of whether uploading was legal.

The decision itself, and other commentary is available on the CIPPIC web site.

Read the CIPPIC material
Read a CBC article

Canada’s spam task force recomends a number of inititives, including some new anti-spam laws. They recognize that a coordinated effort is needed. It includes an interesting chart showing spam trends and the impact (usually temporary) of attempts to control it.

I believe spam will only be reduced as the risk/reward ratio changes. In other words, the financial gains of sending spam must become less than the costs (both in actual dollars to send, and the legal risk of sanctions.

We can do our part by using filters and deleting what comes through.

Read the task force report

The RIAA has sued over 10,000 people in the US for music downloading. They claim thousands of dollars in damages, and apparently typically settle for a payment of around $3,000 to end the suits.

With legitimate paid music downloading sites becoming more popular, some are arguing that the RIAA can’t possibly suffer any more damages than the amount one can pay on one of these sites. The $5.00 per month figure comes from the recent Yahoo subscription service.

Of course, I’m sure the RIAA would not agree.

Read an article on The Big Picture
Read Mark Cuban’s comments on Blog Maverick

A few days ago I noted that the courts decided the FCC did not have the authourity to impose the Broadcast Flag – a controversial attempt to require TV’s and other devices to contain technology to allow the creator to control what a user does with it.

The MPAA is now lobying the US government to pass legislation to give the FCC that power. Hopefully that lobby will be unsuccessful.

Read a CNet article about the MPAA efforts
Read my earlier post