David Canton is a business lawyer and trade-mark agent with a practice focusing on technology issues and technology companies.
Speculation is that we will see a terabyte PC hard drive by the end of the year. That will be a noteworthy milestone. It wasn’t that long ago that a terabyte of storage was supercomputer or data centre territory.
Another noteworthy technology milestone is the sell-out of the initial 100 orders for the Tesla Roadster electric sportscar. It took less than a month for 100 people to put down $100,000.00 deposits for cars that will be available in 2007.
Thanks to Howard Knopf for pointing out in his Excess Copyright blog that Sony applied a while ago for the trade-mark “Like no other”. I note they have applied for it in at least the US and Canada.
Rather amusing in light of the batteries they produced for Dell that burst into flame, and their rootkit CD fiasco.
I’ve been on vacation for the last 2 weeks, hence the lack of blog entries. While trying to catch up, I noticed a recent Toronto Star article by Michael Geist that does a good job of summarizing Canadian intermediary liablity.
This means the liability and obligations of owners of websites for material others post on them. Owners of such sites understandably don’t want to be liable for what others post – and don’t want to be forced to remove material based on a simple allegation that something posted violates someone else’s rights.
The article points out that for the most part, Canadian intermediaries do not have to remove third party material based just on an allegation, but that: allegations of defamation are the exception to the rule. Under current Canadian law, intermediaries can face potential liability for failing to remove allegedly defamatory content once they receive notification of such a claim, even without court oversight.
The article is a must read for any intermediary.
David Canton – for the London Free Press – August 12, 2006
Wikipedia recently came under attack for shoddy and inaccurate reporting of the death of Enron executive Ken Lay within its article on Lay.
The details were not accurate and the entry was changed by several people as the story unfolded in the news.
Wikipedia was intended to be an encyclopedia, not a news service. While it took a few days for the entry to sort itself out, a traditional printed encyclopedia would not have been updated until the new edition or yearbook was published. That’s assuming the editors felt it was important to mention in the first place.
Once it seemed possible to collect and contain human knowledge within the confines of a leather-bound set of encyclopedias. When Paul Skalic used the word “encyclopaedia” in the title of his 1559 publication, the modern information age may have been beyond the scope of imagination, but the goal of making reliable, scholarly information readily available to the public was taking root.
Some people are skeptical that an online publication like Wikipedia — which anyone can add to and edit — can ever be as accurate as an encyclopedia created in the traditional manner by professional authors and editors.
A study recently published in the British journal Nature concluded that Wikipedia has a level of accuracy only slightly lower than that of Encyclopaedia Britannica. It showed that, on average, there are 2.92 mistakes per article for Encyclopaedia Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia.
So is that good enough? For the average person wanting some quick information, it probably is. No one of course should rely on just the information in a Wikipedia entry in basing important decisions on it. But then no one in that position would rely just on the information in a traditional encyclopedia either.
To use the Britannica example again, its website boasts that there are 4,000 contributors to the 32-volume set of books. The Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006 DVD contains more than 55 million words and more than 100,000 articles.
In contrast, Wikipedia has compiled nearly 1.3 million articles in English alone since its inception in 2001. Founders Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger wanted to create “an international collaborative free-content encyclopedia on the Internet” where the content was created by the users.
So in the end, with Wikipedia one gets a slightly higher error rate — but, in return, it covers far more topics, has far faster updates (despite the short time it takes for controversial entries to settle down), and more information about each entry.
It’s also free to users. Not good if you are in the encyclopedia business, but good for everyone else.
Britannica’s current corporate goals are to try to recapture market share lost to competitors offering free services, such as Encarta and Wikipedia. In addition to bound volumes, it has introduced new digital technologies and online subscriptions. Britannica is relying on its past reputation for excellence and accuracy as it attempts to rebuild a viable economic future.
Britannica selected Aristotle’s quotation, “All men desire to know,” as its corporate objective. Perhaps the axiom, “All people desire to know as quickly and inexpensively as possible” more accurately depicts the modern mindset.
Despite their reputations for accuracy and excellence, traditional encyclopedia publishers realize they must offer accessible net-based resources to compete with Wikipedia or Encarta and survive as a viable business.
Quality and accuracy are respected, but breadth of selection, fast updates and free access give Wikipedia an advantage.
David Canton – for the London Free Press – August 5, 2006
Ontario information and privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian’s annual report highlights eight key issues.
They include the need for more transparent government, the secure destruction of personal information and a fair expungement process of police records for individuals found innocent after being charged with a crime.
The report also reviews the impact of the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) in its first year.
Cavoukian also administers the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) and the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Perhaps the most blatant abuse of personal health information was reported early in 2005 when Cavoukian received a phone call that personal health records had been strewn across several streets in downtown Toronto as the backdrop for a film shoot.
The producer simply wanted scrap paper to transform the streets into a set resembling the 9-11 New York catastrophe. Unfortunately, the papers he obtained were personal health records, which were supposed to have been destroyed.
As a result, Cavoukian issued the first order under PHIPA, stressing the importance of secure disposal of personal health information record, to render them unreadable and non-reconstructable.
The IPC recommends physical destruction of media such as paper or CDs. Simple strip shredding or scratching and throwing a CD in the trash is not enough.
Care must be taken when memory media are reused, as deleting does not erase the information.
IPC efforts to promote government openness gained momentum in July 2005 when Cavoukian ordered the City of Toronto to disclose to CBC Radio-Canada all records regarding civil lawsuits the city had settled with third parties from 1998 to 2004.
The city had resisted requests for the information, fearing financial and economic harm if it was produced.
Cavoukian reiterated that “citizens cannot participate meaningfully in the democratic process and hold politicians and bureaucrats accountable unless they have access to information held by government, subject only to necessary exemptions that are limited and specific.”
The IPC continues advocate a fair disposal process for photos, fingerprints and criminal history records retained in police records of individuals who were charged but later found innocent.
The commision’s full report is available on the Internet at www.ipc.on.ca.
Unless otherwise stated, all original material created by David Canton included in this blog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
