-Privacy rooted in older philosophical traditions
- physical, knowledge, homes
-Edmund Byrne
-asked Too much privacy?
-1950′ post WWII – families get smaller, less of a close knit community
- ppl are isolated from each other
-Not illegal to take photos of others in a public space
-everyone else has cameras too
-Canadian charter of rights and freedoms
-is there a right to privacy in Canada?
- not really
-Charter: life, liberty and security of person
-search and seizure
-everyone has the right to be secure
-Invisible information gathering
-10 principles of model code – think of these when evaluating case studies
-PIPEDA (late 1990s)
-response not to anticipate sites like Facebook
-to promote consumer trust on electronic commerce
-to make things smoother when info is collected
-EU was passing privacy collection laws, companies that didn’t have similar privacy laws at the same level couldn’t do business with them
17
2010
14
2010
A question on my CPSC430 midterm mentioned Microsoft suing a 17-year old by the name of Mike Rowe for owning the domain mikerowesoft.com. The story is pretty interesting for me because this guy lives relatively near me in Victoria, seems to be either 2 or 3 years older than me and was a web designer. In 2004 I was in grade 10 and was doing a web design mentor-ship type project with the web maintainer of my local library, and I owned my first domain then too. Luckily my domain name then was some quasi-poetic thing that only a teenage girl would come up with and could not have in any shape or form be associated with a software giant!
Mike Rowe though, his funny domain name was phonetically similar to Microsoft, who sent legal papers to him and then ordering that he hand his domain name over to them…and when he refused, Microsoft offered him $10! Well at least they had the decency to not offer him $9.98, the price to register a new .com (at NameCheap at least)? Mike then asked for $10K but settled out of court for an Xbox, a trip to Redmond, and Microsoft certification training.
Well, I’m glad the story had a somewhat happy ending. But an Xbox – really?! And I seem to remember reading on Engadget about really young kids (10? 13? I don’t remember exactly) passing MS certification tests, so I don’t know how good those are…sure, those must have been some smart young kids but still. And I understand that Microsoft works hard to keep their brand unique, and to not have their trademark diluted. But seriously, who is going to confuse mikerowesoft with Microsoft? Goes to show that companies are serious about their trademark, I guess! But sometimes it confuses me that there hasn’t been a lawsuit. For example apple computer and MAC cosmetics. Everyone calls apple computers “Mac”s and everyone pronounces MAC “Mac” as well (technically it’s M.A.C). It’s true that they’re in completely different fields but it’s still the exact phonetically! Who’s going to get confused between computers and make up? ME! When I first started getting into cosmetics I was confused by MAC, I was like “aren’t they a computer company?” This is probably because I was a geek way before turning into a girly-girl. But I can’t be the only one!
12
2010
Canada’s Private Copying Levy charges 29 cents per CD-R, CD-RW, CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio and MiniDisc sold in Canada. The CPCC then appropriates money to eligible composers, performers and makers. So far the CPCC has distributed 184M dollars. I think this levy is a very good idea. It supports the music industry, while recognizing that in the digital age copying of audio media is here to stay and cannot be prevented. The music industry has made examples of people by suing them, treating them as a means to an end, and they have taken down online P2P file sharing sites. Meanwhile, music copying online is still going strong! There are just too many people and computers on the internet for them all to be taken down, it is just not feasible. The levy on the other hand, seems to work. The industry gets paid, people get to make private copies – no one party is perfectly happy, but all are content at least. It’s a good compromise! Some people are opposed to the levy because it’s a tax that assumes that the buyer of blank media will use that blank media to copy copyrighted material, and it’s never good to assume. I think it’s a fairly good assumption in this case, though.
It’s interesting to see that there isn’t a levy on MP3 players mentioned on the CPCC site. I seem to remember the group who presented this topic in the CPSC430 lecture mention there was. Turns out that the levy on MP3 players was proposed, but then was turned down by the courts.
What about software developers though? They seem to have been left out of this levying system. People copy software just like they copy music. Why shouldn’t the software companies be compensated? Maybe the MP3 players levy should be charged, and the money collected from there would go to the music industry, while the money collected from blank media go to the software industry? Since people put music on MP3 players, and software on discs more often.