E-TIPS

On September 5, 2005, Australian Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox ruled that Kazaa's popular file-sharing service violated Australia's copyright law by authorizing users to infringe music companies' copyright in sound recordings.

As recently reported by Associated Press, none of five US federal agencies that employ electronic data mining (including the FBI and the IRS) complied with all existing rules for the gathering and retention of information from citizens.

=Preliminary findings of a survey released by the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) show that Canadian companies are investing significantly less than US counterparts in information and communications technology (ICT). If these findings prove to be valid, they could be linked to the widening labour productivity gap between the two countries.

The federal government will soon table a bill granting police greater powers to pry in cyberspace. On August 19, 2005, in a speech to the Canadian Association of Police Boards, the Minister of Justice, Irwin Cotler, confirmed that "lawful access" legislation will shortly be presented to Cabinet for final approval before being tabled in the House of Commons.

Although it has recently hit some potholes, Google Print, the Internet-based library developed by search engine giant Google, continues to move ahead with its goal of making the text of thousands of books available and searchable on the Internet.

Because of privacy concerns with third countries, in early July the European Parliament rejected an agreement (Canada/EU Agreement) between the EU and Canadian authorities for sharing airline passenger data in the interests of national security. Previously, the Parliament opposed a similar accord between the EU and the United States.

Florida-based Snipermail.com, an email marketing contractor, and its owner Scott Levine, were convicted of stealing 1.6 billion customer records from data management company Acxiom Corp. It is the largest such theft the U.S. government has prosecuted to date.

On August 19, a Texas jury opened what may be an entirely new chapter in pharmaceutical litigation. In the first civil trial against Merck & Co Inc (Merck) relating to the painkiller Vioxx (Ernst et al v Merck & Co Inc), the jury found Merck to have been negligent in designing and marketing the drug and that its negligence was the proximate cause of Ernst's death in 2001.

Telus Inc (Telus), one of Canada's largest ISPs, in the course of a labour dispute with the Telecommunications Workers Union (Union), blocked two web sites associated with the Union. In doing so, however, Telus also unintentionally blocked at least 766 other web sites, including one for an engineering company and one for breast cancer fundraising. The filtering affected almost one million Telus subscribers.

As Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services move into the consumer mainstream, emergency service providers are becoming more vocal about the potential difficulties in delivering emergency services to VoIP users.

A US court recently found that search engine company Google is partially liable in a closely-watched trade-mark infringement suit. The August 8, 2005 written opinion of the Justice Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, expanding on an oral opinion from the Court last December, found that Google's practice of including trade-marks in the text of sponsored links could cause consumer confusion.

The BC Court of Appeal has ruled that the so-called "single publishing rule" often used in the US has no application in Canada. Under the rule used in many US jurisdictions, the publication of a libel gives rise to only one cause of action, even though there may be later deliveries of the same libel, for example, by way of later sales of a book containing the same libellous statement.

The Director the Alberta Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (Director) recently released her report on an investigation into the collection and retention of personal information by two Canadian Tire retail stores in Alberta. Complaints had been made that the two stores refused to complete return-of-goods transactions unless the customers provided their drivers' license information. The complainants alleged that their personal information was collected in contravention of Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA).

A recent three-member panel decision under Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (CDRP) of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) highlights differences between ownership disputes regarding .ca domain names governed by the CDRP and those regarding .com domain names governed by the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) of ICANN.

In the energy bill recently signed by US President Bush, there is what might be called, with tongue in cheek, a "sleeper" provision - to extend daylight savings time (DST) at both ends of the year by a total of four weeks, beginning in 2007.

On July 28, the Supreme Court of Canada denied leaves to appeal a Federal Court of Appeal decision that the Copyright Board was ultra vires its authority when it applied the private copying levy to digital audio recorders, and that the levy was an unconstitutional tax.

A recent finding by the Canadian Office of the Privacy Commissioner indicates that institutions subject to the Personal Information Protection and Electronics Documents Act (PIPEDA) have an obligation, even if difficult to implement, to ensure that unsolicited advertisements are not sent to customers who have opted not to receive such materials from the institution.

Under proposals given to UK Members of Parliament in the wake of the London bombings in July, police would be able to intervene in, disrupt and attack web sites that facilitate acts of terrorism. Such powers would also make it easier for police to pursue domestic extremism and paedophilia online. This is according to a list of recommendations made to MPs by The Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland (ACPO).

In mid-July, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed a lawsuit against Merck & Co relating to Vioxx, a best-selling painkiller that was pulled off the market last fall after it was shown to be a cardiac risk to humans.

Clinical drug trials are triggering an increasing number of lawsuits in the US, ranging from wrongful death claims to the right to continue receiving drugs, according to attorneys on both sides of the litigation. (See also Merck Sued Over Vioxx Animal Tests above). Not only has this become a fertile ground for litigation, but plaintiffs have expanded their targets to include almost anyone associated with a clinical trial: doctors, universities, research institutions, drug companies, clinical trial review boards -- even patent holders of certain medical devices.