E-TIPS

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.

eBay Inc (eBay), the online auction house, has petitioned the US Supreme Court to decide whether eBay and other companies held liable for patent infringement at trial should be routinely subject to injunctions while their cases are under appeal. With the petition, eBay is attempting to reverse an injunction granted by a US District Court, when the Court found eBay had infringed a patent owned by MercExchange LLC. Later, the decision was upheld in part by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

In a decision released on July 29, Her Majesty The Queen v Hamilton, the Supreme Court of Canada wrestled with the degree of intention required to convict a person of counselling others over the Internet to commit credit card fraud.

Microsoft's new policy of scanning computers for illegal software when they contact the site for upgrades or downloads has upset privacy advocates. The policy is intended to fight software piracy, which the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft says accounts for 36% of all software applications in use in Canada. Microsoft says that 35% of the software in use worldwide is counterfeit, at a cost to the software industry last year of $1 billion.

The Alberta Privacy Commissioner has ruled that a library which had installed keystroke logging software on an employee's computer without his knowledge should not have done so. The library argued that the information collected was necessary to monitor the productivity of the employee but the Commissioner found that the library could have used less intrusive means to monitor the employee's work and had made no effort to do so.

Industry Canada publishes a Telecommunications Service Industry Reference Tool (Reference Tool), a frequently amended reference guide with an overview of economic activity in this industry sector in Canada. Recently, the section on the wireless sub-sector has been updated to reflect the rapid changes in that field.

Recently a man was arrested in Florida on a third-degree felony charge of unauthorized access to a computer network for the relatively common practice of using someone else's wireless network. Benjamin Smith III admitted to using the signal from Richard Dinon's wireless network from Smith's laptop while parked outside Dinon's house.

The Alberta Privacy Commissioner (Commissioner) has found two law firms engaged to advise on an M&A transaction to be in breach of Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) when data was posted by the law firms to SEDAR, the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval.

In the past six months, media headlines across North America have clamoured about privacy breaches at companies such as ChoicePoint, the San Jose Medical Group, Boston College and LexisNexis, to name a few. To the uninitiated, the timing and frequency of these breaches may suggest a sudden rash of poor information security practices, increasing sophistication of cyber-criminals, or both. In fact, these types of breaches are not so much new events, as they are the subject of new legal requirements for companies to report them.

Canada recently became the first non-European country to sign a protocol against racism and xenophobic material on the Internet.

The recent decision by Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on satellite radio has received mixed reviews. Although criticized as being a reversal in Canadian broadcasting policy, it is also being praised as striking a difficult compromise.

In a nine-judge unanimous ruling, the US Supreme Court has reversed the decision of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc v Grokster

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international, 30-county organization that promotes democracy and free trade, recently released a report (OECD Report) on the current information economy surrounding digital music.

A recent report by e-mail security specialist Pinpoint has found 63% of companies with 1000 or more employees either employ or are planning to employ staff to review company e-mail. The filtering policy, intended to ensure that corporate secrets or confidential financial information doesn't fall into the wrong hands, raises some privacy concerns for employees.

The governments of Canada, the US and Mexico announced on June 27 that they have signed a Framework of Common Principles for Electronic Commerce (E-commerce Framework). Resulting from the announcement of the Security and Prosperity Partnership at the leaders' summit in Texas on March 23, 2005, the goal of the E-commerce Framework is to maintain a predictable and secure online environment which, it is hoped, will foster the adoption of international Internet-based business solutions.

On June 20, the federal government introduced the long-awaited Bill C-60, An Act to Amend the Copyright Act, in the House of Commons. In some respects the language of the Bill proved predictable, but there were a few surprises.

On June 20th, the federal Government introduced a bill to amend the Copyright Act. According to the Government press release, Bill C-60 "fulfills the Government's commitment to address short-term copyright reform issues and to update the Copyright Act to meet the challenges and opportunities of the Internet."