Tagged - why internet law is important to YOU

Some thoughts on online defamation because apparently I am an expert now

Posted on May 9, 2013 by allen

pssstt....If you have read the news in the last couple of weeks, or turned on CBC radio, or listened to talk radio, you may have read some quotes from me or heard the dulcet tones of my voice. I have been media whoring like, well, a media whore. Last week it was the Brian Burke lawsuit. This week it was the sad story of the British Columbia teacher who was totally screwed by his ex-girlfriend online and is still suffering for it. These cases have brought to light the messy ugly side of the internet. Or as some people have argued, a terrible overreaction in the Brian Burke case. Let’s use these cases to talk about online defamation, what you should know about it, and the effects on you as both a potential plaintiff and defendant, you cocksucking whore (see what i did there?).

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Posted in: Defamation, Internet law basics
Tagged: ,
4 Comments

P0rn! Star Trek!

Posted on April 2, 2013 by allen

Now that I have your attention…

These are the slides for a presentation I gave last Thursday to the cool kids at the Intellectual Property, Information Technology and Policy Club of McGill’s Faculty of Law, which I thought you might enjoy. It really has porn and Star Trek in it! Unfortunately you don’t get the awesome banter I am famous for, but it’s still a fun presentation nonetheless. Did I mention Star Trek? And porn?

As Scribd converts documents to PDFs when you upload, the YouTube videos in the presentation are unplayable from the slides. Here they are, in order:

Rhymin’ and Stealin’ Slide 6

Mister Worf, Fire the Mashups Slide 18

Oh, Pretty Woman Slide 24

Pretty Woman Slide 24

Just one more vid Slide 31

For the tl;dr crowd, here’s the conclusion of the presentation: you can be creative online, but you better not be a pirate and make any $$$ doing it.

Posted in: Internet law basics
Tagged: ,
1 Comment

Kill Bill C-11 Vol. Final: Welcome new copyright law!

Posted on November 8, 2012 by allen
YouTubes and Copyright oh my!

You could be seeing this less often now

Did you know that you woke up this morning to a brand new copyright regime in this country? Of course you didn’t, because copyright is boring. Not so! You can now do many things that you were probably doing before anyway, but now are legal! Let’s do a quick rundown of some of things you may find important.

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Posted in: Copyright
Tagged: ,
6 Comments

Leakage! Errrr, web leakage!

Posted on September 27, 2012 by allen

Shred baby, shred!Is your privacy online being shredded to bits? The Office of the Privacy Commissioner sure thinks so! This week, they released the results of a study they did of 25 major Canadian websites, which showed that 11 of them were engaging in “web leakage”. So which companies are leaking your personal information? Let’s find out!

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Posted in: Privacy
Tagged: ,
4 Comments

Copyright infringement is a dangerous crime!

Posted on March 29, 2012 by allen

CRIME CRIME CRIME WORSE THAN MURDERIt’s piracy week here at AM.com! This story is not necessarily a 100% internet law story (it’s maybe 87.3%) but it really caught my eye yesterday. And I think it does have a bunch of lessons for the internet law fans out there. Some dude in Winnipeg this week pleaded guilty to copyright infringement and got an 18-month sentence and a $20,000 fine. Once you pick your jaw up off the floor, I’ll explain how all of this is possible.

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Posted in: Copyright
Tagged: ,
5 Comments

Let’s read a privacy policy. For fun!

Posted on February 3, 2012 by allen

you WILL complyDo you use Google products? Of course you do. You’re probably using one right now. If you do, you got an email last week from Google saying that as of March 1st, you will be covered by their brand-spanking new Privacy Policy. Since there is nothing really exciting in Canadian internet law this week, I thought I’d take some time to read the thing so you don’t have to. As I write privacy policies for a living, I am confident I will be able to handle this task with all the usual straightforward hard hitting legal analysis you’ve come to expect from me. Or I could really pile on the snark. Join me after the jump to find out which one!

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Posted in: Privacy
Tagged: ,
5 Comments

Kill Bill C-11 Volume 2: the notices from your ISP are coming!!!

Posted on October 26, 2011 by allen

ISP, or monopoly?As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, Bill C-11, The Copyright Modernization Act, has been introduced in Parliament and we are headed to a whole new regime of Copyright in this country. And I promised to have an ongoing series on the effects of the Bill on the internet. Well, two posts counts as a series, right?

After the jump, let’s explore the “notice and notice” regime imposed by the Bill. Sure that sounds boring, but what legal “regime” doesn’t? And you, Mr. or Mrs. Illegal Downloader, will want to know about this.

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Posted in: Copyright, Regulatory regime in Canada
Tagged: , ,
11 Comments

Hurray for government bureaucracy!

Posted on October 6, 2011 by allen

All powerful, all knowingWait, what?

Let’s praise a regulator for a change after the jump…

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Posted in: Regulatory regime in Canada
Tagged: ,
3 Comments