Oh, hai! Remember me? I used to write about very important internet law developments on the internet. I still do it on occasion, but now I do it (/checks date) 5 months after they happen apparently. I also promised myself I would write at least 3 posts in 2021. It’s a low bar. I am running out of time. Let’s get to it!
Hi!
Happy Data Privacy Day. Keep your data private! If you are here to get my presentation slides from my talk at McGill today, you can download them here.
Allen
Look, if I have to be honest, my year was fine. I don’t know if you heard how important the internet was this year, but it was. And that tends to work in favour of people in the internet business, like me! Besides a lot of inconvenience like everyone else, my close family and I were not really affected by COVID. So I can’t complain.
I hope all four of my readers (Steve, Massimo, Commissioner Miner and Mom) are safe and healthy, and are having a wonderful holiday season. I know every year I say “this internet thing could really take off next year” but given I was right last year (finally!) I’ll just say “to a much better 2021”. I’ll take having a worse year business-wise if it means we can all get back to more normal times.
See you in 2021.
So (/checks calendar) 4 weeks ago now, on November 17, the Federal Government (well the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada) introduced Bill C-11, aka An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act and the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts, aka the Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2020. Yes it is all of those things. The biggest upgrade of Canadian privacy law ever! ANWAY, as I no longer have the excuse that I am busy teaching I better finally write about it. Oh crap, I just realized today at 3 P.M. my students’ final essays are due and I will have to start grading. Better get to this post!
The “Inception” of spam emails. Click to embiggen it’s a fun read.
Happy Canada Day, eh? Not only is it Canada Day, it is the 6th anniversary of the coming into force of Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL), the law that ended spam forever. Well except for the spam I screen-shotted above from yesterday that is freaking me out man, in the way it is turning a mirror on me and my little website’s 7-year-old posts and internet privacy. So what do you get a law that has everything? How about a decision from the Federal Court of Appeal that says you pass constitutional muster? Done and done, and it even came 3 weeks early. OK it’s not Friday afternoon anymore, so let’s read this fucking 250-paragraph thing already.
Allen Mendelsohn is me. I am a lawyer specializing in internet law working out of Montreal, though sometimes I do it in front of the U.S. Capitol. That should tell you what you need to know about internet law in Canada. I also warp young legal minds at the Faculty of Law at McGill.
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