In the face of mounting opposition, the Library and Archives Canada has reinstated its longer opening hours.
Latest Posts
CBC’s Marketplace on ISP Speed Claims
CBC's Marketplace features an eye-opening investigation into the misleading ISP claims about consumer broadband services.
Canada’s Identity Theft Bill: What It Says and What’s Missing
The federal government yesterday introduced much-needed identity theft legislation. Bill C-27 includes several important provisions focusing on identity theft such as trafficking in documents and identity information. Key provisions include: making, possessing, transferring, or selling "identity documents" of another person becomes an offence punishable with up to five years in […]
UN Economist Weighs In On Industry Canada P2P Study
Zeljka Kozul-Wright, an economist focused on the creative industries with UNCTAD, has posted personal comments on the recent Industry Canada P2P study. Kozul-Wright notes that: To hold file sharing uniquely responsible for the decline in record sales i.e., largely unauthorized downloading, is basically erroneous and far too simplistic. Moreover, such […]
All I Want For Christmas is a Legal TiVo
My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, The Tyee version, Ottawa Citizen version, homepage version) focuses on the fact that there is nothing under Canadian law that clearly permits home recording of television programs. I note that TiVo claims that its service is available in Canada, yet few retailers carry the product. In fact, notwithstanding the growing popularity of PVRs and the ubiquity of VCRs – the CRTC estimates that 700,000 Canadian households own a PVR and Statistics Canada reports that over 10 million households have video cassette recorders (VCR) – the absence of the TiVo is not the only difference between the U.S. and Canadian markets. In the U.S., using TiVos and VCRs is clearly legal. In Canada, it is not.
While it may come as news to many Canadians that they infringe copyright on daily basis, those involved in the industry are well aware of this state of the law. The law includes a series of copying exceptions that cover research, private study, and criticism, however, there is nothing that clearly permits home recording of television programs. Indeed, the delayed introduction of the TiVo or the Slingbox, another popular product that allows consumers to transfer their television programs over the Internet to their computer and which only entered the Canadian market last year, may stem in part from fears about the legal climate.
Ottawa has regularly introduced legislation demanded by lobby groups (new laws against camcording in movie theatres and Internet rebroadcasting have been passed over the past five years), yet nothing has been done to address the legality of commonplace, non-commercial activities that affects millions of Canadians.
Recent Posts
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 231: Sara Bannerman on How Canadian Political Parties Maximize Voter Data Collection and Minimize Privacy Safeguards 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 230: Aengus Bridgman on the 2025 Federal Election, Social Media Platforms, and Misinformation 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 229: My Digital Access Day Keynote – Assessing the Canadian Digital Policy Record 
Queen’s University Trustees Reject Divestment Efforts Emphasizing the Importance of Institutional Neutrality 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 228: Kumanan Wilson on Why Canadian Health Data Requires Stronger Privacy Protection in the Trump Era
