The announcement by ICANN to open the Internet to a limitless number of domains has been a cause of stir since June 2008 when Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) accepted this recommendation of its global stakeholders. ICANN's website describes itself as a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation aimed at coordinating and maintaining the integrity […]
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently launched a new web site called TOSBack which tracks changes to the terms of service and privacy policies of several popular websites. Among the tracked sites are Facebook, EBay, World of Warcraft, and various other social networking sites and internet service providers. Visitors can see a change log for […]
Ashlee Froese is an Osgoode Hall alumnus and currently practices intellectual property at the law firm of Keyser Mason Ball LLP. Facebook Inc.'s New Policy On June 9, 2009 Facebook Inc. announced that it would be releasing personalized URLs for Facebook profiles (i.e. "facebook.com/AshleeFroese" as opposed to previously used profile URLs "facebook.com/followed by a randomly […]
Giovanni Maria Riccio is Professor of Private Comparative Law at the University of Salerno. Professor Riccio is an IP Osgoode Research Affiliate. The French Constitutional Court held that the "Creation and Internet" law - the law promoted by the Olivennes Commission and strictly supported by the President Sarkozy - is unconstitutional. This Act - whose […]
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced its decision this past Thursday (4 June 2009) to extend the exemption of new media broadcasting from regulation. After considering the current state of broadcasting in new media, the CRTC felt that while new media is of growing importance, it currently does not pose any threat to […]
The print media, newspapers in particular, appears to be hanging by a thread all across the United States and some of the big names in the field are contemplating the 'toll booth' approach regarding their online websites. The causes of this outcome can be traced back to the decisions made in 1990s to make the […]
Currently, China has an estimated 70 million bloggers posting on a wide range of subjects. In January, the country's number of internet users was estimated at 298 million, the most of any nation in the world. Unfortunately, China's internet censorship is one of the most pervasive and sophisticated in the world. Bloggers' freedom of expression […]
Section 230 of the United States Communications Decency Act (47 USC 230) gives "providers of interactive computer services" (like ISPs, internet forums and social networking sites) immunity from certain types of claims when the providers publish or republish the works of other people. It was enacted to overrule a 1995 decision that held an ISP […]
It is no secret that counterfeit goods have been sold over the internet for years. Your relation to someone who has purchased some form of counterfeited good over the internet most probably follows the six degrees of separation rule. As a prominent source of the sale of counterfeit goods, U.S.-based eBay has been sued by […]
On April 24th the Minister of Industry, Tony Clement, tabled a government bill with the aims of protecting consumers and businesses from dangerous forms of spam and regulating activities that are believed to discourage the use of electronic means of carrying out commercial activities. Bill C-27, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act, contains provisions that prohibit […]