Roses are red
Violets are blue
The war on piracy
Will never be through

The fair dealing provisions of bill C-11 still need clarification. Photo: Shutterstock

Canada’s universities are urging swift passage of bill C-11, the copyright modernization act, which was sent to committee this week for review, but critics say there is still work to be done in the area of fair dealing.

The Supreme Court has made the difficult-to-deal-with standard of review easier, says one lawyer.

The Supreme Court has upheld the decision of an Alberta privacy commission adjudicator in a case that challenged the timeline for the standard of review when dealing with a complaint.

Illustration: Scott Page

My mother used to chastise me as a teenager when I got cocky, warning me never to get too big for my britches. Basically, it was an ego check. She was reminding me not to be conceited and show an exaggerated sense of my own importance.

Properly managing legal spending remains the top concern for leaders of Canadian legal departments, as they try to strike a balance between what they spend and what they get in return.

‘Commencing a legal action implies consent under PIPEDA,’ says David Cherepacha. Photo: Andi Balla

Technology has opened up a wealth of information for lawyers conducting investigations through surveillance for use in court cases, but they need to make sure the collecting of such information is within the bounds of Canada’s privacy rules, experts at a Toronto seminar said last week.

Do you remember the first time someone read your most personal journal? I do. And I stopped keeping them after that. It feels like such a betrayal, not to mention a terrible invasion of privacy. Right? So what about when your credit card company or bank suddenly wants to replace your credit or bank card because your information might have been appropriated by a third party? Or your hydro company sends out a polite letter saying not to worry but just in case, they have to let you know that there might have been a security breach. Did you feel the same way you felt the day you found out your journal or some other personal document had been read? I’m willing to bet not. So how does that work? A bank isn’t a person but because the person who read it is, somehow it matters more. Am I wrong?

The Ontario Court of Appeal said the case posed a ‘knotty and interesting question.’ Photo: Gail J. Cohen

Banks should not share clients’ mortgage information without consent when asked by other financial institutions trying to collect on a judgment debt, ruled the Ontario Court of Appeal. Such disclosure would violate the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

You wouldn’t believe this, but I actually didn’t give a damn about Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social network platforms until around April 27, 2009, when my niece in Calgary posted my mother’s untimely death as a very surprising status update on her Facebook page, having just heard about it from her sister in Victoria milliseconds before.

The federal government’s long awaited introduction of a bill to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act is a constructive step forward in keeping Canada’s private-sector privacy legislation up to date and responsive to the exigencies of technology and the modern marketplace.