Articles

On November 19, 2009, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted preliminary approval of an amended settlement agreement in the Google Book Search litigation, which centred on Google’s plans to digitize millions of books from major research libraries. The Amended Settlement is an attempt to settle two lawsuits commenced in 2005, one by the Authors Guild and several individual authors and the other by certain publisher members of the Association of American Publishers. 

On October 21, 2009, the Canadian Radiotelevision and Telecommunications Commission issued its ‘net neutrality’ policy, designed to govern the ability of internet service providers to manage internet traffic. The policy imposes “a higher standard than that available under (the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) in order to provide a higher degree of privacy protection for customers of telecommunications services.” 

Federal anti-spam legislation received royal assent on December 15, 2010 and is expected to come into force within the next few months, upon proclamation. The legislation prohibits a very broad class of commercial electronic communications, unless the recipient consents to receive it or an exception is available. 

Advances in telecommunications and broadband technology have facilitated the growth of mobile and virtual workspaces such that telecommuting has become a daily reality for many individuals employed in a variety of sectors.

Social media has changed the way people and businesses interact with each other. Not only must an organization be concerned with what the public and its competitors are saying via social media, but it must also be concerned with what its own employees are saying. 

The popularity of user-generated content (UGC) (material uploaded to the Internet by website users), is relatively recent and legal theories are still developing on when liability will attach to those that post UGC and those that facilitate such posting.