Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

End of Online Anonymity in Canada?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the impossible-or-inevitable dept.

boochy writes "Are we close to losing our anonymity online in Canada? As Angela Pacienza writes in a National Post article; "The record industry's attempts to sue people who share music online threaten to change the widely held expectation that everyone's anonymous when surfing the Internet, lawyers representing the public interest argued Monday." This is a very interesting article that shows how much the lawyers representing the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic are trying their best to protect our privacy online."

2 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. The KEY factor is WHO is behind the keyboard? by StandardCell · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is the exact defense one individual I know used when he was accused of breaking into a rural school's computer system about ten years ago. Though this was a criminal charge (and the burden of proof substantially higher), he was easily acquitted because the prosecutor couldn't show that it was him specifically who was breaking into the computer systems.

    In like manner, however, I suspect that the house of cards of the recording industry will just as easily fall apart with these civil suits in Canada. If I stupidly misconfigured my wireless or wired router to allow people to essentially walk in, they could easily breach computer security and use my computer to download all manner of goodies. Given what the AVERAGE computer user is (and you all know what the average user is like...), this is more than a plausible defense.

  2. Re:New law? by farbles · · Score: 5, Informative

    I run an ISP in Canada and PIPEDA, the Cdn govt privacy act, applies to private concerns as of January 1, 2004. Our legal advice, from a major law firm partner specializing in PIPEDA law, was that user IP addresses are considered to be personal information and logs containing them should be deleted every month. All companies needed to appoint a Privacy Officer to deal with PIPEDA complaints. Any user can come to us, request everything we have on them and their usage and they can correct any wrong information or ask us to delete it. According to PIPEDA, an individual's personal information is their property.

    In Canada, this is the law.