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Study Says DRM Violates Canadian Privacy Laws

Posted by Zonk on from the they-know-who-you-is dept.

inkslinger77 writes "DRM technology used in consumer media may be violating Canadian privacy laws, according to a new report. The study, done by University of Ottawa's Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, found that a number of services like iTunes, Visio, and Symantec's North SystemWorks require too much personal information in order to verify their users. 'Another issue cited by [study lead investigator David Fewer] concerned the disclosure of DRM-collected personal information from users of Intuit's QuickTax software."It wasn't the use of QuickTax itself that triggered the concern, but rather the use of Intuit's online filing service where we found buried in one of the disclosures the notice that, as an international corporation, Intuit would send information across the border," Fewer said.'"

3 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Could this apply in the European Community too? by MichaelCrawford · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The EC has quite stringent privacy laws, particularly regarding storage of personal info in databases, and has a record of filing anti-corporate lawsuits.

    --
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  2. Nice thought, but... by allcar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Who's going to pay to find out if this is true. Just because an academic study says it might be the case, proves nothing. A costly law suit will be needed to do that. Any volunteers?

  3. Re:Borders by GNU(slash)Nickname · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...the company could be compelled to turn our information over to the eff-bee-eye or the en-essay or one of those other alphabet agencies they've got down there, and it's illegal for them to tell us (their customer) when this takes place.
    I used to work for a Global 50 company. We had a project underway to consolidate all of the Exchange mailboxes in North America into a single data centre in the US, but wound up pulling out of the project and building a smaller Canadian data centre instead for exactly this reason.