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Industry committee My view is that it is an issue that has evolved. At the time when we were on the spam task force, the Federal Trade Commission spam centre--fridge or freezer or whatever it was called--was seen as a useful tool for investigative purposes, and there was the sense that we ought to
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee We have even higher numbers.
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee I think the legislation already includes.... There is an enforcement arm. The goal of the task force, I assume, by virtue of this legislation, was to try to find a number of tools to go after this. Certainly there is within this legislation, as you know, a number of enforcement
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee As I mentioned, I recognize the potential for parallels, but I actually don't think that the concern within the Canadian legal system is as great. As I mentioned, there are reasons for that, including the fact that it is tougher to even get a class action status in Canada than it
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee What I'm saying is that I don't anticipate the flood of lawsuits in Canada, in part because our court system is somewhat different from that of the United States. The fact that Utah was a leader in this regard isn't by accident. There was a very well-known spammer who was Utah-ba
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee I think it's almost impossible to overstate the effect that this has on consumer confidence. I can recall, actually, that when we launched the spam task force, there was a press conference. I remember one of the reporters turned to the task force members and asked--I happened t
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee It's taken four years to get from the point of a unanimous task force report that included everybody across the spectrum to finally just getting legislation tabled, and there were a couple of false starts along the way. The notion that we're going to go back to zero I think would
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee As I think we've mentioned, the experience elsewhere is that unless you have strong penalties, this doesn't work. I think there were even some quotes in the press from one Canadian-based spammer, who was laughing when told about the prospect of Canadian anti-spam legislation and
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee There are provisions that discuss that ability for information-sharing and coordination between agencies. Obviously the provisions themselves, in some instances, are targeted to a specific agent, one or the other, and one would hope that, properly resourced, there will be the abi
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee I think there are still a lot of options in this regard. In fact, when I'm asked to make a connection with someone in this kind of context or other sorts of contexts, my approach, partly because I'm concerned about the privacy of the individual, is to send the person who's made t
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee Well, I actually think the legislation does deal with this in part, because there is, as I mentioned, the business-to-business exception. I'll tell you that when I launched my spam complaint, it also happened to be against a sports team. It was against the Ottawa Renegades, the o
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee No. There's been an ongoing issue in Canada as to whether or not e-mail addresses are themselves personally identifiable information. At a provincial level, there actually have been some attempts to exclude that, but federally, until we change the law, they are treated as persona
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee I'm going to repeat this. As long as you understand that there's a huge, massive exception, get consent. All of this is permitted as long as you obtain consent. We are now only in that basket where someone hasn't actually obtained the person's consent in the first place. They don
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee I admit that I think there's ample reason for some skepticism as to whether it will be enforced as effectively as it can be, at least on paper. I think that's one reason why a private right of action is a good thing, because it actually does allow the private sector to pick up th
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist
Industry committee There's the potential for that. The concern has actually been the opposite. My understanding is that there have been a number of instances in which there have been international investigations with a Canadian component, and there have been concerns as to whether or not Canadian a
June 11th, 2009Committee meeting
Prof. Michael Geist