Canadian Heritage committee  No, I didn't say that. I said that user content—

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't think I said the CRTC shouldn't be regulating. On the broadcast side, I think what I've tried to say is that user content and the work coming out of the Internet is not broadcast, so that ought to be outside of the CRTC's remit, because it's inappropriate to put it in thi

Canadian Heritage committee  Sure. Thanks for that question. The government's stated objectives have focused on the large streaming services. I think we've heard a lot of talk about a lot of issues that frankly have very little to do with those large streaming services, so it's pretty clear that people look

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for the question. I guess I would start by noting that we've had the government claim, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, that user-generated content, user content, was out of the bill, and we've had the CRTC chair say otherwise. Even now, on this panel, we've had M

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much, Chair. Good morning, everyone. My name is Michael Geist. I'm a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where I hold the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law. I'm a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society. I'm appearing in a pe

Information & Ethics committee  I'd just note that there are companies that address the issue that we've been hearing about, this notion that they think you're someone, but perhaps you're not that person. For example, even Google gives you that ability, and it's quite striking when you do it. Google has a secti

Information & Ethics committee  Well, I think absolutely. As far as we know, the business model for many of these companies—and I think that for many of them, they are evolving, shall we say—is to leverage the information, the social graph that they're able to accumulate, and add value to that for marketers or

Information & Ethics committee  I see the use of these tools, particularly for education purposes, as having a tremendous amount of potential. For instance, this particular hearing is not only being viewed; I took a quick glance, and there are also people tweeting about it as they listen or watch it in real tim

Information & Ethics committee  Sure. I want to harken back to the very first caveat and that is to emphasize how important and valuable these services are. I recognize the language around big brother and social media, but I have to say that the value that's associated with this for so many different purposes

Information & Ethics committee  You're right that many people have different perspectives on some of these issues. I think there's some low-hanging fruit here. We could start by ensuring that there's respect for people's choices about consent and that there's adequate disclosure from the organizations collectin

Information & Ethics committee  It is common language that they use, and I think it's highly problematic language. It's true that I used it, but there is a problem with relying on a reasonable expectation of privacy—which you actually see crop up very regularly in labour cases and other sorts of cases where the

Information & Ethics committee  Professor Steeves is the expert in this area, so I hate to take a different position. But I have to say that we've seen an attempt to try to target kids, from a privacy perspective, in the United States, with COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which sought to ha

Information & Ethics committee  Often the question is put: Who does it better, or who does it best, and can we emulate them? When PIPEDA was first established I think there was a view among many that it was the best practice. It looked at a lot of what was taking place in Europe and at what had emerged in the

Information & Ethics committee  I have a couple thoughts on that. The first is to say that I don't think it's the role of government to come charging in saying, “We're the new sheriff in town when it comes to social media, and we're going to fix everything that has to do with the choices these private companies

Information & Ethics committee  I guess I'm of two minds on some of this stuff. There is no question that there is a necessity of ensuring that the kinds of choices and policies being put forward are better understood. Quite candidly, I don't think any of these things are designed to be read, to begin with. E