Industry committee  I mentioned being impressed with the law when it was first proposed, and I still am. There are a couple of operational things that I would tweak: resourcing, stability, and better interactions. I wish PRA was in place. Things probably do need to be clarified better, but I think t

Industry committee  I've been very close to the law for very long, and it strikes me that complying is simpler than it appears. There are really only four operative sections in the whole thing, and the rest of it is just infrastructure underneath it. Yes, it needs clarification, but I think a lot o

Industry committee  I would maintain the statutory damage, in that it can be extremely difficult to prove certain things. What it should really be is, “I was sent this after I told them to stop.” That should be sufficient, as long as the court, on a case-by-case basis, thinks that's plausible. It h

Industry committee  That does make me nervous. In the case of a private right of action, I wouldn't mind seeing that have a further.... You know, three years down the line, we'll allow private right of action. I do like the way that we sometimes bring these things in stages: “How is it going so fa

Industry committee  Spamhaus offers its threat intelligence data to individuals and small organizations for free. It always has. We are all believers in doing that. However, when we get into a big organization, we figure that we are saving them millions of dollars and making their customers happier.

Industry committee  Yes. In fact—as she was referring to with the question about how small organizations do their marketing and whether they are going to worry about trying to do it themselves—there is a burgeoning market of companies that are specifically intended to run mail and marketing campaign

Industry committee  Did you say the CRA?

Industry committee  Okay. As I understand it, if you raise a private right of action against company X and then CRTC or the Privacy Commissioner or the competition branch decides that this a situation they wish to deal with, then the private right of action goes away. That's my understanding of t

Industry committee  Well, for example, if CRTC saw that I was suing someone for doing something, the CRTC could say it was a result of a larger issue or something like that, and then they would institute an investigation. Then the private right of action is suspended.

Industry committee  My understanding is that one of the main differences is that Canada is a loser-pays environment, whereas the United States is not. What that means is that enormous amounts of money can be made by showering people with spurious lawsuits, because they'll often back out. I believe

Industry committee  An example is advertising fake pills. These are being done by groups of people, many people, who when they send out their spam will have a link on it so that when someone follows that link to the illegal pill site, there's a cha-ching that gives the affiliate a penny. It's that s

Industry committee  And that affiliate was Canadian.

Industry committee  They are. I don't know if any of them have gone all the way through yet, but they are looking at that. The other thing they are working on, at a less than “in front of a judge” level, is dealing with Canadian hosting environments or hosting providers who provide web services to

Industry committee  It's quite good. The CRTC needs more time and experience in dealing with them.

Industry committee  Yes. It's a matter of experience and time and working away at it. Mr. Lau is not seeing it, but I'm seeing how the CRTC is interacting with international organizations, law enforcement, and regulatory bodies.