Another example of an old media player trying to act like a new media company can be found at CTV’s MyNews. It’s an attempt at citizen journalism and based on the calibre of journalism coming out of CTV I’m sure that citizens will fair much better. On their site they say:

Have you seen news happening?
Do you have a video or image(s) of something that should be seen on our CTV Newscasts?
It can be breaking news like a fire or accident or something eye-catching like a late spring storm or a celebrity sighting.
We are looking for the best in citizen journalism to enhance CTV’s own newsgathering efforts.

Wireless spectrum auction

WirelessNorth.ca is covering the wireless spectrum auction happening in Canada. The amount the auction has raised is staggering at $1.8 billion. The auction is not exciting because as any Canadian can imagine there already is little competition over our airwaves. It looks like there won’t be a new player in town anytime soon

Now in to it’s second week and 14th round of bidding, Canada’s AWS auction has hit 1.8Billion and is not showing immediate signs of slowing down. 68 licences received bids last round, actually up from the 40-50 bids of the last round. Thus far industry Canada’s decision to set aside new spectrum appears to have anything but discourage a handsome return on this auction.

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Tags: Canada,CTV,wireless
Categories: Old Media vs New, Uncategorized
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Another week and another accusation that Facebook destroys people’s privacy. However, this accusation could end up changing Facebook in Canada. The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), run out of the University of Ottawa, has filed a complaint with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada that outlines 22 problems with Facebook.

The complaint that CIPPIC sent in lists the points succinctly:

We submit that Facebook is violating Principles 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.7, and 4.8 of PIPEDA,
Schedule 1 by failing to:
• Identify all the purposes for which it collects Users’ personal information (Principle 4.2);
• Obtain informed consent from Users and non-Users to all uses and disclosures of their
personal information (Principle 4.3);
• Allow Users to use its service without consenting to supply unnecessary personal
information (Principle 4.3.3);
• Obtain express consent to share Users’ sensitive information (Principle 4.3.6);
• Allow Users who have deactivated their accounts to easily withdraw consent to share
information (Principle 4.3.8);
• Limit the collection of personal information to that which is necessary for its stated
purposes (Principle 4.4);
• Be upfront about its advertisers’ use of personal information and the level of Users’
control over their privacy settings (Principle 4.4.2);
• Destroy personal information of Users who terminate their use of Facebook services
(Principle 4.5);
• Safeguard Users’ personal information from unauthorized access (Principle 4.7); and
• Explain policies and procedures on the range of personal information that is disclosed to
third party advertisers and application developers (Principle 4.8).

Ars Technica has an article summarizing CIPPIC’s stance:

CIPPIC points out a number of other violations that have raised the eyebrows of users for some time now. Facebook fails to disclose why every third-party Facebook application must have access to every bit of a user’s personal data (this is something that annoys me, personally), and requires the submission of a user’s date of birth upon registration even though there are no age guidelines for using the service. Facebook also fails to obtain express consent to share users’ personal information by making all information partially public by default (users can change privacy settings after saving the information first). The same goes for photographs uploaded by the user, or photos uploaded and tagged by others that then show up on the user’s profile by default—whether they like it or not.

Read the report from CIPPIC (PDF)

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Tags: Canada,facebook,privacy,social networking
Categories: Electronic Communication Technologies
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