Could it be possible that Canada will make Google or any other Internet search and archiving engines illegal?

Bill C-60, which amends the Copyright Act and received its first reading in the House of Commons on June 20, suggests it could be illegal for anyone to provide copyrighted information through "information-location tools," which includes search engines.

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An article in CNet news.com by Martin LaMonica talks about how Microsoft is claimed to be learning to live with Free/Libre and Open Source. "Software Manufacturing" vendors such as Microsoft and IBM are making moves which on the surface look like they accommodating, but I believe this is a distraction away from the harmful political activism they are engaged in around technology policy.

While Balmer was quoted as saying "We compete with products. We don't compete with movements", the "software manufacturing" movement has changed its anti-competitive techniques away from technical work to the political and legal activism. Rather than trying to offer the best software at the best price, they are actively lobbing to change Patent and Copyright laws to favor (or mandate) "software manufacturing".

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As expected, this afternoon the federal government introduced its copyright reform bill . In this age of instant analysis, new legislation does not work particularly well since it requires considerable study and scrutiny to develop a full sense of its implications.

However, since government telegraphed its intentions four months ago, it is possible to provide at least a quick perspective (full caveat that this a quick read and subject to change upon reflection) on the statutory implementation of the March plan. I'll have much more to say in the days ahead but my immediate impression is that the recording industry is the big winner with an enormous basket of new rights and individual Canadians are the big losers as the bill does little to address their interests.

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All of the sites are based on Open Source LAMP projects. The contributions of many Open Source Developers are made plainly visable to all viewing them. Things are not as smooth or polished as they could be but then that would mean alot more pizza and cola.

Beer and Pizza aside - General surfing public at my sites are being presented with open source alternatives. Unbranded albeit but otherwise solid open source alternatives to online applications and websites. Perhaps the sites would make a great place for a frontal Canadian Open Source Adoption Awareness Campaign.

http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/002189.html

"Strange as how it sounds, even Canada looks to be a more fertile ground for continued technology innovation than the US, if E911 becomes mandated for VoIP, including nomadic VoIP offerings."

Jeff runs FreeWorldDialup - a free VOIP service.

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St. Michael's Hospital says it will be the first hospital in Canada next week to roll out an open standards-based workstation that will help better organize and secure patient information.

The Toronto-based facility is implementing Novell Clinical Workstation as a delivery method for its clinical applications that handle patient data. Novell last month announced the product at a health-care conference in Dallas, Texas. Leveraging Novell's identity management technologies and integration tools, the workstation allows IT staff to quickly and securely deliver applications and information to health-care workers, offers cross-platform support for mainframe, fat/thin clients and Web applications, and helps hospitals meet privacy and security regulations, according to Novell.

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A source close to the NDP (and a long time member of PLUG) reports that as of this past weekend, Manitoba's New Democratic Party became the first major political party in North America to officially support Free and Open Source Software.

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Pioneer Petroleum is the largest independent gasoline retailer in Ontario, with 150 retail locations spread throughout the province. Twenty-five of those locations are running Red Hat Linux Workstation 3.0. The other 125 stores are expected to be rid of Windows by the end of 2005.

Ontario is the second largest province in Canada, and its major industries are mining and forestry. Many of Pioneer's gas stations are located in remote rural areas, a situation that can make computer networking a challenge. Up until last October, the only way Pioneer's corporate office could communicate with the branch locations was via telephone and fax.

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Notwithstanding the Internet's remarkable potential, there are dark clouds on the horizon. There are some who see a very different Internet. Theirs is an Internet with ubiquitous surveillance featuring real-time capabilities to monitor online activities. It is an Internet that views third party applications such as Vonage's Voice-over-IP service as parasitic. It is an Internet in which virtually all content should come at a price, even when that content has been made freely available. It is an Internet that would seek to cut off subscriber access based on mere allegations of wrongdoing, without due process or oversight from a judge or jury.

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