Year: 2008

Update – Bill 85 (Photo Card Act)

/ Christopher Parsons

It looks like Ontario has managed to do what politicians in the UK have been struggling to accomplish for years. This morning the Liberal government of Ontario passed Bill 85, the Photo Card Act, which will see updates to the identity documents that Ontarians typically carry on their persons. While the UK government has been stymied at every turn by no2id when they’ve attempted to roll out a sophisticated identify card, the coalition and advocacy groups in Ontario that have opposed the inception of drivers licenses that contain biometric data and radio frequency identifiers (RFIDs) have been less successful. While the Conservatives had been expected to speak against the bill, this did not, in fact, happen. My money is that the politics didn’t cash out to oppose it.

I’ll post updates as they arrive, and be putting together a post-mordum report in a few days.

Update 1: CTV has an article discussing the EDLs

Study: Stolen Web Content Sees More Traffic Than The Original

/ Christopher Parsons

is reporting that a recent study from Attributor Corp., a copyright enforcement company, shows that content that is stolen makes more money than the original content itself. I don’t find this terribly surprising, but the solution (hunting down copyright violations) seems to be a Sisyphean task; no matter how many take-down notices that you send out, when content is taken across international borders it’s almost impossible to easily take it down if you’re dealing with an uncooperative content host.

What’s the solution then? The study suggests that content owners need to find a better way of monetizing their assets – figure out how to generate more revenue (potentially by studying how the thieves do it) so that even if content is ‘stolen’ you’re still ahead of the game. The nice thing about this solution is that it recognizes that you can’t ever, really, stop copyright infringement online – the best you can do is learn to roll with it.

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Short Thought Concerning Enhanced Drivers Licenses

/ Christopher Parsons

A colleague of mine asked that I write a short post that summarizes the issue and my concerns with the Enhanced Drivers Licenses that Ontario is proposing to implement in the near future. Per his request, I’ll writing this.

Beginning July 1, 2009, the American government will require Canadians and Americans who enter the United States through its land borders to carry either a passport or an ‘enhanced’ identity document. The Ontario government, in response, is preparing to pass Bill 85 – Photo Card Act, which will see the government offer these identity documents to the Ontario public. These identity documents are required to contain a radio frequency identification chip that emits a unique number whenever it is within range of a reader, raising deep concerns surrounding mass surveillance of North American populations. Researchers have consistently proven that the anemic protections suggested by the government, such as placing the identity document in a radio-blocking sleeve, to be relatively ineffective in blocking the interception of the radio’s unique identifier. Further, advocacy groups have noted that it is relatively inexpensive to purchase a reader, raising concerns that non-government bodies and individuals can capture this unique identifier.

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Comment – Major ISPs To Deploy P4P Within Months

/ Christopher Parsons

In the US, several ISPs (e.g. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast) have been testing the effectiveness of using Pando Networks’ own P2P client, which localizes transfered files, to increase the transfer speeds of files while reducing the flow of traffic between ISPs. These tests have demonstrated that Pando’s solution to P2P traffic ‘overwhelming’ network traffic has largely been successful; far less data is passing between ISPs, with a huge portion of the P2P traffic now being contained to the respective ISPs’ networks . DSLreports is concerned that, there may be hidden costs to the roll-out of these technologies. Perhaps individuals will need to pay a fee to enjoy the enhanced speeds. Perhaps this will correspond with a more invasive content analysis system. Maybe there will be blocks put on ‘non-authorized’ P2P clients.

Personally, I expect that P4P will be used to let ISPs compete in the media-content selling business. Imagine: you can get a movie from iTunes in 20 minutes, or in 2-4 from your ISP. Sure, the analysis and filtering that DSLreports notes could be coming, but I have a suspicion that P4p will be used to undermine the current content distributors first, and that other uses of P4P will follow only after that business model/technique is tested.

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