Dec 16, 2024 · Canadian digital law and policy in 2024 featured the long-delayed online harms bill, controversial implementation of streaming and online news legislation, as well as a myriad of notable copyright, AI, and privacy court cases. Government legislation stalled in the House of Commons, but with trade battles over a digital services tax, a competition case against Google, and plans to kick TikTok ...

Jan 27, 2025 · A lot has happened over the past six weeks since the last Law Bytes episode that provided a year-end review. TikTok briefly went offline in the U.S., Meta changed its content moderation policies in a major shift designed to curry favour with Donald Trump, Amazon announced it is laying off all of its Quebec-based employees, and Bell obtained an expansive court blocking order covering copycat ...

Dec 5, 2024 · Justice Minister Arif Virani yesterday finally bowed to public pressure by agreeing to split Bill C-63, the Online Harms bill. The move brings to an end the ill-conceived attempt to wedge together Internet platform responsibility with Criminal Code provisions and the potential weaponization of the Canada Human Rights Act that had rightly sparked concerns from a wide range of groups. I wrote ...

Dec 30, 2024 · I’ve posted several year-in-reviews of Canadian digital policy (blogs, podcasts, Substacks), but the most important story this year for me and the Jewish community was the relentless rise of antisemitism in Canada.Over the course of the year, I appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to emphasize the chilling effect of antisemitism, wrote op-eds in the Globe and Mail ...

Dec 3, 2024 · Canada’s largest media companies, including the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Postmedia, CBC, and Canadian Press, came together last week to file a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI, the owners of ChatGPT. The lawsuit is the first high profile Canadian claim lodged against the enormously popular AI service, though there have been similar suits filed elsewhere, notably including a ...

Dr. Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law and is a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society.He has obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees from Cambridge University in the UK and Columbia Law School in New York ...

Nov 12, 2024 · An earlier version of this essay first appeared as a Deep Dive at the Hub Canada Nearly one year ago, I made my way from my home in Ottawa across the river to the Gatineau hearing room used by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to participate in its inaugural proceeding on implementing the Online Streaming Act, better known as Bill C-11.

Nov 6, 2024 · The Canadian government has just announced the conclusion of its national security review of TikTok and arrived at a curious conclusion: it plans to ban the company from operating in Canada but the app will remain available here. I wrote earlier this year about the need for better laws to counter the risks associated with TikTok, rather than banning the app altogether. That post came in ...

Feb 26, 2024 · After years of delay, the government tabled Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, earlier today.The bill is really three-in-one: the Online Harms Act that creates new duties for Internet companies and a sprawling new enforcement system, changes to the Criminal Code and Canada Human Rights Act that meet longstanding requests from groups to increase penalties and enforcement against hate but which ...

Jun 29, 2024 · The government’s choice for chief of the Canadian Human Rights Commission has been mired in controversy this week given his failure to disclose a record of posts and appearances that call into question the ability for Jewish or Zionist Canadians to get a fair, impartial hearing at the Commission. Birju Dattani, who formerly was known as Mujahid Dattani, is now the subject of an independent ...