There is no shortage of speculation on what the copyright reform bill would look like. Many suggest that with the throne speech as well as the Member of Parliament echoing the major foreign copyright stakeholder, it is likely that the worst fears of a Canadian Digital Millennium Copyright Act would be realized sooner or later.

Everyone has been waiting for a copyright reform bill, or a debate, or even a hint as to what is officially going to happen with the copyright issue. Even with the government promising in the last election that they would put international treaties into the House of Commons for debate before ratification, neither debate nor consultation nor a bill has even materialized.

Now with the current political climate, it seems that the chances that the copyright reform bill even seeing the light of day is growing slimmer by the day. The government is currently threatening to dissolve the parliament on a number of issues. One of the issues is the anti-crime bill being stalled in the senate. Another issue is the budget bill – a bill notorious for causing elections in minority government situations. The budget was something that one opposition political party saying that they would vote against it in the past. Added to this is the future of the Afghanistan mission – something that has caused deep political lines already. If it weren’t enough, there have been reports that the Conservative government is contemplating on simply tabling a bill of confidence which, like the other cases, could topple the government into an election. Is it all a game or is the government seriously going to be toppled within the next few weeks? If there is anything certain in this, it’s that the longevity of the current government has been unpredictable at best – which could possibly mean that the copyright bill that was to be tabled several times to not see the light of day.

The copyright bill is a sensitive issue among Canadians who are involved in technology in some form or another – let alone those who are involved in the arts. The grassroots movement of the Facebook group ‘Fair Copyright for Canada’ certainly gained momentum – unexpected momentum for some. With protesters seeking answers on the burning questions on everyones minds with the issue of copyright, the possible tabling of the copyright bill before the end of 2007 was simply put off for a later date. In other words, evidence points to the very likely possibility that the debate pressured the government to take the bill off the table before it was even on the table in the first place. Judging by the reaction, it would seem reasonable to speculate that the government knows that copyright is a rather touchy subject that could prevent votes in a potential election in the future.

With big issues causing election rumbles, whether Canadians are ready for one or not, it is quite likely that the tabling of the bill won’t occur for some time for fear of lost votes – particularly with other issues threatening to cause an election shortly. One thing is for sure, if speculation is right on the contents of the bill, it won’t earn the governing party very many votes anyway. So what are the odds that the Prentice Copyright reform bill will ever see the light of day? Unless the government survives the latest hurdles, it is very doubtful that a copyright reform bill will ever see the light of day.

Where would that leave Canadians on a frosty March or warming April? Heading to the polls with copyright related issues being of hardly any concern with the current political issues more front and center. With the last minority government and this minority government, under the potential circumstance, not passing any copyright reform bill, it may be easier to pass a kidney stone then a copyright reform bill. Even then, that raises the possibility of what is in store for the next government. Would the next one be a majority government or a minority one? There is little doubting that minority governments have stalled the copyright reform bill for this many years. With both Conservative and Liberal party at least showing signs of simply trying to enact restrictive copyright laws, perhaps the best thing Canadians could hope for is another minority government who is willing to set up a public consultation on the matter so as to at least clear the dust in the matter once and for all.

How would they do this? They take a gadget like a cellphone and make it possible for their customers to pay by using this instead of the slender card. Nobody goes anywhere these days without some form of communication. In most cases your cellphone is full of contacts, information and priceless conveniences.

Visa hopes that you will soon be able to swipe your cellphone over a special reader that electronically communicates with a microchip over your phone. Then, the phone owner has an opportunity to confirm the purchase amount using a buttom press…and you’re done!

Consumers can then have the capability to manage their accounts from the mobile phone and they hope to also have the ability to enable contact-free payments, remote payments, person to person payments and mobile coupons.

NFC technology was developed by former Philips chip unit NSP and Sony. This technology is already widely used in public transport (bus passes and subway passes) access cards. Visa claims its cards and payment systems generate over $4 trillion in sales volume and they are known to be the largest credit card payment system. Visa went public with their new operations named Visa, Inc, for those of you that watch the market.

The first version of the technology was released recently and includes contactless mobile payment, personalization over mobile telephony networks, coupons and direct marketing. Other versions are expected to show face later in the year and plans are to include remote payment options and person to person payment capability.

Other companies are getting involved. Over in Japan, JCB, their leading credit card company, started Europe’s first mobile phone credit payment trial with Nokia and Dutch telecom operator KPN back in October. It was a small trial with hopes that it will become a practice they can release to the public successfully. Germany and Finland have also tested some areas of this technology.

This really opens a new world up for those that travel often or do business but how will it affect personal users? Will it be convenient or another identity theft risk.

Read more on Wibree and other Wireless animals…

The various types of computer memory can be classified in several different ways, the simplest of which is the division into volatile and non-volatile memory. Volatile memory requires constant power to maintain stored information. Most types of RAM (random access memory), the most common type of memory used by modern computers, are volatile. Thus, to store information, conventional RAM computer chips are dependent upon electricity flowing through them. When the power is switched off (i.e., when the system is “powered down”), unless the information has been copied to the hard drive, the information is lost.

Non-volatile memory, on the other hand, can retain stored information permanently, absolving the need for a constant power supply. ROM (read-only memory), which stores information that does not require frequent changing (i.e., doesn’t need rewriting), such as Firmware (a software embedded inside a hardware such as a BIOS [basic input-output system]), is typically non-volatile. So, even when the system is off, the data is stored.

More on MRAM…

ZNITCH.com claims to be the opposite of RSS and is naming their service idea SSR, which stands for “Super Simple Reminders”. How does it work? RSS pushes a site’s posts immediately to the users subscribed…every single post. ZNITCH selects specific posts from several pages only when it matches certain keywords entered by the subscriber.

Enter a few keywords on the site, choose a blog or site you want to monitor and let ZNITCH.com do all the work sorting and choosing which posts come through to you. Coming directly to your email makes things faster (I chose to use filters so that all my alerts went to one folder in my setup) and you can avoid any of the posts that don’t fit your chosen interest.

Keep yourself ahead of the game and use a keyword oriented site. This seems to really be a great idea for those that get tons of mail and feeds all day. I know I have to constantly sort through mine and this will help me to avoid those delays.

“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.” – Thucydides

Some of you know by now that I run a blog with my best friend where we investigate various malware outbreaks. The blog (www.webdefenders.net) is in essence a research arm of Jay Loden’s AIMFix project. We try our best to publicly shame the people responsible for damage-inflicting scourges on the Interweb.

A few days ago we recieved a cease and desist order from a lawfirm retained by Dan Yomtobian, the man responsible for Xupiter. I wont get into a lengthy diatribe about what Xupiter is here. It’s been written about at length by the press since 2003. In simplest terms, Xupiter was a piece of software alleged by thousands of people to arrive on a PC without consent and unleash torrents of unwanted advertising. At one time, Xupiter was responsible for a then record-breaking help thread on SpywareInfo.com. It was even bundled with Grokster during Wayne Rosso’s tenure there, until the distribution suddenly came to a halt. Suprise?

After the fall of Xupiter, nobody heard much from Yomtobian until he published a series of business oriented websites promiting his services. None of these sites addressed his past endeavors, so my partner and I published a tell-all article about the depth of our findings over the past few years. The article draws its support from corporate documents, WHOIS records, even direct quotes from Microsoft’s Help Center and Wired.com articles.

Evidently, the fact that a Google query for “Dan Yomtobian” returns our article as the second result on the first page is damaging to its subject’s reputation. So on 09JUN06, we recieved a cease and desist order alleging that we’d made “false and defamatory statements” and demanding that we take it down immediately. No evidence was given that anything we said was provably false. Just a threat that Yomtobian had authorized the firm to pursue all legal remedies if we failed to compy with the order.

So why hasn’t Yomtobian targeted Wired or Microsoft? The answer is obvious. They have (besides the truth) enough money to deflect things like this. Organizations of their stature would laugh at a lawsuit alleging that Xupiter was innocuous. By contrast, Chris and I are full-time college students. It’s easier to make an example of us than Microsoft. So, after much thought I have decided to comply with the order.

Simply put, it is to my selfish benefit to comply right now. I’m working extremely hard in school to hopefully attend Quinnipiac’s law program once I graduate. I’m training to play a college sport. In our spare time, Chris and I are putting together a new Internet startup. So unlike the kid who abandons his ambition, stops cutting his hair, and goes on to live in his parents’ basement once he realizes that justice is evasive, I will pursue the absolute height of my productive capacity and mount a proper legal defense once I have the resources to do so.

I’m 19 years old. Like so many my age, I don’t have my life all mapped out yet. But if nothing else, I’m confident that at no point in my life will I need to send cease and desist letters to bloggers writing about how I spent my 20’s. That’s more than I can say for some people.

(click on picture to check out his site)

The technology acquired from the deal would power VeriSign’s new Broadband Content Services platform, which would aim to deliver rich media content to personal computers, television sets and portable devices.
Kontiki’s P2P technology is already being used by AOL as part of its upcoming download service called In2TV. The technology would allow AOL to serve up high-quality videos without putting a great deal of strain on its own servers, while respecting the copyright protections of the content’s owners.