Google Inc. says Bell Canada Inc. is breaking Canadian telecommunications law by slowing certain internet traffic, and is urging the CRTC to take action against the company.

For immediate release: Ottawa, June 16, 2008

Open source group: copyright bill will hurt innovators
Canadian Software Innovation Alliance comes out against Bill C-61

The Canadian Software Innovation Alliance (CSIA), a coalition of Canadian open source businesses and supporters, worries that Bill C-61, 'An Act to Amend the Copyright Act,' introduced by the Conservative government on June 12, threatens the open source business model.

The Seatlle Times reports that Microsoft has been making available a tool for law enforcement that, amongst other things, decrypts protected files on Windows systems.

As a demonstration of CLUE's involvement in issues beyond "Linux Users", I want to talk about some of the issues that Evan Leibovitch (past executive director) and I (as policy coordinator) are involved in.

Evan has been acting as chair of the North American Region At-Large Advisory Committee of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). Evan will hopefully be blogging about his involvement soon, and some of the issues that the advisory committee deals with. People may get a taste for the types of issues by listening to the This week in Law episode 13 from last month.

While I spoke at IT360 last week on the issue of Software Patents and Free/Libre and Open Source Software, recent interviews and blogging have been focused on the related issues of "Net Neutrality" and competitive access to telecommunications facilities. While these two issues are often lumped together or even confused for each other, I try to separate them in my articles.

• More Bell Canada misinformation and misdirection in attempt to justify questionably lawful throttling
  
• Separating the competitive access issues from the Net Neutrality issues
  
• An ideal future communications infrastructure, how do we get there, and what is stopping us!
  

I have started to offer commentary on the IT World Canada Blogs. The first three articles are as follows:

• When a hardware and software hacker meets lawyers and policy wonks.
  
• We’re not thieves. We just can’t read contracts (McAfee and Open Source)
  
• Even in the “DRM” debate, Content is not King.
  

The December issue of the Open Source Business Resource is now out (PDF)

This issue includes (pp 29-33 in the PDF) my article titled "Protecting Information Technology Property rights". This article, and a letter to the editor, also promote The Canadian Software Innovation Alliance, which has launched a new website.

A desktop virtualization software product developed by an Calgary-based company is teaching students at an Illinois middle school some pretty impressive multiplication lessons.

Several students at Danville School District 118 (up to eight) are able to gain simultaneous computer access to a single Linux PC using the Desktop Multiplier for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (SLED 10), developed by software firm Userful Corp. and distributed by Omni Technology Solutions Inc., or Edmonton.

Hello everyone,

I have the difficult task to convey that CLUE webmaster and community
activist Gerry Roderick Singleton passed away last night (May 12) in a
Toronto hospital.

I have few details except that he died of a heart attack, that must have

I know it has been a while since I last posted but Anti-piracy ads on the radio have prompted me to say that there is no reason to use pirated software. We, meaning CLUE members and affiliates, use F/LOSS but I think that we do not do enough to get our message to the general public. As a result, Microsoft Office, one of MS's best money generators, it is also one of the most pirated suites.