Deep Jive Interests » Canada

Canada Backs Off Chasing Pirates — To Chase Real Criminals Instead

Tony Hung — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 07:38:08 +0000

In a somewhat surprising quote, a French-only newspaper called LeDevoir has the scoop on the RCMP’s (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) change in tactics as it applies to chasing after music and movie pirates. Thank goodness for Google’s translate, but thanks to TorrentFreak’s sharp eyes, we’re able to glean the following:

Piracy [music over the Internet or other media] for personal use is no longer targeted,” said in an interview Christmas Hilaire, head of the federal investigations and questions of copyright theft ‘author to the RCMP. Today it is so easy to copy. Everybody was taken by surprise and we do not know how to stop it. “

“In this context, where the illegal downloading of music, usually in MP3 format, has become an overall pattern in society, especially among young Internet users, the RCMP says that the tracking of this type of thief does not appear in ” [his] priorities. It addresses mainly to crimes against intellectual property, which have an impact on the health and safety of consumers [medicines, electrical appliances, and so on.], But also those related to organized crime, said St-Hilaire. Our plate is pretty full with that, and unfortunately, the small, it does not have time to deal with them. “

Well, not much more to say than that, other than its nice to hear that in a time of limited resources, the police are prioritizing their time catching thieves, rapists and murderers, and not, say, dear old grandmothers. Or, worse yet, grandmothers who are already dead.

Unlimited Mobile Data Coming to Canada? Not So Fast, Soldier.

Tony Hung — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:04:50 +0000

Over at the Boy Genius Report, Joshua Karp reports that unlimited mobile data plans — well, singular, “plan” — are coming to Canada, courtesy of Bell Mobility, for the grand cost of $75 per month. Now, if this were completely true, it might have implications for how mobile devices were used (i.e. for true mobile computing), and even, perhaps, for the iPhone’s future in Canada. Having said that, there are some caveats to said plan, namely

a) that the “unlimited” plan requires you to have a PC Data card, so using it on a mobile phone is out of the question.

b) it is bound by “acceptable use” according to their Terms Of Service.

Now, you might roll your eyes and say *OF COURSE* its bound by their TOS. Everything else is, isn’t it? Well, if you read the Terms of Service real carefully, you’ll find that under section 19:

You shall not use or allow others to use the Service or your Device if such use:consumes excessive network capacity in Bell’s reasonable opinion, or causes our network, or our ability to provide services to others, to be adversely affected;is for multi-media streaming, voice over Internet protocol or any other application which uses excessive network capacity that is not made available to you by Bell;is to operate an email, web, news, chat or other service.

So who knows what Bell’s reasonable opinion is, but it sure looks like you won’t be making any VOIP calls using this service, watching “excessive” amounts of streaming video through YouTube, or possible exceed some magical ceiling. In fact, there are some reports that this ceiling amounts to a kingly sum of 250MB, which you only find out *after* you purchase the plan.

Its a known fact that Canadians are routinely paying more per megabyte for mobile transfers, and this is likely to continue until we start getting some real competition in this domain. Which is pretty unlikely at the moment as Canada is carved up into an oligarchy of non-competing media interests.

And this is a real pity, as stiflingly high mobile transfer rates mean that mobile computing — even as handheld — as a movement, isn’t likely to take off as it has in other parts of the world, iPhones not withstanding. In fact, things may not until we get a real “unlimited” plan that’s easily accessible to everyone.

The iPhone Is Going to The UK — Why Not Canada?

Tony Hung — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:35:59 +0000

Sometimes I think some news are best explained in video. By a puppet.

Well, I thought I would just embed it but it breaks my theme.Check out the video over here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RdHv9jw84k

* Why I Won’t Care About Zune Price Drops

Tony Hung — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 19:54:48 +0000

Well, it looks like the Microsoft Zune, Microsoft’s DRM’d iPod never-be, has dropped its price as part of its planned product cycle. If you wanted to try it out, I suppose now is as good a time as any. Being a Microsoft booster I would love to try it out, despite its many criticisms. I was reminded of its existence here in Seattle (as we’re on a family trip), because it has not, nor has ever been released in Canada. Even if I wanted to try and buy it in Canada, I am, as my old high school friend was wont to say, shit out of luck. On a quick Google search, it looks like the last time it was mentioned anywhere was before Christmas when the scuttlebutt was that it might be released “early” in the year. Well, early left a long time ago and still no Zune. I’m sure there are a lot of legitimate reasons why it hasn’t yet come to Canada, or perhaps anywhere *but* the States, but I think it also says a lot about Microsoft’s confidence in this product.