Canuck

  Friday, 17 December 2004

The Globe and Mail: Court quashes Ottawa's MP3 fee < 1:54:48 PM>.

Canada's Copyright Act gives the federal board the authority to apply levies on blank media such as compact discs and audio cassettes. But the wording of the act has not kept up with the new technology of MP3 players, represented by the wildly popular iPod, which use an embedded memory rather than discs or cassettes, to store digital copies of songs.

The levy on iPods will likely be removed following this verdict.

< 1:52:07 PM>.

But Canadians who need to be connected in flight can take heart: There is faint hope that they might be able to surf the Internet wirelessly if Ottawa is convinced it's safe.

Cool. The technical/safety issues with regards to cellphone use may be bogus but I do not like the idea of sitting on a flight full of people gabbing on their cells. The environment is already far to noisy. Wireless access for data is another matter. Of course once you have the data you could always use VOIP but presumably the number of users there would be minimal.