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Denis Carmel is leaving is the CRTC, where he is director general of communications. Carmel said it was time for a change and that he has a few irons in the fire, but nothing firm. He will likely remain within the ranks of the civil service. The CRTC is looking to fill his current position. Carmel said he would stay at the commission until a replacement is found.

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Lawyer Knopf expresses surprise at CPCC news release
Lawyer Howard Knopf, who acts for a coalition of retailers opposing the blank media levy, says he’s surprised by a press release issued by the Canadian Private Copying Collective announcing it had won a stay of a Federal Court of Appeal ruling that it could not collect levies on digital music players such as Apple Corp.’s iPod (CNM, April 6/05). The CPCC said in a media release that, as a result of the stay, it will keep approximately $4.1 million in levies collected on the devices since December 2003, when the Copyright Board of Canada first decided that devices fell under the blank media levy scheme (CNM, Dec. 19/03). The ultimate decision on what types of memory are or aren’t captured by the private copying regime will be up to the Supreme Court of Canada, which has yet to rule on whether it will hear appeals of the December 2004 lower court ruling. "Retaining the collected monies is the only workable solution. When a decision is issued, the collected levies, including the interest on the amount held by the CPCC, will either be distributed to rights holders or reimbursed to those manufacturers and importers who remitted the levies to the CPCC," said CPCC chair Claudette Fortier in a news release.

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New Media BC (NMBC) has finished polling companies across Canada working in fields related to video games as the trade association works to complete yet another industry "map". Firms in the gaming field were invited to take a 10-minute questionnaire until March 31, and NMBC has now begun the process of analyzing the data after more than six weeks of collecting responses.

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Mobile marketing company MyThum Interactive says a deal it’s inked with Givex Corp. could jumpstart the use of customer loyalty numbers in SMS and other campaigns. On April 5, the Toronto-based company announced the agreement which will see the two organizations jointly offer the Mx-Coupon program – a way to deliver redeemable coupons to mobile phones through text messaging. Givex is one of North America’s largest shops managing loyalty programs for major brands including Chapters/Indigo, IKEA, Cara Foods, and others. Mx-Coupon still falls short of the longstanding promise of using actual barcodes on mobile phone screens to conduct m-commerce, but MyThum director of marketing and business development Michael Brown tells Canadian NEW MEDIA the program brings the state-of-the art a big step closer.

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A fight before the Copyright Board of Canada over royalties for online music downloads appears set to become even more contentious as another group of copyright owners seeks to add as much as an additional 25% of gross revenues to the 15% of gross revenues that has already been proposed on digital download services. Neither Canada’s homegrown music service, Puretracks.ca, or the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) have accepted invitations to comment on the steep new tariff proposed by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) on digital downloads late last month.

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