In the midst of last month's hubbub over the possible introduction of a new copyright bill in the House of Commons, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) addressed the "myths pertaining to changes to Canada's Copyright Act." Myths debunked by the industry association included: The new changes to the Copyright Act will make it a criminal act for me to time-shift with my VCR or to load music I buy on a CD and load it onto my iPod; the average consumer's privacy will be jeopardized; this will only lead to big music companies suing single mums and innocent users; and this new legislation will mimic the US's Digital Millennium Copyright Act. ACTRA answered the latter by noting "The new amendment has not yet been made public. It is premature to make this assumption."
To read ACTRA's full list of myths and truths, click here.

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The US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have released the 2007 International Privacy Ranking and Canada is once again near the top of the list. Using the survey's grading system, Canada scored a 2.9, tying it with Romania and Hungary and trailing only Greece's 3.1. The grading system takes into account criteria such as data-sharing, privacy enforcement, visual surveillance, communication data retention and government access to data. However, compared to last year Canada slipped two ranking levels from "significant protection of safeguards" to "some safeguards but weakened protections," which constitutes an "alarming rate of fall in protections" according to the study. The summary on Canada noted that "video surveillance is spreading despite guidelines from privacy commissioners" and  "[Canada] continues to threaten new policy on online surveillance."

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CBC/Radio-Canada has announced it is beefing up its Access to Information Office in response to a greater-than-anticipated volume of requests under the Access to Information Act. Since coming under the Act on September 1, 2007, CBC has received almost 500 requests. The total is by far the most made of any Crown Corporation that came under the act on the same date – CBC field more than seven times as many ATI requests in September than any other Crown Corporation. "CBC/Radio-Canada takes its responsibilities under the Act seriously and will put in place processes and resources to respond to the flow of requests as quickly as possible," said Meg Angevine, CBC's Access to Information Coordinator. "We have engaged an expert in access to information who will provide us with advice on how best to reorganise our resources. In the interim, we are actively filling additional positions to help us administer the backlog and get on a better footing."

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Pelmorex, parent company of The Weather Network and MétéoMédia experienced record levels of traffic on theweathernetwork.com and meteomedia.com following the major winter storm that swept through Ontario and Quebec last month. The company reports it delivered more than 11.6 million pages of weather content during a 24-hour period on Sunday December 16. "It was our largest single day in terms of content delivery," said Taylor Emerson, VP and GM of Pelmorex Interactive Services. The increase was almost three times that of an average day for the weather websites, which averaged more than 100 million page views per month in 2007.

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A survey last month from Motorola found that consumers with high-definition television were so impressed by the picture quality they watched almost anything that looked good whether they were interested in the subject or not. Other results from the survey of more than 1,000 Americans included: 30% said they are watching more nature shows than they did in 3^rd grade; 12% said they are watching sports, even though they don't like sports; and 11% are using HDTV to their delight in pointing out celebrity blemishes and flaws. Survey respondents also revealed they would like to see old movies re-released in HD, with the number one choice being 1946 black and white holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life.

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