rwmtest

(Photo from recent GOSLING gathering copied from tweet by Mike Gifford .  Mike is sitting beside MP David Graham in the top-right, and I'm sitting beside John Hall on the bottom-right) In May of 2002 I was one of the co-founders of what became known as GOSLING (Getting Open Source Logic INto Governments).  While many participants were focused on how the government creates/distributes and uses FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software), my primary concern was in how the government regulated software. Starting in the summer of 2001 when the government launched the consultations towards that copyright section 92 report until copyright bill C-11 passed in 2012, I spent a considerable amount of time talking to parliamentarians, attending all committee meetings studying the bill, and giving public talks on copyright focused on the regulation of software and hardware. During that time I fairly regularly had people come up to me and ask if they could financially support me, or if I...

The following is a letter to my MP. David McGuinty, my MP for Ottawa South, I find the processes involving analog-era communications companies to be very problematic.  This latest note from Mr Geist is only an example. Super-Secret Submissions: Corus and SaskTel Block Disclosure of Their BTLR Submissions Claiming Prejudice to Their Competitive Position Submissions to the government should be proactively disclosed during the process, so errors and/or misinformation from lobbiests can be corrected by the public.  The government should not be allowing submissions to be claimed proprietary, except when specific proprietary information is required by regulatory agency -- never for a consultation process. I say analog-era as many of these vertically integrated companies are structured the way they are due to limitations with analog communications technology.  Analog communications technology required that a wire or part of spectrum be dedicated to an application.  With dig...