feeds | grep links > Problem Privacy Bill in Canada, VLC Update Supports WebM, RIAA Case Reaches SCOTUS, and Japan Considers Censorship to Deal with Child Porn

• Canada’s not very privacy friendly privacy refrom bill
  Michael Geist has all of the pertinent details. Cory at Boing Boing likened this to the US’s PATRIOT Act but it actually reads like a subset of the US law, focusing in on handling of disclosures and some coordination between companies and law enforcers. As such, the consumer protections are indeed very disappointing, much like the erosion of civil liberties by the PATRIOT Act.
• VLC release candidate drops, with WEbM, VP-8 support
  This should prove less disruptive than a nightly build of a browser. Now all I need to do is find some content to try with VLC and put claims for and against WebM/VP-8 to my own test.
• RIAA case makes it to the Supreme Court
  I hadn’t heard of this case before reading this Wired article by David Kravets. At issue is the lower court ruling the defendant, a teenager at the time, qualified for the innocent infringer exemption to the minimum statutory damages. The Supremes haven’t agree to hear the case, it merely has made it into their hopper for a decision to proceed or decline to hear it.
• Japan moves towards blocking child porn online
  Slashdot has a link to the story where the truly critical element is that mere possession is not illegal in Japan. As ticklish as it is to talk about problematic censorship when it is being considered under the auspices of preventing exploitation of this kind, a less fraught solution would be to criminalize possession.

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