Teresa Scassa - Blog

Publications - Internet Law

  • Electronic Commerce and Internet Law in Canada

    Electronic Commerce and Internet Law in Canada, 2nd Edition, CCH Canadian Ltd., 2012 (with Michael Deturbide).

    Electronic Commerce and Internet Law in Canada, 2nd Edition is a definitive resource on Internet and e-commerce law from Canada’s leading IT law experts, Teresa Scassa and Michael Deturbide.With a Foreword written by Justice Thomas Cromwell of the Supreme Court of Canada, this latest edition’s extensive coverage addresses the vast changes that have taken place in this dynamic and rapidly evolving field.Highlights in the new edition include:

    * New Copyright Act amendments

    * Trademark issues online

    * Online contracting, including browse wrap agreements

    * Personal information protection in the private sector

    * Software and e-business patents

    * Consumer protection online

    * Canada's new anti-spam legistlation

    * Online Anonymity

    * Regulation of online speech

    * Intermediary liability

    * Web-based competition

    * Internet domain names

    * Jurisdictional issues




    in Books
    Tags: Internet IP
  • Location-Based Services and Privacy

    “Location-Based Services and Privacy”, (T. Scassa & Anca Sattler) (2011) 9:2 Canadian Journal of Law and Technology 99-134

    The last decade has seen a rapid growth in the number and variety of location-based services that are available to consumers. While some of the older location-based services are tools such as GPS and other navigation systems, more recent innovations include applications that permit users to call up a variety of different information about their current locations, such as the nearest Italian restaurant, or the best deals at a favourite store. Location-based services (LBS) also allow individuals to share their location with friends in a wide range of social networking contexts. Location-based services are already shifting from pull to push applications. Information can now be pushed automatically to users based on their location. The options for such services are virtually limitless, and include mobile-marketing, public transportation applications, information about local points of interest, health care applications connected to remote treatment systems, or tools to find the closest election-day polling booth.

    There is no doubt that many location-based services offer real benefits to users. Yet location-based services raise inevitable user privacy concerns. These concerns operate on multiple levels and involve many players. In some applications, privacy issues will arise between individual users, where, for example, applications permit the tracking of movements of family members, co-workers or “friends”. Location-based services may also result in the collection of a new layer of personal information about consumers by private sector companies. Information about individuals and their movements has meaningful commercial value, and the potential for the collection, use and disclosure of this information is significant. Location-based services also raise the spectre of state surveillance of individual activity – either concurrent with an individual’s movements (tracking), or retrospectively, through searching records of individual patterns of movement. These are just some of the contexts in which privacy issues are raised.

    In this paper we describe location-based services, their evolution and their future directions. We then outline privacy issues raised by such services. We consider how current Canadian data protection laws apply to location-based services, and indicate where such laws fall short of addressing the full range of issues raised by location-based services. We also explore some technological methods to address the privacy challenges raised by location-based services. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations.




    in Refereed Articles
    Tags: Privacy Internet Geospatial
  • New First Principles? Assessing the Internet’s Challenges to Jurisdiction

    “New First Principles? Assessing the Internet’s Challenges to Jurisdiction”, (T. Scassa & R. Currie) (2011) 42:4 Georgetown Journal of International Law 1017-1082

    The globalized and decentralized Internet has become the new locus for a wide range of human activity, including commerce, crime, communications and cultural production. Activities which were once at the core of domestic jurisdiction have moved onto the Internet, and in doing so, have presented numerous challenges to the ability of states to exercise jurisdiction. In writing about these challenges, some scholars have characterized the Internet as a separate “space” and many refer to state jurisdiction over Internet activities as “extraterritorial.” This article examines these challenges in the context of the overall international law of jurisdiction, rather than focusing on any one substantive area. This article argues that while the Internet may push at the boundaries of traditional principles of jurisdiction in public international law, it has not supplanted them. The article explores the principles of jurisdiction, including the evolving concept of “qualified territoriality,” and demonstrates how these principles continue to apply in the Internet context. The article examines how states exercise their authority with respect to Internet activities by addressing governance issues, by engaging in normative ordering for the Internet, and by extending the reach of their domestic laws to capture Internet-based activities. Lastly, the article concludes by offering a set of “first principles,” in the form of policy precepts, to guide the evolution of public international law norms and to address problems particular to the context of the global Internet.




    in Refereed Articles
    Tags: Internet
  • Working at the Intersection of Law and Science: Reflections on a Fruitful Collaboration

    “Working at the Intersection of Law and Science: Reflections on a Fruitful Collaboration” (with J. Chandler, Y. Bédard, and M. Gervais), in Nicholas Chrisman & Monica Wachowicz, eds., Spatially Enabling Government, Industry and Citizens: Research and Development Perspectives, 2012.

    Abstract. It is relatively rare for largely scientific collaborations to involve researchers from law, and when this is done, their contributions are often peripheral to the goals of the main project which are to advance scientific or technological knowledge and to develop applied outcomes. GEOIDE Phase IV broke with this tradition by funding a science-led collaborative research project that put legal and ethical issues squarely at the forefront of the research agenda. In our project, the researchers sought to examine what legal considerations were relevant to the evolution of GIS-related practices, how technological innovations and standards should adapt to normative frameworks, and where law reform might be needed to advance the goals of GIS in a rapidly changing information environment. In this chapter, the authors reflect on the merits and challenges of such an approach, drawing from their own experience as legal researchers and as scientists within a predominantly science and technology-oriented research network.

     

    Available from the author.




    in Refereed Book Chapters
    Tags: Geospatial Internet
  • Global Reach, Local Grasp: Constructing Extraterritorial Jurisdiction in the Age of Globalization

    Stephen Coughlan, Robert Currie, Hugh Kindred and Teresa Scassa, Global Reach, Local Grasp: Constructing Extraterritorial Jurisdiction in the Age of Globalization, Prepared for the Law Commission of Canada, May 31, 2006.




    in Reports/Consultations
    Tags: Privacy Internet IP
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 Next > End >>

Canadian Trademark Law

Published in 2015 by Lexis Nexis

Canadian Trademark Law 2d Edition

Buy on LexisNexis

Electronic Commerce and Internet Law in Canada, 2nd Edition

Published in 2012 by CCH Canadian Ltd.

Electronic Commerce and Internet Law in Canada

Buy on CCH Canadian

Intellectual Property for the 21st Century

Intellectual Property Law for the 21st Century:

Interdisciplinary Approaches

Purchase from Irwin Law