OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed a challenge from the Canadian music industry over gaining access to the names of a number of high-volume music file-swappers, but has left the door wide open for further court action.
Reading the decision, though, makes it seem like the judges thought that such file-swapping needs some deeper exploration but were bound by the rules of law to dismiss this particular lawsuit.
The Canadian Recording Industry Association had wanted Canadian Internet service providers Shaw Communications, Rogers Cable, Telus, Bell Canada and Videotron to give it the names of 29 music…
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TORONTO – Broadcast industry veteran Cary Rubin will join the team at CanWest MediaWorks on Monday, May 24th as director, affiliate relations for the company’s specialty services (Prime TV, Xtreme Sports, DejaView, Lonestar, Fox Sportsworld Canada, Cool TV, Mystery and Men TV).
He comes over after five years at Bell ExpressVu, where he was director of network programming. While there, Rubin negotiated carriage deals with programmers and managed the launch of over 50 channels on ExpressVu as the satellite service went through enormous growth as a video distributor.
Prior to his stint at ExpressVu, Rubin was director of affiliate…
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OTTAWA – New legislation and more rigorous enforcement are a couple of the new tools recommended to fight e-mail spam says a new report entitled, Stopping Spam: Creating a Stronger, Safer Internet.
The report is from the federal government’s Task Force on Spam, which presented its final report David Emerson, Minister of Industry, today.
The task force members included Michael Binder, Assistant Deputy Minister, Spectrum, Information Technologies and Telecommunications, Industry Canada (Chair); Lori Assheton-Smith, Senior Vice-President and General Counsel, Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association; Tom Copeland, President, Canadian Association of Internet Providers; Bernard Courtois, President, Information Technology Association of Canada;…
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THE WORD DIGITAL IS A conundrum to Canadian broadcasters of any stripe.
It means digital specialty channels, or digital migration of analog channels, or digital over-the-air TV (better known as high definition), or even digital audio.
Investing in digital is an expensive proposition. For an over-the-air broadcaster there is no immediate return on investment in upgrading to HD, so many here haven’t done it. Consumers are forcing that change, meaning HD Cancon should be in the offing this fall..
On the radio side, any transition to digital audio broadcasting (DAB) was halted last year once the CRTC decided to…
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TORONTO – “We are very pleased with the operating accomplishments for the first three months of 2005," said Michael MacMillan, chairman and CEO of Alliance Atlantis upon the company’s release of first quarter results this morning.
"Broadcasting delivered strong results and we are particularly pleased with the results from Entertainment, where the CSI franchise continues to deliver as expected."
For the three months ended March 31, 2005, consolidated revenue increased to $264.8 million, a 25% increase over the same period last year. Broadcasting contributed $62.5 million – up 12%; Motion Picture Distribution generated $100.3 million, representing an increase of…
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MONTREAL – While honouring the best in Canadian children’s television on June 1st, the Alliance for Children and Television (ACT) will also present two special achievement awards.
The ACT will fete Canada’s top English-language children’s programs at the 2005 Awards of Excellence Gala on June 1 at CBC’s Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. Producers and broadcasters of Canadian children’s programming will attend the Gala, to be hosted by Peter Keleghan (a.k.a. Red Green’s Ranger Gord, and The Newsroom’s Jim Walcott).
In addition to granting awards for the best nominated programs, the ACT will present two special awards celebrating the…
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ROUYN-NORANDA – Fifty-one rural communities can look forward to better broadband soon thanks to $6.9 million in federal money.
“The Honourable Stéphane Dion, Minister of the Environment, on behalf of the Honourable David L. Emerson, Minister of Industry, and several other federal partners, today announced that the Centre des technologies de l’information et des communications is receiving $6.9 million in funding from the Government of Canada to deploy broadband, or high-capacity Internet, to an estimated 51 municipalities in the areas of Abitibi, Abitibi-Ouest, Rouyn-Noranda, Témiscamingue and the Vallée-de-l’Or, among which there are seven Algonquin communities,” reads the press release….
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OTTAWA – Canadian telecom company revenues climbed again in 2004, this time past the $34 billion mark, says Statistics Canada.
In a report released today, the 4.1% growth in revenue was spearheaded by the wireless side of the Canadian telecom industry.
As most know, the wireless segment has been sustaining the telecommunications industry’s revenue since the beginning of the decade and 2004 was no exception.
Thanks to Blackberries, cool ring tones, photo and data transmission and so on, revenues in the wireless segment jumped 17.5% to $9.5 billion in 2004, fuelled by a 12.7% gain in subscribers and a…
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MONTREAL – Today, Bell Canada announced a $240,000 contribution to Montréal’s Ecole de technologie supérieure (ETS) for a research project designed to enhance service quality and traffic engineering on an IP (Internet protocol) network.
The three-year project will be carried out in partnership with Bell Canada’s Solutions Architecture and Integration (SAI) lab in Montréal. This contribution is part of the Bell University Labs R&D program for furthering the development of communications technologies in Canada.
The research project is designed to measure, model, simulate and then validate network architectures, and develops solutions for better management on a real test platform….
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OTTAWA-GATINEAU – While the cable industry was fixated on the voice over Internet protocol decision yesterday, the CRTC issued another one at the same time which will affect a number of small cable operators carrying high definition programming.
In the decision, the Commission told Star Choice that it must, within 30 days, cease transmitting its so-called “omnibus” high definition channels it has been distributing to customers for some time. None of these channels were created with the consent of the broadcasters, who complained to the regulator.
Basically, Star Choice takes high definition programming it finds on CBS, ABC, Fox…
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