Top all-time · #330
Michael Geist
Personal blog · michaelgeist.capoliticswriting
Michael Geist's personal blog at michaelgeist.ca covers politics and writing. Since 2007, 156 different Hacker News readers have linked it 216 times, most often “A Canadian lobby group is promoting "widespread adoption of age verification"”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for Michael Geist's analysis of Canadian technology and copyright law, especially the TPP, ACTA, C-11, C-51 and website blocking.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- 'an excellent view' of the TPP; 'I would highly recommend' the blog; 'excellent coverage' of the TPP.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2008-02-26
- A Canadian lobby group is promoting "widespread adoption of age verification"3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-02-24
- /tech-law-topics/tpp/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-02-14
- The Lose-Lose-Lose-Lose Bill C-18 Outcome: Meta Blocking News Links in Canada3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-08-02
- Why Clicking “I Agree” May No Longer Mean You Agree to Everything2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-06-28
- New Canadian Wireless Rules2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-03
- Everyone Loses When the Government Mandates Payments for Links2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-24
- Canadian Government Rewrites Bill C-18 Online News Act with Final Regulations2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-12-15
- TPP Text Confirms Massive Loss to Canadian Public Domain2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-11-10
- Crunch Time in NAFTA Negotiations: What's at Play for Canada on Digital Policy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-09-01
What Hacker News says?
https://www.wired.com/2008/09/comcast-disclos-2/ ""Comcast's practices are not minimally intrusive, as the company claims, but rather are invasive and have significant effects," the commission said, demanding an end to the practices by year's end." This was under the Title I classification that was struck down by the verizon lawsuit, where the court said that the way to enforce these rules within the FCC's existing…
Comment linking /2007/04/rogers-packet-shaping/
on “F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules”Submitted TPP Text Confirms Massive Loss to Canadian Public Domain as a story · 364 points
HN discussionWhere are you going to go? People playing up third world countries don't know shit. The day-to-day corruption in nearly every such country is so bad that after awhile you'd rather have someone reading your e-mail but otherwise leaving you alone. And let me tell you from first hand experience--it is soul sucking to live in a country like that where you're constantly surrounded by people living on the edge of subsiste…
Comment linking /content/view/6870/125
on “Lavabit abruptly shuts down”Submitted Win for copyright user rights in Canada: Digital locks do not trump fair dealing as a story · 248 points
HN discussionTBH, I wasn't certain of that either, which was why I'd looked up the background. I'd be surprised if there weren't some common-law precedent or foundation cited in Straus , and should look that up. Michael Geist might be a good source to look to for specifics of Canadian law, though AFAIU the Canadian royalties programme is defined under Public Lending Right: < https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/154625 > < http…
Comment linking /tag/public-lending-right/
on “The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive”Submitted Supreme Court of Canada: No Liability for Linking as a story · 215 points
HN discussionA couple years ago, I asked Michael Geist[1] a similar question. Me: I am a Canadian citizen and am rather concerned by what appears to be increasing online censorship and erosion of privacy rights in Australia and the UK. If it can happen there, it can happen here. I'd like to do my part to ensure that we can effectively oppose bad public policy when it's proposed in Canada. I deeply respect both the EFF and the AC…
Comment linking /
on “Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website”Submitted As the U.S. Retreats, Canada Doubles Down on Net Neutrality as a story · 214 points
HN discussion> Canada I live in Canada and let me tell you we're not covering ourselves in glory when it comes to democracy either. Between laws like bill C-63[1], which would effectively criminalize "bad" online speech and the prime minister suspending parliament[2] for political expediency we're not looking too good. [1] https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/06/viranis-failed-human-rig... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/court-…
Comment linking /2024/06/viranis-failed-human-rights-commission-choice-why-the-dattani-appointment-irreparably-harms-both-the-commission-and-bill-c-63/
on “"Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order”Submitted The Trouble with the TPP, Day 5: Rights Holders “Shall” vs. Users “May” as a story · 195 points
HN discussionIt appears that NZ and Malaysia negotiated exceptions that will delay the new laws, so there will be no new public domain material for many years, but old material will not be affected. It also appears that Canada failed to negotiate such an exception, so public domain material from the past 20 years would revert. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/10/canada-caves-on-copyright... http://beehive.govt.nz/sites/all/files/…
Comment linking /2015/10/canada-caves-on-copyright-in-tpp-commits-to-longer-term-urge-isps-to-block-content/
on “The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared”Submitted Net Neutrality Alive and Well in Canada as a story · 171 points
HN discussionWe need a flowchart which maps behavior to possible penalties: border inspections, pre-trial seizure of devices, criminal case, civil case, post-trial destruction of devices, penalties for third parties who aided circumvention. Could TPP induce ISPs to block the websites of software vendors and OSS repos whose programs could be used for circumvention, e.g. VLC, Linux DVD viewing, etc.? Edit: http://www.michaelgeist.…
Comment linking /2015/10/canada-caves-on-copyright-in-tpp-commits-to-longer-term-urge-isps-to-block-content/
on “The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared”Submitted Supreme Court of Canada Voids Viagra Patent for Insufficient Disclosure as a story · 106 points
HN discussionThis is a better article: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125/
Comment linking /content/view/4510/125/
on “Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.”Submitted Canadian Conservatives commit to Internet surveillance. as a story · 93 points
HN discussion> Indeed here in Canada ISPs have frequently given subscriber contact information to copyright holders to issue warnings based on bittorrent usage without being legally required to. Citation needed? The “Notice and Notice” regime legally requires the ISP to pass along a notice from a copyright holder that believes your IP infringed their copyright by uploading their material. It does not permit the ISP to give subsc…
Comment linking /2018/09/notice-the-difference-supreme-court-rules-isps-can-be-compensated-for-copyright-costs/
on “VPN – Very Precarious Narrative”Submitted Canadian government introduces ACTA compliance bill as a story · 84 points
HN discussionAccording to http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6134/135/ , IP addresses issued by American Registry for Internet Numbers (the US regional IP issuing agency) is under the SOPA's jurisdiction. The problem is that they give out the IPs for US, Canada, and a bunch of the Carribean.
Comment linking /content/view/6134/135/
on “Tumblr's anti-censorship message generated 87,834 phone calls to representatives”Submitted Canadian Government Buries “Lawful Access” Provisions in New Border Bill as a story · 70 points
HN discussionYou can't know that. Canada has it: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6870/125/ Sweden has it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5852497 http://peterfleischer.blogspot.se/2007/05/sweden-and-governm...
Comment linking /content/view/6870/125/
on “Mozilla should move Persona out of the US”Submitted US Funds IP Enforcement, Offers to Draft Legislation in New Zealand as a story · 68 points
HN discussionThere's also a legal component of control. More DRM means more identifiers for content creators, distributors, consumers, including open-source Firefox that will support HTML5 DRM. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2014/10/new-tpp-leak-canada-emerg... , ".. shows Canada as the strongest opponent to TPP IP demands, signalling its opposition to a proposal 56 times, more than any other country. The strongest opposition comes…
Comment linking /2014/10/new-tpp-leak-canada-emerges-leading-opponent-u-s-intellectual-property-demands/
on “Why Rosyna Can't Take a Movie Screenshot”Submitted The Most Dangerous Canadian Internet Bill You've Never Heard of Is a Step Closer as a story · 63 points
HN discussionCanada is in the same spot with the postal code data being for sale only. Relatedly and famously, Canada Post sued [0] geocoder.ca [1] years ago because it made available a crowdsourced database of postal codes... Years later, the case was settled [2] but yeah. You still have to pay for the "real" data. [0] https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2012/04/canada-post-geocoder-sui... [1] https://geocoder.ca/ [2] https://geocoder.…
Comment linking /2012/04/canada-post-geocoder-suit/
on “We need to liberate the Postcode Address File”Submitted Canadian DMCA Bill Within Six Weeks as a story · 63 points
HN discussionHow much of that infrastructure cost is purely cellular or data centre purpose fibre optics, or to support the existing copper infrastructure though? And does it include routine operations and routine maintenance, components that needed to be replaced because of end-of-life? Service contracts? If there was a national effort to roll out fibre optic, I can easily imagine it costing fractions of a trillion in startup c…
Comment linking /2016/06/ignorescaretacticsbell/
on “AT&T lobbies against nationwide fiber, says 10Mbps uploads are good enough”Submitted A Canadian lobby group is promoting "widespread adoption of age verification" as a story · 62 points
HN discussion"The Trouble with the TPP" series by Michael Geist [0] is an excellent view of some of the issues with it, and demonstrates how the huge nature of the TPP makes it difficult to create short (digestible) but powerful arguments against it. It was very much written from Canada's point of view, so it isn't the most convincing argument for why the US, or any other country, shouldn't ratify the treaty. [0] http://www.mich…
Comment linking /tech-law-topics/tpp/
on “Google endorses the Trans-Pacific Partnership”Submitted Crunch Time in NAFTA Negotiations: What's at Play for Canada on Digital Policy as a story · 58 points
HN discussion
