Canada high-tech Competition

What seems to be a lack of general public and government understanding of technology has caused a number of conflicts in Canadian law relating to Free Market principles. Whether the problem relates to the Government supporting sole-source IT vendors contrary to various Trade Agreements, the lack of information and investigation of potential violations of the Canadian Competition Act, or attempts to expand various laws such as the Copyright Act in ways which seem to only have the purpose of creating monopolies in what needs to be created and protected as a competitive free-marketplace.

A number of Campaigns are starting or are underway including the following. We will add more links and set up petitions in the near future.

Microsoft in Canada

Microsoft has been already convicted of, or is under investigation for violations of various national competition-related laws. Where is Canada on this? We have not yet received replies to requests to Industry Canada on the status of Canada's investigation of Microsoft, or even to find out if Microsoft is currently under investigation.

Here is an Microsoft in Canada (An Appeal for support) to write the minister. Please let us know about any replies.

Government violations of open standards requirements in trade agreements.

There was recently a victory a the Canadian International Trade Tribunal by P&L Communications where two government departments were trying to bias the procurement process to only allow vendors who's products were based on Microsoft.

DVD-CSS, eBook, etc

The controversial expansion of copyright in the USA under the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) seems to be protecting in copyright acts which should rightfully be understood to be illegal under Competition law.

We have posted some letters to the canada-dmca-opponents forum (Now digital-copyright.ca forum) that were partly based on some of the research on the Competition Act.

A reply to the submission by Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association (CMPDA) submission to the current copyright reform process includes more information. Many of the members of CMPDA are also members of the DVD-CCA cartel, with one member centered out ironically as the publisher of the movie "AntiTrust".

A more detailed submission was sent to the Competition Bureau at the time of their National Consultation on Proposed Amendments to the Competition Act (2003).

Last Modified: $Date: 2004/09/26 15:27:12 $ UTC

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