Welcome to Gahtan’s Technology and Internet Law Blog

TigerDirect does business in Ontario both through a retail outlet located in Markham as well as through online sales through TigerDirect.ca. Like other major retailers, TigerDirect advertises prices for some of its products that include the deduction of mail in rebates. However, TigerDirect utilizes a company called OnRebate, located in Florida, to process some or all of its rebates. OnRebate, as a condition of processing a rebate, requires TigerDirect customers to provide a verifiable e-mail address. Also, such customers must consent to receiving OnRebate’s newsletters and promotional material sent by or on behalf of its other third party customers. Canadian privacy legislation requires businesses doing business in Canada to only collect personal information to the extent required in order to provide a particular service. Why is an email address required in order to process rebates when the entire process is typically performed by mail? Is the rebate amount actually a true deduction from the purchase price of an item if the consumer must also provide an email address and consent to receive marketing materials (which both likely constitute additional consideration)? Hopefully TigerDirect has contractually obligated OnRebate to otherwise comply with Canadian privacy law requirements when performing services on behalf of TigerDirect in respect of Canadian customers.

2006-04-04 Follow up: Its been about 3 weeks and I’ve received email confirmation from OnRebate that they’ve “accepted” my rebate application. However, they advise that my cheque should be arriving in 10-12 weeks. Another 2.5 to 3 months. Meanwhile, they took the opportunity (in their notification email) to spam me with advertisements for TigerDirect even though I had specifically advised them that I did not want them using my email for any purpose unrelated to the processing of my rebate application.

In today’s Globe and Mail, Mathew Ingram discusses Google’s acquisition of Writely, a web-based word processor.

This acquisition obviously positions Google to offer an online competitive offering to Microsoft’s $400 Word offering. While there are some downsides to using Web-based applications (such as the fact that they stop working if your Internet access is down, and privacy issues when data is being saved somewhere else), there are also a number of advantages (no upgrades to perform, no bloated client-side application to run, off-site archiving, easier collaboration on documents with remote parties - Writely also offers version control/history functionality). According to the FAQ on Writely’s site, there are no current plans to add advertising. Instead, the current model appears to be free access to basic features and a subscription fee for premium features (such as PDF exporting - hey isn’t that built into WordPerfect and aren’t there free PDF publishing tools around?).

Mark Evans writes that Shaw is firing back at Vonage over its complaint regarding Shaw’s $10 per month Quality of Service (QoS) fee for non-Shaw VOIP application. Although this issue has, and should continue to have, important considerations from a competition perspective, I think we also need to continue asking probing questions from a consumer protection perspective. In other words, if an ISP advertises a data connection with no monthly caps on data transfer and with a speed with X megs/sec of speed and then throttles it down selectively depending on the amount of use by a particular consumer, should that not attract some sort of liability from a consumer protection perspective? Likewise, if a service is advertised as providing “Internet access” and then certain ports are blocked, should the ISP not be forced to prominently disclose that information? Finally, the same issue if the ISP gives a higher priority to their services at the expense of competing services that a consumer may be trying to access.

Although not directly related, there’s also the issue of DSL and cable ISP providers advertising speeds “up to X” when (1) not every subscriber can actually obtain services at those speeds (ever) because the last mile links may not support it (my DSL link, which is advertised and sold as a 3 meg service, is actually throttled down to 1.6-1.7 megs due to line quality issues); and (2) the speed during “normal” surfing hours may be much lower due to the use of shared media or other network bottlenecks. We should have mandatory disclosure requirements so that consumers are able to make informed decisions.

P.S., I think its a good thing that Shaw is offering this optional “enhancement” - my concern has more to do with ISPs providing more disclosure on what they are doing so that customers can better understand what they are buying.

If you own a Windows handheld or smartphone then you can choose from a number of different SIP software-based VOIP applications and connect to a Voice-over-IP service provider of your choice. You can even download and use Skype. Well, now a new service called mobiVOIP from Mantra Group hopes to bring VOIP to owners of Palm handhelds and smartphones. According to the company, with mobiVoIP™ patented technology, you can now use Bluetooth, Wifi, EVDO on your PDAs or Smartphones to call your friends. mobiVoIP™ also is been tested for low bandwidth connections like GPRS and IrDA. The product is currently in beta.

I had a look at the description of the wi-fi network that Toronto Hydro Telecom is proposing to build and found the following quote:

Additionally, not only will the Toronto Hydro Telecom Wi Fi network cover six kilometers in the heart of Toronto’s downtown core, it will provide service that is at least ten times faster than that of our competitors.

Personally, I think it would be more correct to say that the service will be AT MOST ten times faster, not AT LEAST. The maximum speed of the repeater to home user connection may be 10 times faster, but depending on the distance the speed may drop down to as low as 1 meg per second (only a fraction of the total maximum potential). Furthermore, it may be a little misleading to focus on the speed of that link only since TYT’s proposal to use mesh technology to deliver the service will mean that speed bottlenecks may be created on the backhaul between the various repeaters and a base station connected to TYT’s fibre backbone. The useful speed of the service may therefore also be much less than the potential being suggested. Cable and DSL also have certain bottleneck type issues. However, my point is that it is misleading to only look at the link speed of one segment in the network and use that as the basis for comparing the speed of the service.

That being said, the proposed service looks like a good initiative that hopefully will bring more competition to at least a small part of the Greater Toronto Area.

After notes were found in a Google presentation for analysts, stories are circulating that Google may have plans in the works for an online drive which can be used to store a copy of certain data on a user’s hard drive. There will probably be privacy concerns identified but I wonder how long it would be before someone develops a hack (an “enhancement”) that can encrypt the data before it is sent to Google’s servers.

According to a Vonage Canada press release, it has submitted a request to the Canadian Radio-Television & Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to investigate Shaw Communications (an ISP that serves western Canada) for recommending to its high-speed Internet customers that they pay an additional $10 charge if they use a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service provider such as Vonage Canada in order to obtain a “quality of service enhancement” which is necessary to ensure independent VoIP service is not disrupted or degraded. The same fee is not separately charged to customers of Shaw’s own VOIP service. Shaw does not appear to have provided any details of how its enhancement works or why it is necessary. According to Vonage Canada, it wants to ensure that “the monopoly telephone and cable Internet service providers don’t restrict what services, applications or content Canadians can access. Canadians demand and deserve freedom of choice.”

Sounds like the CRTC needs to sit down with the Canada’s Competition Bureau and lay down some rules regarding network neutrality.

See also the write up by Mathew Ingram in the Globe.

According to the Globe and Mail, Toronto Hydro Telecom is expected to announce that the creation of a city-wide wi-fi wireless network based on repeaters installed on street light poles. Toronto Hydro Telecom already provides broadband data services throughout the GTA using over 450 kilometers of fibre optic cable and its network connects to over 400 commercial buildings. I have not seen details about the specific technology THT plans to deploy but suspect that it may not be suitable for high bandwidth applications or applications that require low latency (since packets may need to bounce through multiple repeaters before reaching a base station).

Further details available from Mark Evans and The National Post.