If you are among the [84% of Canadians](https://publications.gc.ca/site/archivee-archived.html?url=https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2025/crtc/BC92-131-2025-eng.pdf) who say they would first try to resolve a complaint directly with their telecom service provider, here is a follow-up question: where would you go if that didn't work?

Don't worry if you don't know – even though service providers [have a responsibility to tell you](https://www.ccts-cprst.ca/industry/compliance-monitoring/), we know that most don't. 

"When asked why they didn’t submit a complaint," says a  [recent study](https://publications.gc.ca/site/archivee-archived.html?url=https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2025/crtc/BC92-131-2025-eng.pdf) on telecom complaints to the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS), the organization resolving complaints about telecom services in Canada, "respondents often cited they were not aware/did not know about the CCTS (71%)." 

This is dispiriting, given that last year, less than half of the consumers who reached out to their providers got a resolution to their complaint. Sadly, [97% of those consumers](https://publications.gc.ca/site/archivee-archived.html?url=https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2025/crtc/BC92-131-2025-eng.pdf) were not told about the CCTS by their telecom provider, [despite firm obligations](https://www.ccts-cprst.ca/industry/compliance-monitoring/) for service providers to do so. 

It is par for the course that consumers face basic and unnecessary barriers when navigating telecoms in Canada, even as connectivity becomes increasingly central to economic and social participation. This is just as true when making complaints about services as when selecting phone or internet plans. 

Today, on World Telecommunications Day, we have an opportunity to change that by reaffirming a basic commitment that Canadians should not only be connected but also informed. Too many Canadian consumers face too many unnecessary knowledge barriers when dealing with service providers.

Rather than mandating this information be made more available, the government seems intent on giving telecom companies free advertising to present themselves as model corporate citizens, as the federal government routinely does, for example, by [promoting](https://x.com/CIPO_Canada/status/1882078328590389759) [Bell's](https://x.com/ESDC_GC/status/1882103586546470954) ["Let's Talk"](https://x.com/Transport_gc/status/1882231889185935482) [Day](https://x.com/CIPO_Canada/status/1750156612138947060) [for](https://x.com/TBS_Canada/status/1750593667302355048) [free](https://x.com/JusticeCanadaEN/status/1882143767416947067) [across](https://x.com/CanBorder/status/1750262473821675722) [their](https://x.com/FINTRAC_Canada/status/1882065977367547995) [social](https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16K955x8jg/) [media](https://x.com/csiscanada/status/1618263094337368065) [channels](https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/maple-leaf/defence/2025/01/bell-lets-talk-day.html). Not a bad deal for a company that is already [one of the largest recipients](https://govcanadacontracts.ca/) of government contracts. 

The relationship between government officials and major telecommunication service providers already epitomizes regulatory capture. One of our recent ministers, who held the portfolio responsible for regulating this industry, [joined the Rogers C-suite](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-industry-minister-joins-rogers-executive-1.6818806) two years after leaving office. The industry minister who followed him [swiftly approved](https://globalnews.ca/news/9592439/rogers-shaw-deadline-ottawa-telecom-announcement/) the Rogers-Shaw merger, further consolidating monopoly power in the sector.

There have been some bright lights in recent years, like the appointment of someone with a competition background as the Chairperson of the CRTC. However, the deck is stacked against public interest and civil society groups advocating for companies to make it easier to understand plans, pricing, and obligations, or to make complaints. 

Obfuscation tactics and a lack of access to clear, easy-to-understand information are a persistent barrier. This is particularly true in the mobile services market, where comparing plans across providers can be difficult, even for well-informed users navigating vague marketing language, inconsistent disclosures, and incomplete information. 

To help address this issue, our organizations, the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic and OpenMedia, [recently called](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/championing-consumer-rights) for the CRTC to implement standardized labels for mobile and internet services. 

These labels would present key terms such as pricing, data limits, contract lengths, and overage charges in clear, consistent, and comparable formats. They are conceptually similar to nutrition labels on food products and inspired by a compelling idea: consumers should understand what they are buying.

The CRTC [recently proposed](https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2024/2024-318.htm) such labels for home internet services. However, their proposal does not currently extend to mobile services. This omission leaves a significant gap, affecting a service essential to most Canadians. The same standards should cover both.

Survey data and complaints [confirm](https://pub.ccts-cprst.ca/2024-2025-mid-year-report/) that mobile customers frequently encounter problems with unclear billing practices, unexpected charges, and confusion about plan terms. The CRTC could prevent these issues by mandating standardized, accessible information. The evidence [also suggests](https://publications.gc.ca/site/archivee-archived.html?url=https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2024/crtc/BC92-133-2024-eng.pdf) that consumers want this type of reform to make more informed decisions when comparing plans. This would encourage providers to compete in terms of service quality and price.

Telecom service providers should also present this information in machine-readable formats to allow third-party comparison tools to support consumer choice and improve market transparency more broadly, building tools that help average Canadians. 

Just as consumers expect clear labelling for other basic goods and services, they should be able to expect clarity when selecting a phone or internet plan. Standardized, enforceable labelling requirements are a practical and overdue step toward greater fairness in Canada’s telecom market.


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Canadian telecom service providers need labels, not loopholes

Clinical education is experiential education, after all. It integrates theory and practice through structured, supervised engagement with real-world legal issues. This pedagogy fosters a kind of reflective, values-driven lawyering that distinguishes professionals committed to justice from others.  

Nurturing students' desire and ability to do justice is a process that American law professor Jane Aiken calls training for “justice-readiness”. One way experiential learning in legal clinics contributes to training for justice-readiness is by supporting students as they go through disorienting moments. Typically, this happens when clinic professors involve students in cases in which they will be confronted with injustice, and encourage them to find creative legal solutions to achieve better outcomes for their clients.  

Can artificial intelligence be of any help in that process?  

It depends on how one chooses to use it. In a previous blog post, I argued that law students and lawyers who use artificial intelligence to speed up their professional activities are flirting with recklessness. I still stand by that stance and would probably defend it even more firmly now. However, speed and productivity are not the only skills a good lawyer needs. Being imaginative, empathetic and principled are also hallmarks of good lawyering.  

Maybe AI can help with that? 

After running some tests, I believe that using AI to develop these qualities among students is a path worth exploring. In fact, I’ve been genuinely impressed by the potential ChatGPT holds for guiding those interested in thinking outside the legal box to promote justice. Here are two experiments I ran to explore whether AI could  help clinic professors to teach justice-readiness.  

My first experiment consisted of submitting an excerpt from Jean-Philippe Baril-Guérard’s Royal—a novel describing the ups and downs of a law student’s life—to ChatGPT. The extract I chose portrays a haughty student who works in a legal clinic and struggles to help a tenant facing eviction. I wanted to see if an AI system could come up with creative legal solutions to help the tenant stay in her apartment despite the landlord’s claim that the place was unsafe.  

ChatGPT did come up with a solution that a 1L with a legalistic worldview wouldn’t think of: it gave me information about a municipal service helping tenants to clean and reorganize their apartments to comply with the city’s regulations. It also noticed that the protagonist lacked empathy when he interacted with his client and offered good advice as to how to improve. 

This is pretty interesting, but it’s nothing a good clinical professor can’t do. For my next experiment, I wanted to see if ChatGPT could prove useful to a seasoned clinic professor. In order to do that, I took inspiration from an academic paper on clinical legal education that contained testimonies from real legal clinicians. I focused on a case in which ChatGPT could have benefitted both the students and their supervisor, it goes as follows 

 
```
A group of students and their supervisor are supposed to meet with a mother who lost custody of her child because she neglected him. The purpose of the meeting is to help her regain custody of her kid after she successfully completed a probation. However, the mother calls to inform the team that she has had a “bad night” and is stuck in a motel room without money. Despite their efforts, neither the students nor their supervisor can imagine any explanation that is not related to alcohol or drug abuse.
```


```
They decide to drive to the motel to confront the woman. Upon arrival, their bias and prejudices reveal. Contrary to their expectations, the woman hadn’t been drinking or consuming drugs. She worked late as a grocery store cashier and found herself stuck there because her father’s car had broken down. She took a cab to get back home, but the driver dropped her on the side of the road when he realized that, save for the physical paycheck she just received, she didn’t have anything to pay for the ride. She thus had to walk to a motel where she could spend the night.
```

Had the legal clinic team used ChatGPT in their brainstorming session, they would have had to consider a broader range of issues—including transportation troubles and overnight work/work crisis. Indeed, these are all potential explanations the chatbot provided when I asked it to help me think through what “bad night” could mean in the context at hand. Realistically, the team of students probably wouldn’t have considered these options to be the most probable ones, but a good clinical professor could have made a teaching moment out of it, framing it as an opportunity for experiential reflection. Encouraging them to prepare for all eventualities, as the legal practice can be full of surprises. The client would probably have received better legal services as a result.  

What should we make of these examples? They certainly show that ChatGPT has something interesting to offer, but the precise nature of its contribution is not entirely clear. Justice readiness is an ethos, it’s inherently human and outsourcing the teaching of it to machines feels dehumanizing. However, LLMs have been trained on an immense corpus of texts, which means that they have been exposed to a broader spectrum of ideas than any human has ever been. Refusing to take advantage of it probably does a disservice to justice.  

When students experience disorienting moments and fail to find solutions that lead to more just outcomes for their client, they can feel apathetic and powerless. Some may fall back on a posture of legal relativism and give up on their commitment to justice. However, research shows that exposure to hopeful alternatives is a way to prevent this kind of disillusionment. Using LLMs as brainstorming tools to generate hopeful alternatives can open students' minds and help them see that things don’t have to be the way they are. In that sense, AI can contribute to training justice-ready law graduates. When used within the structured, reflective environment of experiential education, it can be another tool to deepen student learning. In troubled times like these, we should probably seize every opportunity to nurture students’ desire and ability to ‘do justice’.   

_The opinion is the author's, and does not necessarily reflect CIPPIC's policy position._

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AI in Legal Clinics - A Tool to Foster Justice-Readiness?

While D&D is far from the first or only TTRPG system, it is undisputedly the most well-known. With great fame, however, comes great third-party content built atop this system. “Modules” — stand-alone settings and adventures which augment or expand upon D&D mechanics (the “rules” of the game) and features — the settings and adventures in which the game takes place — are the most popular form of external content. Nowadays, media franchises such as _Dimension 20_ and _Critical Role_ [have also built massive followings](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/2024/05/09/critical-role-dungeons-dragons/) for creating recorded performances using D&D mechanics and inspired settings. 

To manage this outpouring of third-party content, Wizards released [the Open Game License (OGL)](https://www.salon.com/2000/03/10/dungeons/) with the publication of D&D 3rd Edition in 2000. This OGL was structured under a [System Reference Document (SRD)](https://www.dndbeyond.com/resources/1781-systems-reference-document-srd), a then-innovative take on how copyright might work in the world of TTRPGs. In SRDs, the original license holders of a given work systemize and present a clear list of those parts of the original material third parties are allowed to reference or use in their own published content, an idea spawned from the [open gaming movement](https://web.archive.org/web/20020404235238/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/md/md20020228e). With the release of OGL version 1.0, Wizards became the [first to exercise this philosophy](https://www.salon.com/2000/03/10/dungeons/) in the TTRPG space. 

_Wizards_ saw massive success after publishing their games under an OGL, with third-party content [drawing the eyes of a wider audience](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/rs-gaming/dungeons-and-dragons-dimension-20-madison-square-garden-1235258992/) to their once-niche property. While Wizards has flirted with more stringent licenses since, the return of the OGL in D&D 5th Edition (now in shiny 1.0(a) mode) was, for many, a return to a much-appreciated norm – but one that proved temporary. 

With the announcement of the new _One D&D_ in 2022, rumours and leaks of an updated and much more restrictive OGL 1.1 [spread like wildfire](https://gamerant.com/dungeons-and-dragons-one-dnd-no-ogl-rumor/) among the TTRPG community. The rumours proved well-founded. OGL 1.1    

One of the most controversial updates required creators to [report and, in some cases, pay royalties](https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/dungeons-dragons-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl-srd-royalties/) when earning a certain amount of revenue. The new license also stated that it was the only “authorized license agreement,” implying that OGL 1.0(a) and prior, previously stated to be “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive,” would [no longer be viable](https://gizmodo.com/dnd-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl-1-1-open-gaming-license-1849950634). Even more infuriating to some was the limited scope of protected materials, which encompassed only “printed media and static electronic file formats” and leaving other forms of media confined to the realm of fanwork.    

Although Wizards claimed that these new regulations would only impact the most major D&D module publishers, [experts noted](https://gizmodo.com/dnd-wizards-of-the-coast-ogl-1-1-open-gaming-license-1849950634) that, in practice, it may have a much wider impact. In response to the extreme backlash, _Wizards_ eventually rolled back these preliminary changes. Ending with a whimper and not a bang, _Wizards_ eventually opted to quietly publish their SRD for the newest edition [under a _Creative Commons_ license](https://www.rascal.news/the-ogl-is-dead-long-live-the-ogl-dnd-5e/) rather than changing the substance of the OGL.  

This decision, made in light of content creators and fans alike uniting against the OGL 1.1, is bittersweet. After years of trying to create a model of copyright for TTRPGs, Wizards instead ended up fitting themselves under an existing copyright framework. Much like recent decisions such as [_Hachette v. Internet Archive_](https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca2/23-1260/23-1260-2024-09-04.html), the OGL presents another example of unique copyright frameworks crumbling under practical stress tests. While copyright in TTRPG sphere doesn’t enjoy a broad body of legal precedent, more recent court decisions like [_DaVinci Editrice et al. v. Ziko Games_](https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/texas/txsdce/4:2013cv03415/1134359/44/0.pdf) imply that game mechanics are not protected under copyright laws, or at least must meet a high bar to prove their original character. These questions raise the questionL which aspects of the game are protected at all, and so subject to the Creative Commons license terms? Settings and characters, certainly, but mechanics (such as skill checks) still present a legal gray area. Fans and content creators might have feared the OGL’s potential to gatekeep the mechanical play style of D&D against third-party creators, but it seems unlikely that this licensing schema could have held up in court.  

Was the backlash pointless, then? I don’t believe so. While the OGL may have proved unenforceable, the underlying shift in priorities from creative freedom to stringent IP protection belies the philosophy that the OGL was founded on. While attempting to both keep the licensing standards they pioneered and adapt to shifting corporate priorities, _Wizards_ innovated themselves into a corner. To escape, they cut the Gordian knot by leaving the OGL behind altogether, unintentionally proving that permissive copyright frameworks created under proprietary control, regardless of intention, are unsustainable in the face of commercial corporate interests. 

_The opinion is the author's, and does not necessarily reflect CIPPIC's policy position._ 

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Open Game Licenses and Copyright in Tabletop Roleplaying Games: How Innovation Does(n’t) Breed Excellence 

Recent Commentary / Blogs 

Perspectives

Les programmes de stage de CIPPIC offrent aux étudiants la possibilité de travailler avec des avocats expérimentés sur des problèmes juridiques réels et de pointe résultant de l'utilisation de nouvelles technologies

Travail étudiant

Thèmes

Read [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/canadian-telecom-service-providers-need-labels-not-loopholes) the comment by CIPPIC's Melissa Dupuis-Crane and Matt Malone and OpenMedia's Matt Hatfield. 

CIPPIC and OpenMedia comment on World Telecommunications Day

_For Immediate Release_

OTTAWA, Privacy Awareness Week – In recognition of Privacy Awareness Week, the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), Canada’s first and only public interest law and technology clinic, calls on the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to undertake targeted and immediate reforms to its enforcement practices.

“When Philippe Dufresne was appointed Privacy Commissioner of Canada in 2022, Canadians were hopeful he would renew the office’s mandate through robust enforcement of federal privacy laws,” said CIPPIC Director Matt Malone. “Almost three years later, that promise remains unfulfilled.”

“Commissioner Dufresne’s office has become known for launching investigations that span years with little to no resolution, such as those into TikTok and ChatGPT.[1] When pressed, his office issues vague assurances that longstanding files remain a ‘top priority.’[2] Meaningful information is rarely forthcoming. Increasingly, the focus is on the theatre of enforcement, not actual enforcement.”

Through records obtained under the _Access to Information Act_, CIPPIC has learned that some investigations recently closed by the Commissioner have taken many years to conclude – with many investigations taking three or four years, some taking over eight years, and one even lasting over a decade.[3] This mirrors lengthy investigations conducted by the Information Commissioner of Canada, as CIPPIC recently discovered.[4]  

Public records suggest that the Commissioner’s international travel has taken precedence.[5] In just two years, the Commissioner spent over $200,000 in taxpayer funds attending events in locations such as Turkey, Mexico, Japan (twice), Australia, Italy (three times), Bermuda, the UK, Germany, and Singapore. This level of travel activity is not comparable with his peer federal watchdogs. 

Meanwhile, at home the Commissioner is fighting yesterday’s battles. Years late, the Commissioner is still examining the ArriveCAN app and continues litigation against Meta over the Cambridge Analytica scandal – a scandal dating all the way back to 2016.[6] That legal fight alone has consumed a significant sum of public funds, mostly on bills for a Bay Street law firm.[7]  

“The Commissioner demonstrates complacency at a time when Canadians need an urgent response to the threats they face to their privacy rights,” said Malone. “This comes at a time where the country's standing with European regulators is at risk, which could potentially jeopardize our trading relationship with the EU.”[8]
This pattern mirrors a broader failure across federal institutions to protect the privacy rights of Canada’s most vulnerable, especially children and youth. Instead of investing in adequate enforcement resources to combat online harms, the last government introduced the controversial Online Harms Act, seeking to arrogate sweeping new powers.[9]

Disturbingly, all major federal political parties – Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP – have unified to block efforts to impose stricter privacy rules on the use of Canadians’ personal information in their political machines.[10]

**Canadians deserve better.**

CIPPIC is calling on the Commissioner to take the following immediate steps to restore public confidence in his office’s work:

- _Suspend his international travel_. CIPPIC calls on the Commissioner to halt all taxpayer-funded international travel until his office achieves tangible reductions in investigation timelines and exhibits better transparency.  
- _Increase transparency about investigation timelines_. Publish quarterly information for all completed investigations revealing, at a minimum, (1) the date the complaint was received; (2) the date the complaint was accepted and an investigation was opened; and (3) the date the investigation was closed.  Canadians deserve the complete data so they can have an accurate picture of the privacy watchdog’s track record, and they should not be forced to obtain this information through the _Access to Information Act_.  
- _Publish more information about data breaches_. As soon as it becomes available, publish the names of all federal institutions that have suffered data breaches and the number of affected Canadians. Stop making vulnerable and under-resourced civil society actors or journalists obtain this information through the _Access to Information Act_. 

CIPPIC also calls on Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney to direct the Commissioner towards these actions, and to make privacy and data protection reform – along with transparency legislation reform – a priority of his government. It is time for Canada’s leaders to deliver the protections that Canadians expect and deserve. 

**Media Contact**

Director, CIPPIC

admin@cippic.ca



**Cited Material** 
 
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/privacy-commissioner-investigation-openai-chatgpt-1.6801296; https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/federal-and-three-provincial-privacy-commissioners-launch-tiktok-investigation. 

[2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/government-tiktok-advertising-1.7378849. 

[3] A-2024-00062. Notably, the Commissioner did not provide this record in the format requested by CIPPIC. 

[4] https://www.cippic.ca/articles/some-investigations-recently-completed-by-the-information-commissioner-of-canada-stretched-over-a-decade-long. 

[5] https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/009f9a49-c2d9-4d29-a6d4-1a228da335ce/resource/8282db2a-878f-475c-af10-ad56aa8fa72c. 

[6] https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/opc-news/news-and-announcements/2024/an_240319/. 

[7] https://theijf.org/open-by-default/24395324. 

[8] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-if-canada-wants-closer-european-ties-we-need-european-privacy/. 

[9] https://theijf.org/open-by-default/24482917. 

[10] https://www.burnabynow.com/highlights/liberals-conservatives-and-ndp-argue-in-bc-court-to-prevent-investigation-of-their-privacy-policies-8642239. 

CIPPIC calls on the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to commit to targeted reforms in its enforcement practices

CIPPIC has filed its [Memorandum of Fact and Law](https://cms.cippic.ca/uploads/A_267_24_1395804_ONTARIO_LTD_v_AG_Canada_Intervener_Memorandum_of_Fact_and_Law_3e8eead498.pdf) in the appeal of [_1395804 Ontario Ltd. v. Canada (Attorney General_), 2024 FC 829]( https://canlii.ca/t/k4zfr), arguing that the _Copyright Act_’s anti-circumvention provisions do not override fair dealing. CIPPIC’s argument focuses on reconciling user rights with Parliament’s enactment of remedies for circumventing digital locks. This intervention follows CIPPIC’s successful participation in the hearing in the Court below, where CIPPIC’s interpretation of the digital lock provisions prevailed. 


**The Decision: Fair Dealing and Anti-Circumvention Provisions**

In the decision under appeal, [_1395804 Ontario Ltd. v. Canada (Attorney General)_, 2024 FC 829]( https://canlii.ca/t/k4zfr), the Federal Court of Canada ruled that Canada’s anti-circumvention provisions do not override fair dealing. The plaintiff, a paywalled news service, sued Parks Canada, arguing that employees had improperly accessed and shared its articles, violating copyright and technological protection measures. The court rejected this claim, holding that using a validly obtained password is not circumvention and, regardless, copyright owners cannot use digital locks to negate fair dealing rights.
The unsuccessful plaintiff appealed.

**CIPPIC’s Argument on Appeal**

CIPPIC has been granted leave to intervene in the appeal. It has intervened to defend the balanced interpretation of the relationship between user and digital locks in copyright law. We argued that:
- Anti-circumvention provisions must align with fair dealing. Copyright owners cannot use technological protection measures to eliminate legally protected user rights.
- A valid password is not circumvention. The Copyright Act targets hacking, not legitimate access.
- The Act must remain technologically neutral. A user’s fair dealing rights do not disappear when content is digital rather than physical.

CIPPIC thanks [James Plotkin](https://gowlingwlg.com/en-ca/people/james-plotkin) and his team at Gowling WLG for their outstanding work on our intervention.

**Next Steps**

The Federal Court of Appeal will schedule a hearing. CIPPIC will continue defending fair dealing and ensuring technological protection measures do not become tools for erasing user rights.
- CIPPIC’s Memorandum of Fact and Law](https://cms.cippic.ca/uploads/A_267_24_1395804_ONTARIO_LTD_v_AG_Canada_Intervener_Memorandum_of_Fact_and_Law_3e8eead498.pdf)
- [Intervention Order](https://cms.cippic.ca/uploads/A_267_24_20241220_O_E_O_OTT_20241220091845_LB_2_c79d6cd3bf.pdf)
- Decision under review [_1395804 Ontario Ltd. v. Canada (Attorney General)_, 2024 FC 829](https://canlii.ca/t/k4zfr)	

Fair Dealing and Digital Locks: CIPPIC’s Intervention at the FCA

#### Prior Work:

- For a list of CIPPIC's past work, see [here](https://preview.cippic.ca/articles/cippic-s-past-work). 

#### Ongoing Matters:

- _CIPPIC v Sahni_ (more [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/cippic-v-sahni-ai-s-role-in-copyright-law)) (seeking to expunge registration of copyright by an AI “author”). 
- _Blacklock’s Reporter v Attorney General of Canada_ (more [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/fair-dealing-and-digital-locks-cippic-s-intervention-at-the-federal-court-of-appeal), [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/cippic-granted-leave-to-intervene-in-blacklock-s-reporter-appeal), [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/federal-court-rules-that-digital-locks-do-not-restrain-fair-dealing-using-a-validly-obtained-password), and [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/cippic-discusses-digital-locks-case-on-michael-geist-s-law-bytes-podcast)) (balancing copyright enforcement with user rights).
- _Voltage_ Matters (more [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-voltage-v-doe2), [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/cippic-granted-leave-to-be-added-as-a-party-by-the-supreme-court), [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/cippic-files-respondent-factum-voltage-v-doe-scc-proceeding), [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/appeals-court-affirms-denial-of-default-judgement-in-file-sharing-case), [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/voltage-reverse-class-lawsuit-denied-certification-again), [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/voltage-reverse-class-proceeding-denied), [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/federal-court-of-canada-sets-rogers-reasonable-costs-in-norwich-orders), and [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/supreme-court-of-canada-decision-in-rogers-v-voltage-clarifies-role-of-is-ps-in-copyright-infringement)) (protecting Internet subscriber privacy rights). 
- Various CRTC Matters (more [here](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/championing-consumer-rights)) (making information for Internet and mobile consumers easier to access and understand).
- _Malone v Library and Archives Canada_ (preventing the destruction of copies of records released under the _Access to Information Act_). 

#### Recent / Commentary / Blogs / Media:

- May 2, 2025 - Director Matt Malone and Student Drew May on [Digital Trade Policy](https://www.thewirereport.ca/2025/05/02/opinion-will-canada-keep-a-raft-of-terrible-digital-trade-policies-just-to-stick-it-to-trump/).
- April 8, 2025 - Director Matt Malone on [Risks to Canada's Adequacy Assessment by the European Commission](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-if-canada-wants-closer-european-ties-we-need-european-privacy/).
- March 13, 2025 - Director Matt Malone on [Repairing Canada's Transparency Legislation](https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2025/03/12/ten-steps-trudeau-should-take-before-leaving-office-to-improve-canadas-transparency-laws/453847/).
- March 7, 2025 - Student Sean Cousins on [Privacy and the Charter in 2024](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/digital-privacy-and-the-charter-2024-year-in-review).
- February 27, 2025 - Student Drew May on [Delays in the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/some-investigations-recently-completed-by-the-information-commissioner-of-canada-stretched-over-a-decade-long).
- February 20, 2025 - Student Tina Derak on [Upcycling in Trademark Infringement](https://preview.cippic.ca/articles/fashion-upcycling-and-trademark-infringement). 
- February 14, 2025 – Articling Student Gareth Spanglett on [AI and Copyright](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/the-ai-copyright-conundrum).  
- January 15, 2025 – Director Matt Malone on [TikTok in the United States](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-while-the-us-supreme-court-deliberates-a-tiktok-ban-canadas-own-tiktok/). 

#### Mentorship:

- CIPPIC is working with a talented group of law students this 2025 winter term. 
- CIPPIC is helping coach law students for three moots during this 2025 winter term (building on some [record-setting success](https://www.uottawa.ca/research-innovation/news-all/law-students-repeat-winner-oxford-international-intellectual-property-moot)).

#### Ongoing Initiatives:

- CIPPIC’s [Open Information Initiative](https://www.cippic.ca/articles/the-launch-of-cippic-s-open-information-initiative).  

#### New Research:

- Secret. More soon 😊 

#### Questions:

- Any questions? Contact admin@cippic.ca.  


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