After 11 years of bringing you local reporting, the team behind the Vancouver Observer has moved on to Canada's National Observer. You can follow Vancouver culture reporting over there from now on. Thank you for all your support over the years!

A New Year: Weekly News Update from OpenMedia.ca

See video

Hi I'm Lindsey and this is your weekly news update from OpenMedia.ca.

It's a new year everybody, and you know what that means: we're all looking ahead and thinking about what threats we'll face, what victories we'll claim, and what growth our Internet freedom community will see in 2013.

I can't stress enough how amazing its been to see Canadians leading the charge for Internet freedom here and around the world. I'm more than confident that we'll continue to win our battles and craft a positive vision for the Internet in the coming months and beyond—this is one of the most effective communities there is.

This year will see the push for openness and affordability continue. Next month the CRTC is holding their hearing to develop a code of conduct to protect cell phone users, which many of you continue to contribute to by sharing your stories and support at CellPhoneHorrorStory.ca.

The mere existence of the proceeding is a clear indicator of the progress we've made so far: it wasn't long ago that the CRTC was extremely big-industry-centric, and Commissioners didn't understand that citizens are stakeholders in the digital future. Now they're working in a way that's far more inclusive and beneficial for Canadians—and now we get to work on advancing that, and making sure it leads to more choice, affordability, and unfettered access to communications.

This year we're also sure to see more news about online spying bill C-30, which is still quietly alive between Parliamentary stages. The federal privacy commissioner announced this week that her office will be attempting to reconstruct the bill with our civil liberties in mind, but it remains to be seen whether the Conservative government will finally listen to experts' and citizens' outcry around the online spying bill, and either scrap it or make substantive changes.

On the international front, negotiations on the secretive and extreme Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement will continue in Singapore in March. This is the agreement that could allow industry lobbyists to criminalize everyday uses of the Internet, threaten you with fines, and censor online content. Our copyright law in Canada is far from perfect, but this undemocratic agreement will make things far worse—we call it the Internet trap. You can visit our so-far-successful capaign StopTheTrap.net to speak out and learn more.

You can look forward to all of this and more as we move deeper into 2013. It's going to be a big year, but we're so excited to be standing with you through it all.

For the Internet, this is Lindsey with OpenMedia.ca signing off.

Read More:

More in Technology

Gee-Whizzery

SIGGRAPH 2018: Virtual circus comes to town
Chris Priebe and Karen Olsson of Community Sift

British Columbia tech firm guards virtual worlds from cyberbullies

VANCOUVER — As online communities come under the attack of cyberbullies, racist speech and spam, a British Columbia tech firm has developed technology to keep the trolls under the bridge. Community...

B.C. tests remote undersea glider to prevent whale-ship collisions

VICTORIA — A remote undersea glider equipped with acoustic sensors is patrolling deep water canyons off the west coast of Vancouver Island in a bid to set up a traffic alert system to prevent large...
Speak up about this article on Facebook or Twitter. Do this by liking Vancouver Observer on Facebook or following us @Vanobserver on Twitter. We'd love to hear from you.