Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

At the end of every year, I make it a point to review our blog readership detail to see which topics you, our audience, find the most interesting. The Schneider Electric and APC blogs continue to be recognized in the marketplace as a great source of thought leadership and information on data center solutions ; perspectives from hundreds of global bloggers creates a rich platform for exchanging ideas. In 2019, four topics in particular stood out to our readers. My bet is that many of you will be able to glean solid insights from these trending topics for your own organization. 1. Sustainability Efforts Ramp Up with Renewables Blog posts that covered how to leverage renewable energy garnered a lot of attention. In fact, many colocation and service providers are moving quickly to implement renewables in order to drive down their energy costs. In particular, this blog features the new marketplace initiatives that are now influencing the growth of renewable energy systems. As you wou...

Protecting the Legal Foundation of the Internet: 2019 in Review When someone says something unlawful online, they should be the one held responsible for it, not the website or platform where they said it. Section 230 —the most important law protecting free speech online—reflects that common-sense principle. This year, EFF defended Section 230 in Congress, the courts, and on the Internet. In 2018, Congress passed SESTA/FOSTA , the only change to Section 230 in its 23-year history. SESTA/FOSTA includes broadly-worded provisions aimed at holding websites liable for sex trafficking. This has given platforms little choice but to become more restrictive in what types of posts they allow , censoring innocent people in the process. Faced with the impossible task of complying with the law, some forums have shut down altogether . SESTA/FOSTA also cast legal doubt over important harm reduction activities in the sex work community, putting sex workers in direct danger . Misguided attempts to...

Activists Worldwide Face Off Against Face Recognition: 2019 Year in Review We’ve all heard the expression, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” We might hope that what we do and where we go will only be known to those who were there in person. Yet maintaining such anonymity and privacy in public spaces is becoming ever more difficult. 2019 has marked the year where a growing digital rights network around the world is pushing back against governments and companies’ use of face recognition technologies in public spaces. This year, in an attempt to prevent people from having their movement and actions meticulously tracked, these activists took action against face recognition in countries all over the world. Ban on Mass Use of Face Recognition Digital rights activists have long argued that face recognition constitutes mass surveillance when used to track the movements of entire populations in public spaces by matching faces obtained from CCTV cameras, drones or other device...

Seven Times Journalists Were Censored: 2017 in Review Social media platforms have developed into incredibly useful resources for professional and citizen journalists, and have allowed people to learn about and read stories that may never have been published in traditional media. Sharing on just one of a few large platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube may mean the difference between a story being read by a few hundred versus tens of thousands of people. Unfortunately, these same platforms have taken on the role of censor. They have created moderation policies to increase polite speech on their platforms, but simply put: they are not very good at it. These moderation policies are applied in imbalanced ways, often without an appeal process, sometimes relying on artificial intelligence to flag content, and usually without transparency into the decision-making process. This results in the censorship and blocking of content of all types. Globally, these content takedown process...

Time to Rethink Copyright Safe Harbors? 2017 in Review Platform safe harbors have been in the crosshairs of copyright industry lobbyists throughout 2017. All year EFF has observed them advancing their plans around the world to weaken or eliminate the legal protections that have enabled the operation of platforms as diverse as YouTube, the Internet Archive, Reddit, Medium, and many thousands more. Copyright safe harbor rules empower these platforms by ensuring that they are free to host user-uploaded content, without manually vetting it (or, worse, automatically filtering it) for possible copyright infringements. Without that legal protection, it would be impossible for such platforms to operate as they do today. In May this year we heard recording industry representatives call copyright safe harbor a greater threat to their industry than piracy . But that alarming claim isn’t based in reality. In most countries that have copyright safe harbors, a platform comes under a responsibil...