Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

A Win for Music Listeners in Florida: No Performance Right in Pre-1972 Recordings Another court has ruled that the public still has the ability to play old music that almost everyone believed they lawfully had the ability to play. The Florida Supreme Court, following in the footsteps of New York State’s high court, ruled yesterday that its state law, which governs sound recordings made before 1972, doesn’t include a right to control public performances of sound recordings, including radio play. Both this decision and the reasoning behind it are good news for digital music companies and radio listeners. This case stems from a broader debate about copyright in sound recordings. Although federal copyrights in sound recordings cover reproduction and distribution, they don’t include a general right to control public performances, except for “digital audio transmissions” like Internet and satellite radio. That’s why AM and FM radio stations, and businesses like restaurants that play mu...

Twitter’s Ban on Russia Today Ads is Dangerous to Free Expression Freedom of speech “presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and always will be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all.” – United States v. Associated Press, 52 F. Supp. 362, 372 (S.D.N.Y. 1943) (opinion of the court by Judge Learned Hand), aff’d, 326 U.S. 1 (1945). On October 26, Twitter decided to ban “ advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik ,” two Russian state-owned media outlets. Twitter was reacting to an assessment by the United States intelligence community that RT and Sputnik interfered with the U.S. election on behalf of the Russian government, as well as Twitter’s (non-public) internal research. Many may be tempted to celebrate Twitter’s decision as a move to protect democracy from an authoritarian state. We fear it’s just the opposite. There see...

It’s Time for Congress to Pass an Open Access Law The public should be able to read and use the scientific research we paid for. That’s the simple premise of the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act, or FASTR ( S. 1701 , H.R. 3427 ). Despite broad bipartisan support on both sides of the aisle, FASTR has been stuck in Congressional gridlock for four years. As we celebrate Open Access week , please take a moment to urge your members of Congress to pass this common-sense law . Under FASTR, every federal agency that spends more than $100 million on grants for research would be required to adopt an open access policy. The bill gives each agency flexibility to choose a policy suited to the work it funds, as long as research is available to the public after an embargo period. (The House bill sets the embargo at a year, while the Senate bill sets it at six months. EFF supports an embargo period of six months or shorter .) Sen. Rand Paul recently incorporated the text of FAS...

Certbot Development Livestream (Halloween Edition!) Do you want to know what it’s like to be an open-source developer? Want to see how we work on Certbot behind the scenes? This Halloween, an EFF Certbot developer will be live-streaming their work on Twitch to show you what it’s like to work on Certbot, chat with other developers, and answer your questions. On October 31st at 10:30 am Pacific time, tune into the livestream and join us! We will update this post with the livestream link, as well as tweeting it from EFF’s Twitter account . There’s a growing trend of open-source developers live coding through streaming platforms like Twitch, and we’re excited to jump in. Certbot is one of EFF’s many tech tools . It offers all domain owners and website administrators a convenient, free way to move their websites from insecure HTTP to secure HTTPS. Gone are the days of expensive certificates that are hard to configure—Certbot deploys Let’s Encrypt certificates with easy-to-follow, in...

Food and beverage manufacturers are facing many similar challenges as other industrial companies– slim margins, aging equipment and lower budgets. However, there are also challenges unique to this sector. The biggest issues in the food and beverage sector involve consumers’ satisfaction with the products and brands they choose. First of all, consumers today demand a wider variety of products than ever before – according to Fortune, this increasing demand for variety is one of the main causes of the recent mass exodus of Big Food CEOs . This increasing variable demand means companies need to operate with greater agility to remain competitive. Second, digitally-connected consumers expect full transparency of information and will react instantly to safety and health issues. From the same Fortune article, consumers have already lost trust in once-staple legacy food brands. Any company impacted by a recall faces a similarly steep potential drop in trust. Implementing end to end traceabili...