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The Australian House Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs has released its report on exceptions to liability for circumvention of technological protection measures. The Committee recommends an approach very similar to that adopted by the last government in Bill C-60, recommending 37 broad, public interest oriented exceptions to liability for circumvention for purposes including fair dealing, consumer protection, and archival, educational and library use.

A Consumers International report has condemned World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) technical assistance as 'thoroughly inadequate', and is demanding a wholesale review of the organisation's legislative advice to developing countries. Titled Copyright and Access to Knowledge, the report concludes that the copyright law of 11 Asian countries, including China, India and Malaysia, have given copyright owners far more protection than the intellectual property treaties they have signed up to require and fail to take advantage of copyright exemptions and limitations written into international IP treaties. The report concludes that copyrighted educational materials are too expensive with the result that consumers are being priced out of access to knowledge. Report

In a recently released finding, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner determined that the complainant's IP address constituted "personal information" under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), since it could be linked to the complainant by the ISP. The complainant had alleged that his ISP was breaching PIPEDA by refusing to route his outgoing e-mail messages unless they were sent via the ISP's own mail servers. His complaint was unsuccessful.

Bowing to pressure from privacy advocates as well as Costco's refusal to hand over its customer information without a legal battle, the BC government has withdrawn its demand that Costco hand over names and addresses of its BC customers who purchased goods tax-free in Alberta. Globe and Mail article