• 3 Posts
  • 320 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 2nd, 2023

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  • Downloading content is almost definitely legal in Canada, and non-commercial digital distribution has never gone to court, so its legality hasn’t been established.

    I can’t find the source, but I recall reading speculation that sharing backup copies between owners of the media is likely legal in Canada but, again, it hasn’t been tried by courts, so its legality hasn’t been firmly established.

    Anyway, with non-commercial digital distribution not having any legal teeth in Canada, it’s effectively legal and its literal legality is unknown.












  • To be fair to Loblaws, I’ve never seen them change prices with these mid-day, so they’re not engaged in “surge pricing” that I’ve heard of. (I haven’t been to Loblaws since the start of the boycott, but I don’t expect it’s changed.)

    But I do wonder about the legality of that; right now, if the price at the till doesn’t match the item price, you get the first one free and the rest at the marked price (up to $10 items; above that it’s $10 off the marked price for the first item). But my impression is that policy is from Loblaws signing some sort of grocery code ages ago when scanners came in, essentially to assure consumers that they wouldn’t be scammed by scanners ringing up items at higher prices than advertised. I don’t think that is legally mandated.

    So, then, what happens if the price changes between when you put it in your cart and when you arrive at the till? Anyone engaging in surge pricing where the timing isn’t clearly marked in advance is going to get into a lot of trouble with consumer backlash, at the very least, but I hope it’s illegal, too.



  • This seems like it might work really well. We’ve evolved to be social creatures, and internalizing the emotions of others is literally baked into our DNA (mirror neurons), so filtering out the emotional “noise” from customers seems, to me, like a brilliant way to improve the working conditions for call centre workers.

    It’s not like you can’t also tell the emotional tone of the caller based on the words they’re saying, and the call centre employees will know that voices are being changed.

    Also, I’m not so sure about reporting on anonymous Redditor comments as the basis for journalism. I know why it’s done, but I’d rather hear what a trained psychologist has to say about this, y’know?



  • I didn’t like summers or winters where I used to live, so I moved to somewhere where I like both seasons. Then moved again to somewhere that I love all four seasons.

    But I get what you’re saying; you’re describing the summers of my childhood. Hot and humid so you feel like you need a cold shower within 5 minutes of walking outside. Sticky by day, swarmed by mosquitos at night.

    But you lost me at the sand bit. I love the beach and ocean when it’s like 10-30°C out. Colder and hotter are okay, too, but not as nice.





  • In Canada, I’ve never bothered with a VPN. Nobody in Canada has ever been successfully sued for torrent downloading of media, and BC courts have thrown out mass John Doe cases as a waste of the legal system’s time.

    Even if it does go to court, there’s a principal in Canadian law that damages can be at most three times the value of the good (for punitive damages). For BluRay that’s, what, $50? They don’t want to go all the way to a judgement to set the legal precedent of a $150 judgement.

    Even if courts go beyond treble damages, there’s a maximum fine of $5000 for non-commercial infringement. Even that isn’t with their legal costs to pursue.

    So non-commercial piracy is de facto legal in Canada.

    (IANAL, this is not legal advice.)