Tag Archives: Wikimedia Commons

Privacy vs. Telemarketers: Canada’s “Do Not Call List”

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Although I still have misgivings, I am about to register my telephone number on Canada’s National Do Not Call List (DNCL).

I know, you are wondering: if this can stop telemarketing calls, what’s not to love?

In order to register on the National Do Not Call List (DNCL) personal information will be collected, used and disclosed by the National DNCL Operator in order to register, verify and de-register residential, wireless, fax or VoIP telephone number(s) on the National DNCL. The numbers registered by consumers on the National DNCL will be disclosed to telemarketers and clients of telemarketers and other subscribers to the National DNCL to prevent telemarketing calls to those numbers. The numbers may also be disclosed, on a confidential basis, by telemarketers and clients of telemarketers and other subscribers to the National DNCL to another person involved in supplying the subscriber with services to enable compliance with the National DNCL Rules. In addition, personal information will be collected, used and disclosed by the National DNCL Operator, the CRTC and/or its Complaints Investigator Delegate in order to investigate complaints regarding violations of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules, to administer and enforce these rules, and for audit and quality assurance purposes. Personal information may also be disclosed to Canadian and/or foreign law enforcement agencies for the purpose of administering or enforcing any law or carrying out a lawful investigation.

The catch 22 is that I must first allow my personal information to be “collected, used and disclosed by the National DNCL Operator in order to register, verify and de-register residential, wireless, fax or VoIP telephone number(s) on the National DNCL.”

If that isn’t bad enough, the National DNCL will then “disclose my registered phone number to telemarketers and clients of telemarketers and other subscribers to the National DNCL to prevent telemarketing calls to those numbers.”

“The numbers may also be disclosed, on a confidential basis, by telemarketers and clients of telemarketers and other subscribers to the National DNCL to another person involved in supplying the subscriber with services to enable compliance with the National DNCL Rules.

In addition, personal information will be collected, used and disclosed by the National DNCL Operator, the CRTC and/or its Complaints Investigator Delegate in order to investigate complaints regarding violations of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules, to administer and enforce these rules, and for audit and quality assurance purposes. Personal information may also be disclosed to Canadian and/or foreign law enforcement agencies for the purpose of administering or enforcing any law or carrying out a lawful investigation.”

— National Do Not Call List

So the deal is, to stop telemarketers from abusing my privacy, I must first give up my privacy by handing my phone number over to an absurdly long list of faceless people and agencies:

  • National DNCL Operator
  • telemarketers
  • clients of telemarketers
  • other subscribers to the National DNCL
  • another person involved in supplying the subscriber with services
  • the CRTC
  • CRTC Complaints Investigator Delegate
  • Canadian law enforcement agencies
  • Foreign law enforcement agencies
Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian

Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian

Canada has been a world leader in the field of Privacy Law, with both federal and provincial privacy commissioners.  Recently I heard Ann Cavoukian talk about how we deserve to have our privacy protected, and that corporations need to implement “Privacy By Design.”

Still, handing over personal data feels like the opposite of personal privacy protection, particularly for someone whose only “loyalty” membership is with my bank that knows how I spend my money.  What is the point of protecting personal information from Facebook and the like if I hand my data over to a government agency that promises to pass it to the very telemarketers I wish to discourage?

Why Now?

Today, I just had a call from a telemarketer who curtly informed me that they “have no list.” When I started to explain the “Do Not Call List” he hung up on me at “Canadian Law.” The alacrity of his hangup suggests the DNCL might actually work. 

So maybe it is time to give the DNCL a shot. If it works, the only disadvantage I can see is that my husband will lose out on the entertainment value he currently derives from telemarketer baiting. When he has time, he makes them work hard, answering questions, providing information, and generally toys with them for as long as possible. The theory is that the best way to make them stop is to cost them money, but the problem is that there are just so many of them — for every company you teach not to call, hundreds or thousands of new ones pop up every day.

experiment

These days it seems as though I’m getting a handful of telemarketer calls every day. Total strangers are calling me up and very often asking for me by name, so they already have some of my personal information. For the past few years I’ve interrupted telemarketer pitches at start with the instruction to “remove me from the list”. I can’t really say whether or not if that helps, because the number of telemarketing calls seems fairly constant, but that’s just an impression; I don’t have any hard data.

Telephone modele U43 MGR Lyon (Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr Rama)To frame this adventure as an experiment, beginning tomorrow, on May 21st, 2013, I will start making a log of all the telemarketing calls we get. A month later, on June 21st, I will register with the DNCL and log the telemarketing calls we get over the following month.

I’ll let you know how it comes out. :)

Image Credits:
Screen Capture from Canada’s National Do Not Call List (DNCL) website

Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian at the 2013 #GOopendata Conference by laurelrusswurm licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Telephone Photograph by Rama, found on the Wikimedia Commons, released under a Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr License

Images You Can Use

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Because of the changes to copyright law over the last few decades, it has become increasingly dangerous to make use of the media that we find on the Internet. Copyright infringement is against the law in Canada and most, if not all, of the world.

So even though a wealth of music is available for download, and great photographs can be easily cut and pasted online  — doing so may well result in allegations of copyright infringement — which could result in having your booth at the local fair raided by the RCMP. or your blog or website might be taken down.

The only sure way to avoid risking such a terrible fate is to only use only those images that you have permission to use.

Copyright

A maple leaf within the copyright symbol

In Canada by default, all creative work is automatically covered by copyright. Creators don’t have to register their work, or even mark it © Copyright.

When you are looking for an image to use in your blog, or to add to your bake sale flyer, even if the photograph you select is not marked © Copyright “All Rights Reserved,” it probably is.

Fair Dealing

Canadian law provides specific “fair dealing” exceptions to copyright that are supposed to allow us to make use of copyright works in certain circumstances. These exceptions are not clearly defined, and may leave the user open to allegations of copyright infringement.  Even if you believe your use falls under fair dealing, a court may not agree.

New Law

Worse, in Canada, our government recently passed Bill C-11, which will radically change Canadian copyright law.  Once in force it will be some time before the courts, copyright scholars and IP lawyers hammer out what it really means and how it actually applies. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not wind up as a “test case” in court.

Getting Permission

We don’t need permission to use any of our own original creations, whether it is original artwork we make, any original  photographs we take, or any original music or video we record.

But if we are to  use any © Copyright “All Rights Reserved” work, we are now required to have explicit permission.

Assuming you can figure out a way to get in touch, you can try to get permission from that record label to use their hit song as the sound track to your home movie.  And maybe they’ll give it to you.    But then you would probably need additional permissions  to upload it to YouTube, and maybe they won’t give it to you.

A much easier way to get permission is through a license from the creator/copyright owner.  Since I am not a lawyer, I find that this is the safest course, to use only works released under a license that allows people to use, share or modify the work.   Although there are other licenses available, Creative Commons licenses are popular, widely recognized and relatively easy to find.

Finding Licensed Images

Internet search terms:
or, what to type in the search bar

In any search engine, and on any site that has its own search bar, you can probably search for “creativecommons” or “Creative Commons” “by” or “by-sa”

You can usually type more than one word, separated by spaces or by +
You can usually search for a phrase by enclosing it within quotation marks.

Google

  1. On the Google Search Page choose “Images” from the tab along the top.
  2. Then type the words that best describe the image you want in the search bar then click the little blue magnifying glass symbol beside the search bar.

Now there are new choices offered at the top right hand side of the page, including a tab which allows you to change the “Safe Search” parameter, and beside that is the tab we want, which is marked with a circular graphic (that I believe is supposed to represent a gear).

Click the gear icon, then choose “Advanced search” from the drop down menu, and scroll down to “usage rights”. To the right you’ll find a tab with Google’s default “not filtered by license.” Clicking that gives you the choices:

  • not filtered by license ~ result will include everything, including © “All Rights Reserved” work you can not legally use
  • free to use or share
  • free to use or share, even commercially
  • free to use, share or modify
  • free to use, share or modify, even commercially

Select the use that best describes your requirements, then click the “advanced search” button.

Flickr

Although many of the image results returned by Google are from the popular Flickr photo sharing site, you will find even more if you look there directly there yourself.

On the the Flickr search page choose “advanced search” then scroll down to check off “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content” where you can choose:

  • Find content to use commercially, or
  • Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon

Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s Wikimedia Commons has a vast repository of both creative commons licensed and public domain material.

Jamendo ♫

If you’re looking for music specifically, all the music available on the Jamendo website carries a Creative Commons license.   I’m not sure what the percentages are today, but a year or so ago fully 25% of the music available on Jamendo was released under the freest Creative Commons attribution only license.  (CC by).

Internet Archive

A final place that hosts an incredible amount of  material you can share freely would be the Internet Archive.

Further Reading: License To Share

Post Script

As I stumble across free culture resources online, I add them my my free culture page. If you know of any online free culture resources or repositories that I’ve missed, please let me know and I’ll add them.