For the digital economy to thrive, accounting standards used for tangible assets need to change to recognize intangible assets. Without a fresh approach, challenges will arise in making loans and investments and in taxing value creation. In this new CIGI paper, Patricia Meredith writes that the accounting profession will need support from policy makers and regulators, investors, creditors and directors to make the necessary changes.
Ronald Crelinsten describes his and others’ research into gender-based violence and the parallels between domestic violence and hostage-taking and terrorism. Online hate and vitriol can be weaponized and amplified in truly frightening harassment campaigns, designed to intimidate and silence women. Research also shows the connections among misogyny and sexism and the alt-right and white supremacy movements, and that online threats often precede actual violence, either online or offline.
Tech Firms Caught in the Middle of Russia’s War on Ukraine
“Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the faceoff between Russia and U.S. tech firms is escalating in step with tensions on the ground as the battle to control the narrative and public opinion pits internet giants with a professed commitment to free speech against Vladmir Putin, who has mastered the art of using their platforms for propaganda and information warfare.” Read the full article by Courtney Radsch at Tech Policy Press.
Consumers often are aware of and accept modest price variance without complaint. But recent research details how online dating app Tinder can charge, unbeknownst to the users, up to five times more for the same service, depending on variables such as the user’s age and where they live. In this article first published on iPolitics, Vass Bednar asks: Is such “personalized” pricing simply a digital bazaar without the haggling, or price gouging based on personal data?
The breadth of issues recently highlighted by Canada’s sole competition enforcer, the Competition Bureau — hardly a radical advocate — shows how out of step Canada is with its competition laws, especially relative to international peers already acting to update theirs. As Keldon Bester explains, the Bureau has highlighted the scope and scale of the problems with the Competition Act; the solutions are ultimately for Canadians to decide.
Last week, Big Tech host Taylor Owen welcomed Claire L. Evans, author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. Evans reveals a lesser-known history of computation and the internet, one prioritizing community, trust and the production of knowledge. Today, in the face of online harms, misinformation, failing institutional trust and content moderation challenges, there is much to learn from the work women were already doing decades ago.
What began as a squabble over border vaccination rules quickly metastasized into a projection of all manner of social and political discontent. But how do you discuss politics when you’re not arguing facts but reality itself? In this article (first published in the National Observer), Charlie Angus writes that what appears to be a shift in the geography of the public mind will have profound political implications in the weeks and years to come.
Information corrosion is outrunning efforts to combat it. The occupation of Ottawa, like the 2021 Capitol riots, was fuelled by disinformation amplified via US-based social media platforms, and funded online. In this article, first published in the Ottawa Citizen, Michael Den Tandt writes that like-minded democracies should cooperate to take on the powerful US social media companies; a global Digital Stability Board could be the first step.
Dwayne Winseck writes that the latest draft of Canada’s Broadcasting Act reform bill includes some improvements over Bill C-10, but a basketful of problems remain. The bill’s drafters and backers are still trying to see the internet-centric communications and media environment through yesteryear’s broadcasting prism; what’s more, Bill C-11 is all about content, ignoring the problematic system of market power and surveillance capitalism.
Mar. 24 – 8:25 a.m. EDT (UTC–04:00): CIGI and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office will be hosting the main event of the fifth annual IP Data and Research Conference. The objective of this full-day virtual gathering is to disseminate intellectual property research from leading experts to further innovation and inform policy.
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