Monthly Archives: September 2007

| Business, In the news, Media

Legal battle costs arm, leg, kidney

Here’s an interesting story that’s been raising eyebrows today: Jean Bédard, who runs an offshore financial services company apparently called Offshore Financial Services, is being sued by the National Bank, and because he’s running out of money and the moral and financial stakes are so high, he’s decided he has no choice but to sell a kidney to pay for court costs.

He hasn’t actually sold a kidney yet. He hasn’t even really setup the procedure or figure out where he’s having it done (it’s illegal to sell organs in Canada). But that didn’t stop him from talking to Gazette freelancer Mark Cardwell and CTV’s John Grant, suggesting that only a settlement with the bank would stop him from performing this dangerous operation.

Bédard is clearly trying to use the media (and doing so effectively with a good news hook) to influence the outcome of his case. But unlike those consumer advocate segments where grandma gets reimbursed her $50 fee error, I doubt the National Bank is going to walk away from a six-figure legal case.

The legal precedent of the case is interesting. In essence, Bédard deposited a $1.5 million cashier’s cheque (which is a cheque guaranteed by a bank) into an account at another bank. He then sent some of that money overseas before the bank realized the original cheque was forged. (Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s the old overpayment scam) The bank was out $179,957.67, and sued Bédard.

What sets this case apart from other similar scams is the use of a cashier’s cheque or bank note, which is guaranteed by the issuing bank. As such, it’s usually cleared immediately and is considered as good as cash. That’s what happened in this case: the bank cleared the cheque and Bédard assumed it was genuine. The judge dismissed the case because the bank accepted the cheque (and because Bédard clearly wasn’t trying to defraud them). The bank is appealing:

“It’s not the money, it’s the principle,” said the bank’s lawyer, François Viau, a partner with the Montreal office of Gowlings, Lafleur, Henderson. “If the ruling prevails, banks would have the burden of verifying bank drafts against the issuer.”

That, he added, “defeats the very idea of a bank draft.”

That’s true. But for a bank to suggest that it shouldn’t have to verify bank drafts before releasing funds is just as silly. Either it has to be treated like a regular cheque (frozen, verified and then released) or like cash (checked for obvious signs of forgery and immediately redeemed). They can’t have it both ways.

UPDATE (Sept. 22): Letter-writer Sheryl Keeble points out that those in desperate need of a new kidney aren’t finding this funny, and that perhaps simply declaring bankruptcy would be preferable to getting third-rate doctors to harvest your organs for a few pennies.

| Montreal, TV

A Montreal cable access channel?

The CRTC is currently accepting public comments in advance of hearings to be held on new broadcasting applications. Among them is an interesting proposal for a new television station out of Montreal.

Télévision communautaire Frontenac is an organization of about a half-dozen people who live within three or four blocks of the Frontenac metro station. They want to put together a low-budget cable access channel specifically for their neighbourhood (but also the city).

The application (ZIP file with PDFs) is for a French-language Category 1 specialty channel community specialty channel for Bell Canada’s ExpressVu satellite service, which is nationwide and doesn’t provide community channels. (UPDATED: See comment below for more details.) Videotron, the local cable provider, has a similar service in Canal Vox, which it runs.

The station’s plan is to broadcast 25 hours a week, with 60% locally-produced community programming, of which 1 hour every week is new. Naturally, because of the bare-bonedness of the operation, it would not provide luxuries like closed-captioning or descriptive audio.

Montreal currently has a few other low-budget non-profit over-the-air channels, though none seem to conflict directly with the proposal:

  • CFTU-TV 29 (Canal Savoir), an education channel run and produced by Quebec’s universities
  • CIVM-TV 17 (Télé-Québec), a provincially-owned network with a variety of shows but with emphasis on educational programming for children
  • CJNT-TV 62 (CJNT Montreal/E!), a CanWest-owned multicultural station that fills its remaining schedule with much-needed celebrity gossip shows and second-rate U.S. network programming simulcasts.

The hearing is scheduled for Oct. 30 in B.C. Though it’s mainly about which of a dozen applicants will get a lucrative FM radio channel in Kelowna, there are a few other interesting television applications:

  • Vanessa, a French-language adult pay TV service with emphasis on … oh forget the euphemisms. It’s porn.
  • Movie Trailer TV, a really stupid idea for a channel of movie trailers and making-of documentaries.
  • Short Form TV, from the same folks as Movie Trailer TV, and whose sole programming restriction is that its content is short in length.
  • The Christian Network, which is self-explanatory but would seem to overlap significantly with the multifaith Vision TV.
  • Arya Persian TV, which doesn’t yet meet CRTC requirements.
| Business, Media, Montreal, Technology

Cyberpresse bloggers shutting up

One of La Presse’s unions has sent its members a notice asking them to stop blogging on Cyberpresse as a pressure tactic. As a result, bloggers Sophie Cousineau and Marie-Claude Lortie have stopped their blogs with notices explaining why. Both are regular columnists who will continue their columns as usual.

Unaffected by this is star blogger Patrick Lagacé, who explains that he’s under a specific contract to do his blog (unlike other journalists who blog as part of their regular journalistic duties). Tristan Péloquin has a post about it as well, but it’s unclear if he’s stopped blogging or he’s just pointing out the situation.

The local union news blog has more details on the situation.

This isn’t the last we’ll see of this. Employees at the Journal de Montréal are already arguing over online rights to their articles. And as media outlets start expecting journalists to blog, shoot video and do other “online extras” as part of their regular duties (and without extra compensation), we’ll be seeing a lot more of these kinds of disputes over the next few years.

UPDATE: Heri and Steph have some interesting comments on the issue, but they seem to miss the main point: Unionized employees are being told to perform duties outside of their collective agreements, and for no additional compensation. Say what you want about Cyberpresse’s approach to blogging, but these aren’t personal blogs being updated out of the kindness of their hearts. It’s work, and employees deserve to get paid for it.

| Montreal

Concordia president forced to resign

Claude Lajeunesse

Concordia President Claude Lajeunesse has resigned, just two years and change after taking office. The reason? Everyone hated him.

You can tell it’s bad when the PR people aren’t even trying to hide it. It was a “mutual agreement” between Lajeunesse and the Board of Governors, according to spokesperson Chris Mota, who I’m sure has had a really bad day today trying to explain to the media why the university’s internal political struggles are literally ripping its senior administration to shreds.

(He had a similar problem at his previous stint at Ryerson, and those who remember him there are applauding this embarrassing misstep in his career.)

While a search committee hurriedly tries to find a replacement, the Board will have to find an interim replacement, likely from within the university’s senior administration.

Unfortunately for them, not many of those people are qualified for the job, if only because few of them have PhDs. Instead, all but one of Concordia’s VPs are professionals in their fields, and have specific skills training instead of rounded academic degrees. (One, the fundraising VP Kathy Assayag, doesn’t even have a bachelor’s degree. Ms. Assayag does, in fact, have a degree from McGill University. My apologies.)

The Provost/VP Academic position, which is the most logical choice for an interim replacement, is vacant after Lajeunesse eliminated his political enemies reluctantly accepted the forced resignation of Martin Singer last year.

That leaves the four faculty deans, the dean of “general studies” and the VP of research and graduate studies comprising the field of candidates. And that’s already reaching. You could also go down to the vice-provost and vice-deans, but that that point you might as well start appointing janitors to senior administration positions.

Speaking of which, do you want to run Concordia University? Send in your CV, they might just be desperate enough to take you.

Meanwhile, even the crazy leftists who think all senior administrators are out to secretly murder them are looking back longingly at the days of former president Fred Lowy, who diplomatically kept the university together instead of stubbornly shutting people out (at least until the Netanyahu riot put so much pressure on him he started making poor decisions)

UPDATE: The Gazette has a longer story on the sudden departure, with a quote from an anonymous “insider” pointing out the obvious: That personality conflicts and a clash of professional styles between the Board of Governors and Lajeunesse led to the latter’s departure. It also points out the troubles he’s had with labour unions, the unfortunate timing with the provost position being vacant as well, and the relative quiet on the student front (which is more a matter of a shift in student politics than anything on the administration side).

Meanwhile, Lajeunesse himself issues the most BS-laden press release I’ve seen in … minutes. (Does all this niceness about his departure mean he’s still going to attend his meet-and-greet barbecue this Friday?)

On the same day, he announces that Dr. Louise Dandurand, the graduate studies and research VP I mentioned above who’s one of the few people with a PhD on the senior administration, has been appointed interim Provost. That puts her in the most logical position to take over the presidency, though it would look odd being promoted to an interim position based on holding another position you were promoted to a month earlier.

UPDATE (Sept. 21): The Gazette demands to know why he stepped down. It suggests the problem might have to do with an existential debate over whether the university should be more Ivy-leagueish or more accessible, a debate that was settled years before Lajeunesse came here when Concordia dropped its “real education for the real world” slogan and decided it would be a serious, research-based university that was still accessible.

UPDATE (Sept. 25): The Link reports that one of the governors is quietly resigning for undisclosed reasons (though the timing suggests a possible link to the Lajeunesse resignation).

UPDATE (Sept. 27): Concordia’s full-time faculty association (which normally doesn’t take issue with anything the university does) is peeved at the lack of an explanation.

| On the Net, TV

Weatherbabes need recognition

The Weather Network and its French equivalent MétéoMédia are useful cable TV channels which provide weather information 24/7. Trying to decide what to wear? Switch the channel, check out the weather, and then turn off the TV.

But these networks (and for that matter any TV news program that presents weather) realized that ratings would go up when female meteorologists would gesture at weather systems on screen. One could only imagine what so many teenage boys were doing alone in their rooms and why they were so interested in the national weather maps.

This breakthrough in TV weather development has led to managers milking this for everything it’s worth. (Goodbye Don McGowan, hello Lori Graham.)

Now, finally, there’s a website out there devoted to fanning the flames of passion the country has for some of these very talented female meteorologists. Miss Météo is a discussion forum for MétéoMédia weathergirls, with different boards for each one.

I was always an Isabelle Lalonde kind of guy myself. I also grew up a lot with Michelle Therrien… in a purely platonic sense of course.

| Media, Montreal

Journal still trying to manufacture scandal

As Kate so succinctly points out, the Journal de Montréal is taking yesterday’s OMG-McGill-is-giving-out-free-cocaine!!!111oneone story and republishing it with little new information to try and get people to agree with them that it’s a scandal. So far other media are talking about the story, but with the seriousness it deserves. They’re studying a drug, and unfortunately that means people have to take it under controlled conditions.

| Business, Montreal, Slow News Day, Technology

Mike Boone LIES!

Hey, remember back when Gazette columnist Mike Boone was having problems with Sympatico Internet, and because he talked about it in the paper, he got a call from a VP in Ottawa to give him special treatment?

Recognizing that he was obviously getting better service because he was a newspaper columnist, and that prevented him from pretending he was like the rest of us, he promised not to take advantage of it next time he had a problem:

I still have the phone number of the guy in Ottawa who QBed the rescue effort. But as a gesture of solidarity with all the other schmos, I’ll report any future problems to Sympatico tech support – with one small adjustment.

“Next time you call, press 1 right away to choose French,” a neighbour advised. “That way you get connected to a techie in Canada.”

Well, less than two months later, it seems he’s gone back on his word, using the number to short-cut his way to a solution after the common-folk customer service people scammed him into paying Apple to diagnose a non-existent software problem.

I gave up. When I wrote a column, in July, about the nightmare of trying to set up the wireless system that Sympatico sold me, I got a call from the office of the vice-president of customer relations.

They arranged for a house call.

After some initial difficulties owing to unfamiliarity with Apple, the technician got me up and running.

I kept the phone number of the Sympatico’s VP’s office. When I called about my latest nightmare, they promised I’d hear from a senior technician that evening.

To Boone’s credit, he didn’t reach for the Special Treatment Number right off the bat, and the resulting grossly incompetent service gives him plenty of fodder for another column. But it’s hard to think of a columnist being one of us when that magic VIP lifeline is available to him to use at his convenience.

UPDATE (Sept. 24): Letter-writer Ruth Taylor, who had a similar problem, blasts Boone for taking advantage of his journalist status. She asked for a “Mac specialist” as Boone’s column suggested, but got nowhere. Unlike his gold-plated solution, she had to pay her own techie to diagnose her problem.

| Blogosphere, Business, Montreal, TV, Video

Want to get on TV? Try just asking

Some elements of the local blogosphere are talking about Marc-Olivier Vachon, co-founder of car-pooling website Amigo Express, who has put up a video of himself begging to be on Tout le monde en parle so he can profit off free advertising for his company meet Guy A. Lepage and talk about the environment. He’s even created a Facebook group for his campaign.The video is ambitious, and it half-succeeds at its attempts to be funny. Chances are it’ll get enough traction as a self-marketing technique that Vachon will get his wish. But Lepage will probably be more interested in his viral video campaign than his carpooling service. There are, after all, plenty of carpool and ride-share websites available to Montrealers.

| Montreal, Public transit

Students will seek junk food

When I was in high school, a 250ml carton of milk could be bought for $0.20 in the school cafeteria ($0.25 out of the vending machine), thanks to heavy government subsidies. Soft drinks, candy bars and other junk food were also freely available, for a price.

Last week, the Quebec government announced that they would no longer allow junk food to be sold in public schools, in an effort to get kids to be healthier. It’s a sensible move: if you want kids to eat better, don’t dangle sweets in front of their faces.

This morning, La Presse reports that a special STM shuttle bus is being used to take kids to and from Mount Royal High School to the Plaza Côte-des-Neiges mall during lunch – ostensibly because they want to gorge on high-calorie foods. And the Marguerite-Bourgeois school board is trying to get them to stop.

The STM’s response is simple: They’re there to provide transit service to paying customers, not to second-guess their motives. “School extras”, the extra student-only shuttles that usually start mid-route at the school to take students home, aren’t there because the STM wants to be nice. They’re there to avoid dozens or even hundreds of students suddenly trying to get on the same bus after the bell rings.

Quebec’s junk food plan will help a bit, if only morally, to help control junk food intake. But students will go out to get what they want, even if that means they’ll have to take a bus to get there.

Expect a lot of weekday-only fast-food restaurants to start opening up near schools as a result of this policy.

UPDATE: Le professeur masqué has some thoughts on this issue as well. Another blogger asks if we’ve all gone crazy.

UPDATE (Sept. 26): The STM caves, vowing to only run shuttles to bring students back to school, a compromise about as stupid as the entire controversy.

| Montreal, TV

Congratulations, Mr. Mulcair

Thomas Mulcair

Thomas J. Mulcair, elected today in a by-election to represent the federal riding of Outremont for the New Democratic Party, only the second person to do so in the NDP’s history (Phil Edmonston was the first in a 1990 by-election). He replaces Liberal Jean Lapierre, who resigned from the House of Commons on January 28 to escape the shame return to broadcasting as a political analyst.

Local NDP supporters are naturally taking the news with mature, thoughtful self-congratulation.

Interesting media meta-side-story: CTV Newsnet is covering a speech by Liberal leader Stéphane Dion (in French), while RDI is covering a speech by NDP leader Jack Layton (in English), introducing the winner Thomas Mulcair. Considering Mulcair won the election, doesn’t that give him priority in TV time?

(In real elections, you wait for the losing candidate to finish his concession speech before starting your victory speech. But the NDP isn’t used to winning elections here, so we’ll give them a break.)

Now that CTV is getting Mike Duffy analyzing, I’m wondering if maybe the network doesn’t have a camera crew at Mulcair HQ. TVA/LCN isn’t any better, covering post-game analysis of a Canadiens pre-season exhibition game. Because that’s more important than a potentially historic by-election.

And while we’re on the topic of analysis, everyone seems to be saying that Outremont is a “Liberal stronghold” to underscore the significance of this victory. While it certainly used to be that way, and the riding has been won by the Liberals all but one time in its history, the most recent election was a slim victory, with Jean Lapierre only taking 35% of the vote. How is that considered a stronghold?

Meanwhile, the Tories have taken Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean from the Bloc Québécois, adding to their growing Quebec caucus.

The third riding up for grabs, in Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, is a BQ hold.

| Blogosphere, On the Net

Influential bloggers all look the same

North x East (never heard of them either) has a list of their 50 most influential bloggers in the world. Building these top 50 lists is easy, so we see a lot of it. They’re also heavily subjective. This post, like many others in this category, doesn’t give any criteria for who is selects to its list, so I guess we can just assume they pulled the Technorati Top 50.

That said, it does give an insight into what’s considered an influential blog these days. And looking at the list, a lot of their subjects seem to repeat themselves. Here’s a breakdown:

  • Twelve on the list run technology blogs (web development, electronics, software etc.)
  • Seven run or are heavily involved with celebrity gossip blogs
  • Six run political blogs
  • Five bloggers run blogs that specialize in search engine optimization or search engine marketing
  • Five run marketing, media or social networking analysis blogs
  • Four run or are involved with “life hacking” or personal development blogs.
  • Three make money writing blogs about how to make money writing blogs

That’s 42. Leaving only 8 outside of these six categories. And of them, four aren’t known for their association with one particular blog, but for running blog networks or blog services.

That leaves four bloggers — Heather Armstrong (Dooce) Jason Kottke, Matthew Haughey (MetaFilter) and Mark Fraudenfelder (BoingBoing) who are there because they run general-interest or personal blogs that have gained a huge following.

Are these the only categories of blogs that can be considered influential in this world? Or is it because big-time blogging is still so new that it’s confined to these technology-related and niche subject areas?

| In the news, Radio

CBC needs lesson in Parliament 101

I’m listening to CBC Radio (I oblige myself to do so at least once a year — besides, it’s “So Montreal” according to the marketing bureaucrats in Toronto).

I’m listening to the news, which is mostly about the three by-elections going on today in Quebec, and the possibility that the NDP might win a seat in Outremont. At the end of the report came this line:

“The two other seats are currently held by the Bloc Québécois.”

While I’m sure everyone knows what that means (that they were previously held by BQ members), it’s still technically wrong. The seats are vacant after the resignations of Yvan Loubier (Feb. 21) and Michel Gauthier (July 29).

| Montreal, My articles, Technology

TWIM: Parking and Wi-Fi

This week on This Week in Me:

I speak to Ville-Marie’s Jacques-Alain Lavallée about how complicated on-street parking restriction signs are in Montreal. I’d been bounced around through about four or five people talking about this subject, but settled on the borough since boroughs set the policies for on-street parking. He notes that a lot of the restrictions come by request from residents and businesses who want space for deliveries, diplomatic vehicles, etc.

Perhaps the only controversial statement was his answer to why the signs are unilingual French:

The city of Montreal is a French organization. The signs are pretty visual and easy to understand, but as a French organization, the law allows us to have a French-only policy. All the signage on autoroutes is French (except on bridges, which are federal jurisdiction).

I’m sure that’ll satisfy the tourists who are trying to figure out what “MAR-JEU” means.

Also this week, I have a bluffer’s guide on the health risks involved with Wi-Fi. (No link because it’s not online — Page B5 of Saturday’s paper). I’ll post it in a week when the copyright clears, but in a nutshell there’s no proof that electromagnetic radiation causes cancer. The only thing it can do to human tissue is heat it up a bit. Whether that may cause long-term health effects is up for debate, but I find it unlikely to have a statistically significant impact.

| Media

Copyright infringement isn’t ok just because everyone else does it

Andy Riga (yeah, he’s still blogging) mentions a tiff that’s developed between La Presse and the website Le Québécois. The paper has sent the website owners a lawyer’s letter demanding that La Presse articles be pulled from the site because they infringe on the paper’s copyright.

The website’s response is an angry “screw you!”

Since I just looked at when media violates your copyright, it seems only fair that we take a look at the reverse, and how equally stupid the excuses are.

As Andy mentions in his blog, copyright infringement through the posting of newspaper articles on websites is a huge and probably unsolvable problem. It happens all the time by people who either don’t realize they’re not allowed to do it or who know that the newspaper isn’t going to waste the effort going after them.

Usually, it’s fairly benign: Someone who was featured in an article posts it to their personal website so their friends can be mesmerized at their 15 minutes of fame.

But Le Québécois was doing it to a bunch of articles, and acting almost as an unlicensed syndicator of La Presse’s content. And because Le Québécois has commercial interests, La Presse felt they needed to act.

The organization’s responses don’t hold much water (especially since they freely admit they’re violating the paper’s copyright):

  1. La Presse is rich. This is an ad hominem attack and has no bearing on the argument at hand.
  2. La Presse (which publishes “propaganda”) doesn’t like us because they’re federalist. Ditto. And if you hate them so much, why are you posting their articles?
  3. These articles are “all over the Internet”. An exaggeration, I think. But either way it’s irrelevant. If you murder someone in Iraq, it’s still murder, even if everyone else is doing it. If you loot a Wal-Mart after a hurricane, it’s still theft, even if you’re just part of the mob.
  4. There’s an unwritten custom that allows articles to be posted if they’re credited. Well I can’t exactly argue with an imaginary rule, but I’d argue that the custom involves using excerpts of articles and linking to the full text where possible on the paper’s website. I don’t see any professional blogs or other websites posting complete articles without getting permission first. Besides, agreements aren’t agreements unless you reach them with the copyright holder.
  5. This is an attack on freedom of expression. No it’s not. You can express any opinion you like. You can quote from the article, comment on it, call it names. You simply can’t violate someone else’s copyright.
  6. We’ll never cite La Presse articles again! OK. You have fun with that.

The Internet has turned everyone into a media publisher. And while the financial barrier to entry is incredibly low, it does mean that people have to brush up on basic facts of copyright (and libel) law.

Nobody gets a free ride on copyright. Big or small.