The recent appeal ruling on the Ahenakew hate case in Canada may have far reaching implications.

In that case, the appeal judge, Chief Justice Laing, ruled that conversations with a reporter can not be considered to be ‘private’. He upheld the original trial judge, who wrote:

Who is a reporter?

Couple this ruling with Michael Geist’s views on the California appellate court ruling that expands US First Amendment protections to bloggers and I wonder if we have the potential to remove conversations from ‘private domain’.

Quite often, I like to eat vanilla ice cream. Not the cheap, gummy, goopy vanilla ice cream that can sit out of the fridge for hours at a time and still not melt. I used to like the original Breyers – remember the stuff that had an ingredients list that read “Cream, sugar, vanilla bean and nothin’ else.” Perfect for topping with fresh fruit, hot fudge or anything else that is good or bad for you.I haven’t been able to find Breyers original vanilla in years.

Why the ice cream theme? Partly because of the start of the summer holiday weekend. And partly because ice cream is a wonderful metaphor for IP network technology. I invite your comments to carry this theme forward… think about it this weekend with your favourite toppings. I welcome photos of your OSI ice cream models.

It seems to me that the “net neutrality” folks want plain vanilla IP from network providers. They think the other flavours should only be added by application providers or users. Dumb pipes – vanilla ice cream.

I just think that committing vanilla flavoured IP into legislation will stifle innovation in the long run. I agree that vanilla should be available. I wish we could legislate the old formulation of Breyers back into existence.

Some people need something more than a rich and creamy vanilla base – don’t you think we also should allow other base flavours to emerge? If I want a coffee-toffee crunch, isn’t it ok for me to pay to start with a dark chocolate base instead?

It reminds me of the movie Pleasantville – where the cast are thrown from the present into a B&W; 1950’s era family values show. Life in Pleasantville is ok – it is just missing the colour.

But that is another metaphor – we’ll save that for another time.

At the annual ITAC dinner in Toronto on Tuesday, Ted Rogers delivered a patriotic message, referring to Canada Day on Saturday, supporting increases in military spending and in response to a question from the floor, he expressed concerns about the announcement that Canadian mining giants Falconbridge and Inco are being sold to Arizona-based Phelps Dodge.

In a reference to corporate philanthropy, Ted took a swipe at the challenge of getting a foreign based company interested in making substantive contributions to local hospital.

With Nortel’s CEO Mike Zafirovski facing shareholders today at its AGM, we note that speculation is rampant about what kind of company it will be next year – and will it remain a technology powerhouse, let alone a Canadian business icon. There are lots of Canadian institutions that are watching for signals.

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddard, released her annual report recently.

In the report, she notes that her predecessor, Bruce Phillips, in his outgoing report 6 years ago, already called the weaknesses of the Privacy Act

Such a review has still not taken place. As the current report states, “If the review of the Act was both ‘urgent and unavoidable’ in 2000, it is even more so today.”

As we have written, there are numerous privacy issues that arise from new technologies and applications that cry out for review. As Commissioner Stoddard’s report notes:

I’m trying to imagine the listing in the real estate section of the New York Times for the landmark Bell Labs building in Holmdel NJ. 2M sq ft, former home to Nobel laureates. Buy a piece of American history. Architectural landmark.

I remember my first time arriving at the facility. In 1986, the building was already a quarter century old, but it looked like new. One of the first mirror glass buildings in the world, it was designed by Eero Saarinen to ‘disappear into the sky’ despite its awesome presence in the midst of farms and pastures in the area.

Inside, no offices are along the windows. Instead, a series of catwalks provide hallways separating the offices from the outer glass skin and the central atrium in the middle. Offices had no windows, decades before computer programmers began working in batcaves.

It made coffee break conversations in the atrium all the more inviting, encouraging interaction while providing quiet solitude when you wanted to work on your own.

When I was being shown around the facility by my first boss, Dick Grantges, he paused as we passed the reflecting ponds at the front of the building. Resting his arms on the banister and gazing out at the geese, he sighed and said that one of the things he liked best about working at Bell Labs is that if you get your best ideas while gazing out the windows, then we’ll pay you to stare at geese. Dick was a great boss – and he appreciated my trips back to Canada that always included bringing him an extra box of Red River Cereal.

Two million square feet of offices in a six story building on 472 acres. Taxes of more than $3M.

When I worked there in the late 1980s, there were more than 5000 people on-site. AT&T Communications, the long distance company, had separated from the RBOCs, but it was still integrated with what would become Lucent and Avaya. With all of the structural changes that have dissected the piece parts of the Bell Labs organization, only a thousand people remain at the Holmdel facility.

Despite AT&T reuniting with a large part of its baby Bell offspring, there is no way to put all of Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Sure, it’s only a building. But it was also a symbol of the once mighty industrial research giant. Watching Lucent sell the Holmdel facility is another loss of America’s back pages.