Blame Canada

David Fraser writes the Canadian Privacy Law blog

As of January 1, 2004, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (aka PIPEDA or the PIPED Act) began to apply to every organization that collects, uses and discloses personal information in the course of commercial activities in Canada, except in those provinces that have legislation that deemed to be substantially similar. At the moment, only Quebec's law has been deemed to be substantially similar. PIPEDA has been around for a little while; it began to apply to "federal works, undertakings and businesses" on January 1, 2001. Though it isn't exactly new, many of its principles remain untested and many key terms are not satisfyingly defined.