There has been plenty of press on how the tracks we leave online are going to haunt us – or at least stay with us – for ever. Much has been written, including at this site, about how the vast wealth of information that gets into the cybersphere puts a complete picture of our lives, good and bad, right out in public. The CBC was running a story yesterday about a Privacy Commissioner report warning that young people, as a result of posting too much information online, are being fired and missing out on job interviews and academic opportunities.
In a change from the usual complaint about online information living forever, the Globe's excellent columnist Ivor Tossell highlighted the disappearance of online information. Those of us who were surfing the internet in the 1990s will remember being amazed at the wealth of dubious information available at geocities.com. At its height, it hosted over a million pages. Since dubious information rarely supports a successful business model, however, geocities is ceasing to exist this month. Those million pages will never be seen again except through the Internet Archive.
None of us think a service like gmail (which archives seven years and counting of my important and unimportant correspondence) could disappear. But services like that can and will end. I guess it's up to each of us to decide what amount of backing up we need to do to guard against that occurrence. On the other hand, how much is really at risk? I've always dutifully backed up my computer hard drives, and as a result am free at any time to open up essays I wrote in 1997 as an undergraduate student. I'm not sure I've ever saved anything of real value.
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Available online today are four new chapters of the publication Women in Canada: A Gender-based Statistical Report, which explores the socio-demographic and economic circumstances of Canadian women in general.
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The bill amends the Constitution Act, 1867 by readjusting the number of members and the representation of the provinces in the House of Commons.
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Blueseed plans to buy a ship and turn it into a floating incubator anchored in international waters off the coast of California.
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Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the flow of information out of Ottawa has slowed to a trickle.
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"…the IPC has exclusive jurisdiction to decide whether a record is in the custody or control of a university in the context of an access request…"
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John J.L. Hunter, Q.C. of Vancouver has been elected President for 2011-2012
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These summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book.
More information.
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This is a listing of a few upcoming events in Canada of interest to lawyers, law students, legal librarians, and others involved in the practice of law.
Clicking on any event in the list below will give you access to more information and to links allowing you to see the full entry and to add the event to your own calendar.
Click this link for a fuller version of the TalkLaw/ParLoi calendar of events and for instructions as to how to add events and calendars to your own calendar.
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Thanks for this post, Evan – it helps to make the point that even in an e-world, records management is an important discipline.