Unfortunately, Project Loon doesn't have anything to do with Canada — yet. But there's potential here for a great benefit to Canadians in rural areas, particularly in the far north.

Google, where people are paid to brainstorm and pursue ideas that are often "wacky," has initiated a project to place a chain of balloons into "orbit" around the globe and to use them as a way of providing internet connectivity for people who would otherwise not be able to access the internet.

Of course, being balloons, these relay stations won't actually be in orbit. They will be in the stratosphere, . . . [more]

Twitter has been ordered by French courts to reveal the names of people responsible for anti-semitic tweets (using a standard hashtag) to a number of public interest organizations. Though Twitter said it would cooperate if it received an order from the American courts acting on the request of the French courts, the Court of Appeal said it has to cooperate because the direct order of the French court.

Would such an order be made in favour of private parties here? Would the private bodies first have to begin a legal proceeding against the pseudonymous tweeters – a civil action? a . . . [more]

So do I need to point out that the NSA cell phone snooping story broke on the 64th anniversary of the publication of Orwell's 1984?

By all accounts, privacy is dead, the question is do people care? Personally, I do; but I cannot deny that if you go online then you must accept that you are leaving a trail, but that does not mean that we have to exchange our love of the interwebs and mobile computing in exchange for our privacy.

I observed this comment by a friend of mine and I feel it needs to be spread more . . . [more]

With today’s release of The Future of Legal Services in Canada: Trends and Issues, the consultation phase of the CBA’s Legal Futures Initiative begins.

Trends and Issues puts data and insight from original research commissioned by the CBA into a single document meant to provide an overview of major challenges facing the profession. The report – and the questions it raises – form a starting point for discussions and further consultations with stakeholders in the legal services industry.

We’ve been showing you bits of those papers here, and on the interim Futures website, for the last seven weeks. If . . . [more]

The Online Dispute Resolution Working Group will hold its 12th annual meeting in Montreal next week on June 16-18. This conference brings together ODR scholars and practitioners from around the world. As you might imagine, among the stellar cast of speakers (Fabien Gélinas, Colin Rule, Ethan Katsh . . .) you'll find Slaw columnists Karim Benyekhlef and Nicolas Vermeys, who have been informing our readers about ODR for some time now. And among the discussants are Slawyers John Gregory and David Bilinsky.

The full program can be downloaded here. From that document:

The Montreal ODR Forum will serve to

. . . [more]

It now seems clear that any and all electronic communications are grist for the NSA's mills. Only a fool would imagine that something expressed directly and plainly by phone, email, or SMS would remain private between sender and receiver. Of course, most of what we say to each other these ways is utterly trivial and inconsequential as far as the spy agencies are concerned, which doesn't mean, of course, that we are happy or even content to have our private communications, however mundane, so casually and routinely raked through. 

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to go: we can, as some have . . . [more]

Earlier today, Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, presented her office's annual report on the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) for 2012. Last month, she was making her case for reforming and strengthening the Act to better protect Canadians' privacy in the digital age.

All of these activities will not surprise anyone.

What is less well known is that the Office of the Privacy Commissioner also funds a whole series of research initiatives. Recently, it published a compendium of results from many of these projects:

From tapping our smart phones to transfer funds, to swiping an

. . . [more]

Many Slaw readers will be familiar with the guides and resources made available at Catherine Best's LegalResearch.org. Over the past 15 years, Catherine has invested thousands of hours into this project, making it one of the most respected (and fluid) resources for introducing legal research here in Canada. "Best's Guide to Canadian Legal Research" has helped to introduce an entire generation of researchers to the topic. I would also consider it to be one of our earliest examples of a digital guide published entirely over the web.

So I'm very proud to announce the re-launch of this . . . [more]

Garry Wise is fond of saying that “the internet and technology are the great equalizers,” in the legal world. They allow smaller players, and newer players, to gain ground swifter than 20, or even 10 years ago, making them a growing threat to larger firms.

Larger firms however, don’t see it that way. They still view themselves as kings of the hill with competition only coming from equal-sized outfits – much like American car companies in the early 1970’s.

When Japanese car makers started to export product to North America, the cars were inexpensive and of not the highest quality. . . . [more]

The British Columbia Court of Appeal recently (May 30) released a practice directive dealing with the citation of authorities. Based on the McGill Guide, as you'd imagine, it sets out in detail what the court (the directive would have "Court") requires, down to the level of periods and point size. Importantly, it recognizes the supremacy and sufficiency of the neutral citation, noting that "[a]dditional (parallel) citations are optional." The directive also encourages the use of hyperlinked citations and requires citation to paragraph number rather than page number, inferentially acknowledging the death of print versions.

The comparable directive from the . . . [more]

Two resources I'd like to share with you, each touching on the topic of flipped classrooms. The first is Matt Homann's 6 minute contribution at lexthink.1 where he talks about disrupting CLE. Moving beyond technology supported learning, Matt makes some interesting points on the physical structure of learning environments, telling us to "flip that classroom!". (Click into this post to view the embedded materials.)

The second piece is from Rich McCue's recent presentation at UVic on Flipped Classroom Benefits. The preceding link routes to a summary of Rich's presentation, and his prezi slides are embedded below:

I would consider . . . [more]

With 10 years of experience as Privacy Commissioner of Canada behind her, and her term reaching its end, Jennifer Stoddart has released a report titled "The Case for Reforming the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act" which describes how to modernize Canada's private-sector privacy legislation to ensure it is able to meet the current and future challenges of the digital age and protect Canadians’ right to privacy.
. . . [more]