In one of the longest decisions in the Court’s history, the Court has closed the book on the case of R. v. Truscott:

we have concluded that, while it cannot be said that no jury acting judicially could reasonably convict, we are satisfied that if a new trial were possible, an acquittal would clearly be the more likely result. Having regard to the highly unusual circumstances of this Reference, we have determined that the most appropriate remedy is to enter an acquittal.

Accordingly, in the words of s. 696.3(3)(ii) of the Criminal Code, the appeal is allowed, the conviction

Both the BBC and the Sunday People are reporting that Her Majesty has become fascinated with her BlackBerry which she uses to surf the net for racing results.

Prince Philip sounds more like his age, reported as commenting “At 85 he’s more reluctant to embrace technology and thinks his wife is like a distracted teenager.

“He even muttered he wished she would ‘get rid of the bloody thing’.” . . . [more]

Timothy Wu, at Columbia Law’s Program on Law and Technology, and the Silicon Flatirons Program at the University of Colorado law school have launched AltLaw, a convenient way to find and search the full text of 170,000 decisions of the U.S. Supreme and Circuit Appeals Courts. The coverage of the database is described here. There’s an advanced search function and the ability to browse cases chronologically.

There is a press release.

[via DigitalKoans] . . . [more]

We alerted you a couple of months ago, and now we remind you: Lexum is hosting the 8th International Conference of Law Via the Internet in Montreal on October 25 and 26. You can see the schedule of events below, with session titles linked to the official site’s descriptions.

According to the conference blog, 16 LII’s have registered to attend. So should you. As you’d imagine, you can register online. See you there.

SCHEDULE

Thursday – October 25, 2007

• 09:00 – 09:30
  Greetings from honorary guests
• 09:35 – 10:35 Session 1
  Free access to law: impact on emerging countries

John Baez — for those of you over 60 that’s John, not Joan — is a mathematical physicist who specializes in quantum gravity and n-categories, both of which seem like thoroughly Good Things. Which should show you how much I know about physics, or any categories if it comes to that. And that carefully curried ignorance has the potential to make me a crackpot, I learn from John’s 37-item crackpot identification list. The great thing here, apart from the fact that the list is amusing, is that it might, with some small modifications, be made to apply to those . . . [more]

There’s some hyper-sophisto online stuff coming out of the EU. A while back I pointed you to the European Navigator, a complex search and education tool for the community. Now I’ve run across the Europe Media Monitor (EMM) [en français], a joint initiative of the European Commission Directorate General’s Joint Research Center and the Directorate General Communication .

Essentially, EMM offers you two views. The News Brief does pretty much what Google or Yahoo news does, in that it gathers together and excerpts current news stories. You can focus it in various ways to filter your news: . . . [more]

The U.S. Supreme court made an historic first a few months ago posting video footage on the Internet to go along with the opinion in the case, Scott v. Harris. (Alternatively visit the site here and see Scott v. Harris on April 30.) The particulars of the case are a police chase which resulted in the pursued being severely injured and suing the police. The chase was caught on video and the U.S.S.C. posted the video along with the opinion. One of the interesting aspects from the posting of this video is that, when posted it was viewed . . . [more]

A war is quietly being waged over Wikipedia. Governments, political groups, and corporations are suspected of making anonymous changes in their own favour. A quick search of Google News for “Wikipedia” shows a wide range of censorship assertions from around the world.

Of particular interest is the website List anonymous wikipedia edits from interesting organizations, commonly called WikiScanner, by self-described mad scientist and disruptive technologist Virgil Griffith.

On the WikiScanner FAQ page, with regard to whether one can prove changes are actually made by an organization, technologist Virgil states:

Technically, we don’t know if it came from

My email gets filtered by my university, where my account lives, and spam winds up in a special folder for my later delectation. Actually, I check the spam folder at least every other day because from time to time emails that I want wind up in there. Commonest of these are the emails from the latest NewWeb2.0.com at which I’ve registered because I had to if I wanted to try out their new SreenIlatorPow. As you know, you fill out their form and their machine kicks out the registration details you need, sending them to the email address you submitted. . . . [more]

My friends tell me I’m a Facebook addict. Yes, I’m on Facebook often (I’m not going to define often), but I’m still amazed at how easy Facebook makes it for me to quickly share information (photos, plans, comments, thoughts, links, etc) with my friends. And its applications also make it very easy for me to personalize my space and make it unique. How great would all this be in your organization? Think of your friends on Facebook as your colleagues and your profile page as your desk at work. Imagine the groups on Facebook as your firm’s various departments and . . . [more]

Via BoingBoing, a link to a sarcastic map of the RIAA decision tree for copyright infringement issues. I hear from a friend that his cousin said this is the real thing! . . . [more]

John Gomery, the Quebec judge who presided over the judicial commission of inquiry into the federal sponsorship scandal in 2004-2006, has been signed as a legal commentator by Radio-Canada (Radio-Canada press release in French).

Gomery, who retired from the bench earlier this year, will comment on legal affairs and public ethical issues for the main Radio-Canada TV network and its all-news channel, RDI.

Radio-Canada is the French network of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. . . . [more]