Online advertisers intend to ignore ‘do not track’ settings set by default. Here’s a story on OutLaw.com about that practice: Advertising industry standards do not “require companies to honor DNT signals fixed by the browser manufacturers and set by them in browsers”. So much for the ‘better business’ in Better Business Bureau. ‘Better For Business…’ appears more accurate.

A very pungent description of the ‘Privacy? Never heard of it!’ world of advertising and the discussions about these standards can be found on ZDNet. (h/t David Cheifetz)

And even browsers set to ‘do not track’ will not comply with the . . . [more]

It’s Thanksgiving Day, so we’ll be light on entries — but heavy on eating — today.

But before the feasting begins I wanted to say “thank you” to everyone who reads Slaw. We’re grateful that you take the time to see what we have to say.

And if you have a moment to spare, read a bit about what may have been the first thanksgiving ceremony performed by Europeans on North American soil, here in Canada in 1578. . . . [more]

Microsoft has announced that its new Internet Explorer 10 browser will block the tracking of users’ browsing records by advertisers. There will be a ‘do not track’ command that will be turned on by default, though users can turn it off.

According to this Outlaw.com story, the American Association of National Advertisers has complained about this. Tracking, it says, allows for advertising better targeted to users’ interests, thus more likely to be effective, thus more lucrative for the advertisers, thus providing more money to support the ‘free’ content on the Internet. Blocking tracking by default ‘takes the information out . . . [more]

You may recall that UNCITRAL’s Working Group on Electronic Commerce meets at the end of October to continue work on electronic transferable records (like bills of lading, warehouse receipts, negotiable instruments etc) — documents that have to be unique to keep their value.

The Secretariat has just published the main working papers for the meeting – WP 118 and WP.118/Add1. They are on the UNCITRAL site in the working group document section under E-commerce (of course): http://www.uncitral.org/uncitral/en/commission/working_groups/4Electronic_Commerce.html.

The US, Spain and Colombia have also submitted their overview of the issues, as WP.119.

In addition, the ABA’s task force on . . . [more]

Slaw is pleased indeed to tell you that Karin Galldin and Leslie Robertson are joining us as regular bloggers. They’ll be writing together, so each of their entries will be in their joint names.

Karin and Leslie are partners in a feminist Ottawa law firm, Galldin Robertson. Karin’s practice comprises civil litigation, human rights, and plaintiff-side employment law; and she is particularly interested in using tort and human rights law to strengthen institutional responsibilities towards women’s security, as well as that of other historically marginalized groups. Karin believes strongly in mentoring young women in the legal profession, and in . . . [more]

According to lawsof.com,

On Thursday last week, eight judges in South Korea’s Constitutional Court unanimously struck down a law requiring the use of real names online on the grounds that it violated the constitutional right to free speech.

Would the Canadian Charter or other law produce the same effect if Parliament passed a similar statute?

Is there any remedy against a private service provider sought to enforce such a policy? I know that Facebook states that users must use their real names, bit I also know that that rule is not universally applied. (It is a bit hard to . . . [more]

According to Steptoe and Johnson’s E-Commerce Law Week,

The U.S. Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and NASA last month proposed a change to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) that would require contractors to safeguard their information systems containing information provided by or generated for the government. The proposed rule … would require government contracts with all federal contractors and appropriate subcontractors to mandate basic information security measures.

Is this a good idea?

In particular, should Canadian governments be concerned about the security of the IT systems in place among businesses that contract with them? If so, should . . . [more]

Recently I published here a case comment on a Quebec tribunal decision involving the admissibility of social media evidence.

One particular element of the argument surprised me, and I would be interested in your views.

In the case, an employee brought a complaint before a labour tribunal against her employer, claimed that the employer had created, or allowed to continue, an atmosphere of harassment. As evidence, she brought printouts of comments made by her work colleagues on the Facebook page of another colleague who was also (for a while) a Facebook friend of the complainant.

The employer objected to this . . . [more]

Has anyone had any experience with the use of the voice as a legal signature (presumably by way of a recording)? Is there any case law on the topic, one way or the other?

When we did the UECA in 1999, we had in mind that a voice mail message might be an electronic document and the association of the content with the speaker could well constitute a signature.

There is some law that a signature must be an intentional act, and whether just saying ‘Hello, it’s John, I accept your offer to sell me your house’ would constitute an . . . [more]

I’ve set up a new site to collect commentary on judicial opinions: commentary.slaw.ca

At the moment — and for the near future, certainly — it contains only commentary on Supreme Court of Canada cases, starting with 2011. (It goes only a small way into 2012 in order to give commentary time to appear and me time to collect it; generally it’ll run somewhere between four and six months behind the present date.) The commentary is that which is available free online, essentially from Canadian law blogs and law firm web publications. And by “commentary” I mean material that offers some . . . [more]

The Canadian legal market is worth roughly $12 billion a year. That is a very big number – one that will certainly catch the attention of aggressive multi-national companies. A good portion of that $12 billion market involves the careful application by sophisticated lawyers of high-end skills, knowledge and analysis. But an equally large portion, I can say with certainty, involves the application of simple, standard, repeatable processes. We in the legal profession need to understand just how vulnerable we are to losing our share of that market.

Clients are not prepared to pay our traditional high fees for what . . . [more]

One of the strangest habits of traditional law firms (which really means most law firms, if we’re being honest) is the tendency to take one of the firm’s most productive lawyers out of a practice he or she loves and appoint that lawyer to manage the firm.

It’s hard to fathom why we do this. We place these lawyers into a management role for which they were never trained, a role whose long-term strategic focus is directly at odds with lawyers’ natural tendency to dwell on details and solve the present problem. Then, once the managing partner’s term is complete, . . . [more]