I maintain several personalities on social media. I am a different person on Facebook than I am on Twitter than I am on Google+ than I am on LinkedIn, and I like to keep it that way. And even within particular media, I maintain multiple personas with different names and different passwords. I do this to keep my work life separate from my personal life, to be more efficient, to freely explore new technologies, and to reflect different interests. I also do this to explore the potential freedom to be anonymous on the Internet – to not be confined by . . . [more]

Cicero (106-43 BC) the great Roman politician/philosopher considered gratitude the greatest of virtues.

Modern psychology argues that there is a correlation between gratitude and wellbeing. That is, a grateful attitude can lead to increased wellbeing.

Gratitude is not the same as being indebted to someone. Gratitude can be expressed when one is thankful for things such as fair weather or good health.

Gratitude has been the focus of several world religions but here I would like to focus on the kind of gratitude that Warren Buffet speaks of when he says that he has won the ovarian lottery. Buffett says . . . [more]

We leave a trail of footprints across the Web that can seem ephemeral. Content on law firm Web sites changes, status updates to LinkedIn or Twitter fade, with new content taking the place of the old. In some cases, it’s out-of-sight-out-of-mind but it continues to live on. Twitter resells access to old posts through its Firehose, Web sites can be archived by services like the Internet Archive. That may not be the best way to keep track of your online activity. You can create a personal archive and preserve your own online footprints.

A personal archive can have a . . . [more]

I mentioned the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in my previous column. Did I spot any law of the future trends there?

For one thing, I rarely if ever heard the words ‘rule of law’. There was a lot of interesting interaction about Big Challenges – economic crisis, environmental crisis, peace and security crises, development, cyber and digital challenges, Arab Spring, innovation, the need for values, and the rise of African and Asia. Rule of law is, I must suppose, assumed to be part of solving all that. But assumptions make me a little nervous. I . . . [more]

The tragic loss of Aaron Swartz on January 11, 2013 has given rise to a thoughtful swell across the blogosphere and news media on information rights as well as crime and punishment. His life has been rightly celebrated for his contributions to a more open and free exchange of knowledge, just as the federal prosecutors have been excoriated for the mishandling of the alleged charges against Aaron of illegally downloading over four million scholarly and previously published articles from JSTOR. In the aftermath of this tragedy, what comes to mind, for me, at least, is how the law contributes to . . . [more]

Over the past year, Google has made a number of significant changes to its delivery of search engine rankings. In light of those changes, law firms that employ various aggressive search marketing tactics need to reconsider them. In this column, I want to highlight some of the major web-spam filters that Google has created and offer some important (and ethical) lessons for maintaining a strong search engine presence.

Let’s start by discussing a couple of those changes.

Penguin and Panda

Major alterations to Google’s ranking methods tend to be given nicknames, kind of like hurricanes — but for some businesses, . . . [more]

CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, manages the registration of domain names ending in “ca”. It has created a set of rules and procedures, called the Canadian Dispute Resolution Process (or CDRP), for resolving some of the disputes that arise over domain names, particularly cybersquatting. Everyone who registers a dot-CA domain name agrees to abide by CIRA’s rules and procedures.

In a couple of recent dot-CA domain name disputes, the outcome has turned on the timing of the formation of the party complaining about a domain name. It is important that before bringing a domain name dispute that you investigate . . . [more]

Given the constant flow of events in the world of information and the waves of change confronting librarians, I search for a unifying theme. Can I find something that manages to pull it all together for me? As a law professor I talk to my students about that moment of insight when all of the pieces fall into place, when what had previously been a jumble of unconnected information suddenly shifts into a discernible pattern. Even if the fine details of the final product are unclear, there will be a structure, the subject will make sense. Where is such a . . . [more]

A good lawyer, with knowledge of how and when to use the right tools, has a competitive advantage. Those tools might be varied, and are not limited to IT.

Jordan Furlong’s article “The Law of the Pencil – Innovation and Client Service in the New Millennium”, mentions the urban myth of NASA spending millions on a “space pen”, while the Soviets used a pencil. Law firms (and others) have also been known to blow millions on IT that could have been spent more wisely.

The humble pencil might be far superior to alternatives in certain circumstances, ie to . . . [more]

As a first post on legal ethics, it seems appropriate to ask “what exactly are we talking about”. The answer isn’t as simple as one might think given the number of different perspectives involved.

Courts set (or reflect) legal ethics in cases involving lawyers. Law Societies set legal ethics in codes of conduct and in discipline cases. Legal scholars posit appropriate legal ethics, either as a matter of formal legal reasoning or from varying philosophical perspectives. Practising lawyers develop their own sense of legal ethics in part from these other sources and in part from their participation in the legal . . . [more]

Was I alone ignorant of Echosign before that client dragged me into using it?

Recently, a client sent me a document for signing through Adobe’s Echosign service. At first I was surprised by this new eccentricity. However, a contract is a contract so I just signed it. I printed the signature – not out of suspicion of the technology but as material reminder to look into Echosign later on. It rested on my desk until Simon’s reminder about Lexum’s column which made me look around to retrieve the name of the signing system: Echosign. A proven leader in web contracting . . . [more]

The Internet has transformed society in so many ways. Even the ways we find information and the sources we rely upon have been fundamentally transformed. It appears our legal systems need to adapt to this new reality.

In R. v. McKay, 2013 ABPC 13 (CanLII) the Alberta Provincial Court had the occasion to consider these issues in the context of a charge under the Criminal Code. The accused had been pulled over, a breathalyzer was applied and then he was taken to the police station. At the police station he was given a toll free number, to the Yellow . . . [more]