As everyone knows by now, Amazon is poised to bring out Kindle 2 in the U.S. Apart from its other features, the Kindle 2 can read — out loud. This is, of course, no more than any competent computer can do nowadays, and in tones that are increasingly lifelike. But this ability to speak a book worries the American Authors Guild, which opines that an act of turning text to speech might violate copyright, or, more precisely, impinge on an author’s “e-book rights.”

(Most commentary you’ll read on this — WSJ, Boing Boing, and those quoted in . . . [more]

Courtesy of the Northern European law firm Roschier comes news of this most alarming decision from the Finnish Supreme Court: running an ice fishing competition without a lottery licence.

Supreme Court Rules on Lottery Offence in Ice Fishing Competition Case

The Supreme Court ruled on 30 December 2008 that an ice fishing competition can constitute a lottery in accordance with the Lotteries Act. […]

[T]he participants were entitled a prize of monetary value for each fish caught based on the weight of that single fish. The value of this prize rose substantially along with the weight classes, but at the

The Georgetown Law Library will hold a symposium on the Future of Today’s Legal Scholarship on July 25, 2009 in Washington. It will debate how blogging has become an integral part of legal scholarship:

“The Future of Today’s Legal Scholarship is a symposium that brings together academic bloggers, law librarians, and experts in preservation to tackle the bigger, more imperative challenges that will influence legal scholarship and democratic access to legal information for generations to come.”

“We must determine how to prioritize, collect, archive, preserve, and ensure reliable long-term access to the burgeoning amount of legal scholarship being published through

I’m at the CanLII meeting at Osgoode Hall here in Toronto to learn more about their new legislation database. At the moment the speakers are thanking their funders.

Ivan Mokanov is presenting SATO, section and time-based operations. The first simple demo called up the Human Rights Code that was in force on a given date. Above the text of the legislation is a linked list of all possible versions, making comparison easy. The screen will print properly with sections aligned.

Any statute or section can be noted up. (Results can be refined by narrowing searc terms.)

The third tab of . . . [more]

SLAW has had some recent posts on the availability of the works of Charles Darwin being available online (here and here), presumably as a result of tomorrow being the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Likely because of that anniversary, PBS in Buffalo/Toronto broadcast last night a documentary called “Intelligent Design on Trial.” The documentary can be viewed in clips at the foregoing link where there are also transcripts and extra video clips and links.

The show was a documentary on the attempt by the Dover Area School Board (in rural Pennsylvania) in late 2004 to . . . [more]

Statistics Canada has just released a report on legal aid spending in the 2007/08 year for all but three jurisdictions (Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and Nunavut). The Daily summarizes the results. As far as overall amounts go,

[a]fter accounting for inflation, spending was up from the previous year in six jurisdictions, with Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, and Northwest Territories reporting the largest increases at 10% each. Spending was down in New Brunswick, Quebec and Yukon and unchanged in Ontario.

Precise data (1983 – 2007) is contained in four tables:

revenues, by type of revenue; expenditures, by type of . . . [more]

Dr. Ben Goldacre writes a weekly column for the Guardian called Bad Science, in which he “skewers” journalists, politicians, advertisers and others who misrepresent, make up or ignore scientific evidence concerning the sorts of things that concern us all. He also maintains a blog by the same name, where he can (and does) expatiate on these issues. One of his recurring themes is the awful mishandling of vaccination data by the media and, consequently, the various vaccination panics that spring up around the world.

In this connection he writes about an interview he gave on LBC Radio in . . . [more]

Thanks to my partner David Stratas for a tip-off concerning major changes to the SCC website announced today. . . . [more]

Via CALL-L, there is a new policy at the Supreme Court of Canada, effective today for access to court records.
The most interesting part? Webcasts!

In addition to the records already listed in this policy, members of the public shall have remote access to those court records, or portions thereof, listed in this subsection:

* the electronic version of any factum on an appeal filed on or after February 9, 2009, subject to the following conditions. An electronic version of the factum must be available. The factum must not be subject to any limitation on access by court order or

The folks at the Toronto law firm Hicks Morley are leaps and bounds ahead of most other firms in their wiki use. They are using the wiki-based platform ThoughtFarmer as their whole intranet. This has had advantages, including being quick to set up and cost effective compared to other intranet or portal platforms.

In October Knowledge Management Specialist Heather Colman made a presentation to both the Toronto and New York Legal KM Groups, and we subsequently invited her to present at Toronto Wiki Tuesdays. These were her slides: . . . [more]

With the renovations progressing here at the DMP Law Library, most of our print has moved off site, and is harder to get. To compensate the students, I’ve been giving some instruction in electronic-only legal research, and even though I’m immersed in this topic every day, it is still surprising to me just how much can be accomplished online. Generally, of course, Legislation that has any historical aspect still requires the print for most jurisdictions, though CanLII’s new point-in-time functions are great, and some jurisdictions offer this sort of detail online.

For Canadian case law, just about anything you want . . . [more]

This story will warm the heart of any law librarian (or any other kind of librarian).

Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who made a miraculous emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York on January 15, was worried about a book he had borrowed from the library at California State University.

The book happened to end up on the bottom of the river in the cargo hold of the aircraft.

But that did not stop our hero.

He contacted the library and asked for an extension. Pretty conscientious, eh?

The library, of course, waived the overdue . . . [more]