Virtual delight echoed in tweets, posts, and emails in my corner of the web late Wednesday, upon the release of Judge Baer’s opinion in Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust 11 CV 6351 (S.D.N.Y.). Very shortly after its release, Prof. James Grimmelmann posted the opinion on Scribd.

Briefly, for those unfamiliar, the plaintiffs and defendants had each sought summary judgment in respect of the plaintiffs’ copyright infringement claim. HathiTrust and related university defendants saw near-entire success in their summary judgment motions, failing only on a standing question not consequential to the result. The outcome: Fair use protects the defendants’ participation . . . [more]

Yesterday at the Law via the Internet conference, Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody” and “Cognitive Surplus” described how people were using RapGenius.com to do more than explain rap lyrics…they were using it to explain law.

Here’s an example: 

Will “the crowd” develop an interest in annotating the law?

There is a pretty exciting project underway in Quebec that has built a platform for just that purpose.

In the meantime, go here to read more about Clay Shirky’s presentation and to watch the video.

Finally, if you want to try your hand at annotating Canadian law, we’ve . . . [more]

The U.S.-based blog Free Government Information was launched a few years ago by a group of academic librarians who wanted to raise public awareness of the importance of better access to all forms of government information.

They occasionally have guest bloggers and this month’s guest will be a real treat for history buffs, archive geeks, hard core freedom of information fans and investigative reporter types: Malcolm Byrne from the National Security Archive, a non-governmental organization based at George Washington University that specializes in declassified documents.

His first post is about the Archive’s work on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis . . . [more]

Important Message from the Senate and the House of Commons of Canada
Published on: Fri, 09/28/2012
Last Modified: Fri, 09/28/2012 – 2:25pm

The Senate of Canada and the House of Commons have informed us that as of September 17, 2012, their publications will be available in electronic format only. Therefore, Publishing and Depository Services will no longer sell and distribute Parliamentary publications in paper format as of that date.

We are working closely with the Senate of Canada and the House of Commons to make these publications available in PDF format in our electronic publication collection available on our Web . . . [more]

This is just a brief note to say that I’ve updated the Canadian Case Commentary site, which now contains Supreme Court judgments released by the end of June, 2012, i.e. up to Clements v. Clements. (This comes as close to the present as seems sensible, given that the latest commentary recorded was published merely a week ago.)

I invite those of you who haven’t had a chance to learn of this project to visit the site. You’ll find navigation easy: there’s a killer search function and a hyperlinked table of cases.

Fifteen judgments were added to the database, for . . . [more]

This morning’s Globe and Mail features a prominent advertisement for Queen’s University:

The bold statement is hard to miss:

But is it quite true? To get a definitive answer we will need to wait for Kerri Froc‘s book. She is writing the first comprehensive examination of its history, interpretation and potential application with the goal of ensuring the Charter delivers on its promise of a fair, equal and democratic society for all Canadians.

In the interim, we can argue about why cases like M. v. H., 1999 CanLII 686 (SCC), [1999] 2 SCR 3, won by Martha . . . [more]

Last night was the kick-off of the 2012 annual International Association of Libraries meeting at the Law Society of Upper Canada in Toronto. About 120 prominent law librarians from around the world–primarily from academic, legislative and court house libraries–have arrived in Toronto and are enjoying the first day of programming.

The theme of this year’s program is “Canada: The Cultural Mosaic and International Law.” So far we have been welcomed by Ms. Deborah Deller, Clerk of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Dean Lorne Sossin of Osgoode Hall Law School, and The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada (via . . . [more]

If a brilliant legal treatise is composed by an academic but nobody reads it, does it really matter?

A study last year by Mark Bauerlein looked at books and essays in English literature at several public American universities, and found the vast majority attracted very little attention from other academics. Other research suggests that up to half of university library holdings are never used. There’s no reason to believe that these patterns in library use are any different in the legal field.

Of course despite my initial premise I do believe in the inherent worth of even obscure legal research . . . [more]

The old saying goes that a picture is worth 1000 words, so if your amicus brief was limited to five pages at roughly 250 words a page you would have 1250 words to state your position (after previously submitting a 25 page brief -6250 words). For an in-depth legal position such as an ebook price fixing case, 1250 words is very little so if you have the ability why not harness the power of a picture being worth 1000 words and submit the equivalent of a 11250 word brief?

That is exactly what Bob Kohn did in submitting his brief . . . [more]

In this Clay Shirky talk at TED Global, he describes how democratic principles of freedom of expression and engaged citizenship can be enabled online by the use of “distributed version control”, or software that allows “collaboration without coordination.” This is a funny and thought provoking talk, urging people to seek, as he puts it, not only a dashboard from their governments, but also a steering wheel.

The main barrier to this development is expressed concisely in this image:

. . . [more]

Last week, fellow Slawyer Kim Nayyer wrote about the launch of the new Congress.gov in Washington. It will eventually incorporate the well-known THOMAS federal legislative information website.

Earlier this week, In Custodia Legis, the blog of the Law Library of Congress, ran an interview with Meg Peters, an Information Architect in its Office of Strategic Initiatives. She is part of the team that designed the new site.

Since October 2010, In Custodia Legis has been running an interview series featuring members of the library staff. There are over 80 interviews in the series so far. The Law . . . [more]

I was perusing my library collection this morning while shelving books. This activity made me think of great new titles that are slated for upcoming release, my 2013 library collection budget, and which hard copy title that I wouldn’t, and couldn’t live without.

Would it be a reference work, a general text, a text specific to an area of law, an annotated set of the Rules of Court?

Consider that your desert island has high speed internet service and someone with good negotiating skills to acquire a broad spectrum of reasonably priced electronic subscriptions. The electronic subscriptions include Canadian secondary . . . [more]