Well, as Simon Chester alerted us it would, CanLII has just now clicked the odometer over as the millionth judgment comes on line. Here’s the graphic evidence (courtesy of Colin Lachance):

Fittingly, perhaps, the millionth judgment was an opinion from the Supreme Court, S.L. v. Commission scolaire des Chênes 2012 SCC 7.

That’s a whole lot of precedent. Use it wisely, Canada. . . . [more]

The Association of American Publishers announced yesterday that they have successfully taken two websites offline that were freely distributing copyrighted e-books. One of these sites, library.nu, was said to contain more than 400,000 protected digital works.

PaidContent.org has a post up describing how publishers are banding together to fight against book piracy, similar to the battles the RIA has fought over the past decade. The piece also correctly notes how this takedown was conducted without any new legislative powers, such as those in the failed US SOPA bill.

But perhaps the best read of the bunch (at least for . . . [more]

Daniel Poulin just told me that Canlii will, this week, pass a momentous event – the millionth case will be added to Canlii.

We tend to take Canlii for granted – but it really has been a remarkably successful project, which should be supported by all Canadian lawyers, and cheered by Slaw readers. Public access is vital.

Now – a small challenge for those readers. What will the millionth case be?

A Newfoundland and Labrador trial decision? Or something from the Québec Commission de reconnaissance des associations d’artistes et des associations de producteurs? Which has the wonderful acronym, qccraaap. . . . [more]

An item noted by Susannah Tredewell on the VALL website, CANSIM data has been made available free of charge by StatsCan under the Statistics Canada Open Licence Agreement.

CANSIM is Statistics Canada’s key socioeconomic database, receives periodic updates daily to its various tables, and “provides fast and easy access to a large range of the latest statistics available in Canada.”

They’ve also added a screencast video tutorial, which would have been a nice addition to the 4 videos StatsCan currently has on its Youtube channel. It seems rather odd, I must say, when an organization’s youtube channel . . . [more]

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) is accepting nominations for this year’s Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing.

It honours a publisher (whether for-profit or not-for profit, corporate or non-corporate) that has demonstrated excellence by publishing a work, series, website or e-product that makes a significant contribution to legal research and scholarship.

Slaw.ca won the award in 2009 (yay team!).

Members as well as non-members of CALL can make nominations. Criteria are explained on the Award website (see link in first sentence).

Members of the Award Selection Committee set up to choose the lucky winner are: . . . [more]

A little while ago I blogged about legal bibliographies and highlighted some of the work that John Eaton at the University of Manitoba has done in this area. It is very nice to see that John’s work has been recognised as he is the 2012 recipient of the Association of College and Research Libraries Marta Lange/CQ Press Award. This award recognises librarians who have made a significant contribution to bibliography and information service in law or political science. The press release from the American Library Association announcing the award can be found here.

Congratulations John! . . . [more]

Library Boy told us last year about some tentative steps that courts were making to embrace – or to sniff around tentatively – the whole subject of social media. Today’s announcement from the UK Supreme Court that it will start official tweets of judgments – this in anticipation of the Assange extradition decision – represents the first wholesale adoption by a final court of appeal.

It overshadows Chief Justice McLachlin’s announcement within a speech at Carleton University on the Media and the Courts, that the Canadian judiciary should start to think seriously about social media.

See the Globe, the . . . [more]

CanLII President Colin Lachance has just now released his plan for that organization’s next three years. “Strategic Priorities 2012 to 2014” is available in a variety of formats: HTML, PDF, and large print PDF. Versions in French are also available, of course.

The report elaborates on four strategic priorities for CanLII:

1. Secure permanent role as foremost source of free law in canada.
2. Continually enrich content to meet the needs of public and professional users.
3. Deliver easy to use professional grade tools and a compelling site experience.
4. Continuously promote and defend free access to law

As readers will . . . [more]

Fair use (s. 107) is an intentionally drafted ambiguous provision in the U.S. Copyright Act for the purpose of defending users of copyright works from a variety of otherwise infringing acts. Although often compared to the Canadian fair dealing, the two defenses are quite different. Two interesting documents on the analysis of fair use and its interpretation were recently released.

General Counsel from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released a memorandum on 19 January 2012 on: USPTO Position on Fair Use of Copies of NPL Made in Patent Examination. The memorandum looks at three issues: . . . [more]

Canada’s newest student-run law review just released its first issue.

The University of Western Ontario Journal of Legal Studies is published entirely online, and is the first student journal coming out of UWO for over 25 years. The contents of the first issue are as follows:

Editors’ Note Lisa Di Valentino and Benjamin D. Tinholt

Niqab vs. Quebec: Negotiating Minority Rights within Quebec Identity Nafay Choudhury

Protecting Your Personality Rights in Canada: A Matter of Property or Privacy? Amy M. Conroy

The Rules of Professional Conduct: A Conflicting Guide for Counsel in Child Custody and Access Proceedings Jennifer L. Hiatt

I have updated the Reference Tools page of my legal research and writing website with a new section on Law Reform Commission Reports, a topic that – in retrospect – was likely insufficiently treated in my book.

I believe it may currently be the most complete, online collection of links and other resources for researching law reform commission reports. Included, of course, are links to the BC Law Institute Law Reform Database as well as links to individual law reform commission reports websites.

For the older, online Ontario Law Reform Commission Reports, I linked to the listings from . . . [more]

Colleague and fellow law librarian Sarah Sutherland let me know of her article “On Hiring Library Staff in Rural Areas” in Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research.

The article of course is good and worth mentioning for that reason alone but Sarah’s email made me realize I had forgotten about this online journal, which was mentioned a number of years ago on SLAW. As such, I thought I would also remind SLAW readers since many of the articles would be relevant to most of you. In the current edition, for . . . [more]