Google is offering terabytes of space for OA scientific data at http://research.google.com. Here is some coverage:

• Wired
• Peter Suber

I wonder if all Canadian court cases and legislation, and all the citations between them, would come to even one terabyte… . . . [more]

A recent proposal from France President Nicolas Sarkozy is either crazy, crazy like a fox, or trying to distract attention from his recent PR issues. I’m not quite sure which category the proposal falls into, maybe all three. From the International Herald Tribune, “Sarkozy proposes taxing new technology to finance the old.” More specifically, the proposal is to ban commercials from public television in France and make up for the lost revenue by taxing the internet and mobile phones. The proposal is to place an “infinitesimal” tax on internet and mobile phone connections and directing that tax revenue . . . [more]

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.

And in country too…

Which is why I was taken aback when I learned that some in the U.S. use “Canadian” as a disguised slur to refer to Blacks — as code for the ‘n’ word, in effect. As is common on the web I learned this fourth hand, and traced the story back from the Language Log, to Defending People, the Art and Science of Criminal Defense Trial Lawyering, which had a brief post about a memo from the Harris County (Texas) . . . [more]

Martin LaMonica blogs today that “Microsoft eases access to Office binary formats for OOXML”, while Mary Jo Foley provides additional context in “Microsoft bends over backwards to prove there’s an ‘open’ in OOXML”. It’s all part of Microsoft’s battle with ODF over who controls the future of storage formats for word processing files, spreadsheets, etc.–an important issue for the archivally inclined. . . . [more]

If you are “old school” like me, you may still enjoy picking up an old fashioned book from time to time, instead of staring at your computer screen. A non-legal BLOG that I follow reminded me of the self-publishing options that are available and singled out lulu.com

I did some quick cost calculations on various book formats – the prices seem very reasonable. . . . [more]

The National Post has an editorial today, Striking down the iPod tax. This post just adds the footnotes.

The January 10th decision was Apple Canada Inc. v. Canadian Private Copying Collective, 2008 FCA 9 (CanLII).

The decison of the Copyright Board under review was Private Copying 2008-2009, Re, 58 C.P.R. (4th) 446, 2007 CarswellNat 2100 (also on the Copyright Board website.)

The 2004 decision of the Federal Court of Appeal was Canadian Private Copying Collective v. Canadian Storage Media Alliance, 2004 FCA 424 (CanLII), [2005] 2 F.C.R. 654, 247 D.L.R. (4th) 193, 329 . . . [more]

Quoted from the press release:

VANCOUVER, Jan. 11 /CNW/ – The Law Society is deeply saddened by the
passing of former Chief Justice Allan McEachern on January 10.

“Judges and lawyers will remember the clarity and precision of his judgments, his professional courtesy, his humility, his capacity for hard work and, above all, his sense of humour,” said John Hunter, QC, President of the Law Society.

“One of Mr. McEachern’s greatest achievement was to open up the courts not just to the people of BC, but to the entire world via the internet,” Mr. Hunter said. “In 1996, he

In order to compensate for the many frivolous places I’ve sent you on Friday, I offer you something much more earnest today — and something to do with laws. The laws, however, are those of the universe and not of any of our dull sublunary jurisdictions. And the earnest thing is a giant, free physics book available online in PDF.

The author, Christoph Schiller, got his doctorate in physics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and says that he believes “exploring physics is more fun that making love.” Hmmn.

Still and all, when you’re not doing the latter, you . . . [more]

This just in, Lexis/Quicklaw is intending to charge $50 per head for Academic Access at Canadian Law Schools starting next September.

So a Canadian Law School with 500 students would be charged $25000 starting September 2008.

I’m going to save my comments for later. . . . [more]

I missed this last summer: TimesOnline reported that China passed regulations forbidding Tibetan Bodhisattvas (i.e. living Buddhas) from reincarnating without permission from the Chinese government. This joins the Malaysian prohibition on Christian use of the word Allah in the “implacable force meets immovable object” category of demolition derby.

Of course, as I said when I blogged about Malaysia, without the text of the regulation it’s hard to say how sensible or silly the prohibition actually is. TimesOnline does at least throw quotes around a small portion of text, suggesting that this is how the law reads, in translation at . . . [more]

An interesting article in the NYTimes on the recent health issues of Om Malik. Om, for those of you that don’t follow tech blogs, is a long time industry insider and the publisher of GigaOm.

On Dec. 28th Om had a heart attack, and well wishes aside (I’m a long time subscriber), the combination of the sedentary life style, smoking and scotch (nah, couldn’t be the scotch…), are cited as causes to his health issues. The big kicker for me was the fact that Om is 41! Now that’s a wake-up call if ever there was one. Ouch.

The . . . [more]

Howard Elliott of the Hamilton Spectator, in today’s editorial, says “Facebook … is threatening to render some Canadian laws irrelevant.” Noting that two youths had been charged with first degree murder in the case of Stefanie Rengel, Elliott complained that the two accused were “still legally anonymous. Except on Facebook, where they’ve been identified repeatedly by name and photograph.” Elliott calls for an end to the double standard, “in the name of civil society in cyberspace.” . . . [more]