Many of our readers will also follow Michael Geist’s blog. For those of you who don’t, I’d like to direct it to your attention, as over the past week he’s been dealing with a particularly important issue.

The Conservative government was to have introduced new copyright legislation in Parliament this week. Their plans have now been delayed. Professor Geist has been very busy lately educating his readers about the proposed law and its potential effects. If you are interested in these issues and concerned about the direction the government has taken, take a few minutes to read through his . . . [more]

CBC Radio News is reporting that Conrad Black has received a sentence of 78 to 97 months (6 to 7 years). There is no web link at the moment, but here’s the link to the last newscast. . . . [more]

Hindu gods get court summons – Telegraph: “An Indian judge has summoned two Hindu gods to help resolve a 20-year-old property dispute.

Sunil Kumar Singh has placed notices in newspapers in the coal mining town of Dhanbad, in the eastern state of Jharkhand, asking gods Ram and Hanuman to appear in his court next week to present their arguments.

“You failed to appear in court despite notices sent by a messenger and later through registered post. You are hereby directed to appear before the court personally,” Judge Singh’s notice stated.”

Evidently it’s not uncommon for Hindu gods to be . . . [more]

In ebook form, with wonderful public domain illustrations, the full text of Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark”, here. Carroll’s is far more entertaining, far better than mine. More educational, too.

Anyway, this place supposedly being about things related to law, here’s an excerpt from “Fit the Sixth – The Barrister’s Dream”. The full text of “Fit the Sixth” follows after the break, together with the illustration that accompanies it.

He dreamed that he stood in a shadowy Court,
Where the Snark, with a glass in its eye,
Dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending a pig
On

Oyez, oyez! and listen up! because you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.

What with radio and iPods and elevators our ears are almost always full of music (and then there’s that stuff that gets played at supermarkets). And the music is typically mainstream. But there’s a lot of nifty different sound out there and I’ve got a source today for some sounds that are anything but programmed.

framework is a site streaming out of the Netherlands that plays long stretches of recordings made in ordinary public places and mixed into interesting soundscapes — “field recording; contextual and decontextualized sound activity” as . . . [more]

Today is the 90th Anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, as it has become commonly known, although in looking for material for this post, I discovered that it was referred to as the Halifax Disaster at the time. The largest man made explosion in history, prior to Hiroshima. As with most things some legal material sprung up around the explosion. The most interesting case being, R. v. Mackey (1918), 52 N.S.R. 165 (S.C.) On March 15 it was determined that the caption (nee captain) of the Mont Blanc was to be released on bail, opposed by the crown, while awaiting . . . [more]

The end of the year is fast approaching and many offices will be throwing holiday parties, either in-house or in restaurants, clubs or bars.

It is also the season of many questions about drunkenness, sexual harassment, liability and many other touchy topics.

A few texts with useful reminders:

• Serving Smart at Holiday Parties (Ogilvy Renault): ” ‘The liability risks of holding staff parties are a big concern for employers this time of year. They need to be responsible, inclusive and aware,’ says David Bannon, a partner in Ogilvy Renault’s Employment and Labour Law practice. ‘Companies can be liable if an

Announcing the 2008 Harvey T. Strosberg Essay Prize Competition

Harvey T. Strosberg, Q.C., Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Class Action Review and Irwin Law Inc. are pleased to announce the fifth annual Harvey T. Strosberg Essay Prize competition. The prize of $10,000 is awarded to an outstanding student paper on Canadian class actions.

The competition is open to all Canadian students enrolled in an undergraduate, graduate, or professional program. The deadline for submissions is March 1, 2008.

For more details see http://www.irwinlaw.com/prize.aspx?prizeid=369 . . . [more]

Today is the International Day of Disabled Persons, a day to think about how well your firms do with hiring and accommodation and to worry about whether Slaw is up to snuff.

In what is surely no accident, StatsCan released a Participation and Activity Limitation Survey today on The Daily. The lead sentence reports: “An estimated 4.4 million Canadians—one out of every seven in the population—reported having a disability in 2006, an increase of over three-quarters of a million people in five years…” The increasing age of the population was, of course, a factor in this 21% rise over . . . [more]

Astute readers of this feature (and some of the rest of you, too) will have noticed that I tend towards non-verbal Friday Fillips, seeking, I guess, relief from the “jaw-jaw” that is law. Graphics, music — these are the stuff of nolaw. Well today I bring you a wondrous combination of these two. Kenji Kojima has created a small application (that runs on both Windows and Mac) called the RGB Music Lab. (The RGB stands for red, green, blue, the channels of instruction given to graphics programs to produce all colours.) The simple notion is this: you drop a . . . [more]

Sadly there’s one more niche for advertising to ply its charms. Yahoo and Adobe have signed a deal for Adobe to provide space in PDFs for Yahoo-pushed advertising. The joint communiqué — an ad-free PDF — can be found here. A publisher of information (U.S. only — for the time being?) registers with Adobe and uploads content; Adobe’s algorithm then pairs that content with ads; the distributed registered PDF comes to you adorned with ads. As the articley on ZDNet says, perhaps it won’t be so bad: who reads publishers’ PDFs anyway? . . . [more]

In Eugene Meehan’s Supreme Court letter today he states the facts of a proposed class action:

“The Applicants alleged that their flight back to Quebec City was delayed because of technical problems. Then, after takeoff, a loud banging noise was heard, the aircraft lost 10,000 feet in altitude, and the pilot had to return to the airport in Varadero, Cuba. An officer carried out a visual inspection of the aircraft and informed the pilot that part of the aircraft’s rudder (tail fin) was missing, and that the coffee was cold…”.

I’m not sure that, if I were a passenger I . . . [more]