The latest area to fall under the spell of the “deuce dot duck's-egg” description is that of web searching.

A fast update on today’s news from India. The Herald Tribune is quoting an official as saying it was “a technological error” that would be repaired soon.

In an e-mail sent early Thursday, an official at the Consulate General of India in New York said that the order to block a handful of Web sites, including the popular blogspot.com, which hosts thousands of personal Web logs, had been prompted by the discovery of a Web site that contained “two impertinent pages” rife with material containing “extremely derogatory references to Islam.”

In an effort to stave off sectarian violence, said the

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Statistics Canada’s Daily contains a report on crime stats for 2005, and the good news is crime is down pretty much everywhere. Justice Minister Vic Toews may have to get a new speech to replace his “get tough on crime” party line:

The homicide rate increased 4% to the highest level in almost a decade. However, the overall violent crime rate was unchanged, while the property crime rate fell 6%. The rate of drug offences declined in 2005 as did overall youth crime.

The national crime rate has been relatively stable since 1999, with last year’s 5% decrease offsetting

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Google Blogoscoped says you can deep link into a specific part of a Google Video clip by tacking an anchor on the link url, ex: #1m35s

[via Mr. Rubel]

Interesting, we skipped right over doing this for audio files. Any thoughts? I can see how deep linking into a podcast episode would be useful. . . . [more]

If you’ve been surprised with the vehemence with which the administration has been arguing for a New Paradigm, in which traditional separation of powers doctrines go by the board, and wondered why the Courts haven’t been sympathetic to government lawyers’ arguments, a couple of excellent pieces shed significant light.

The first is from The New Yorker, earlier this month, called The Hidden Power – The legal mind behind the White House’s war on terror, by Jane Mayer and the second Power Grab by Elizabeth Drew explains the new custom of issuing signing statements on how the laws passed . . . [more]

Recent posts concerning privacy and Last month Ma Bell's Sympatico brought in a new customer service agreement (a contrat d'adhésion [eng], of course), one feature of which has concerned lawyers.

The Ontario government announced a few weeks ago it is looking into ways to reform the civil justice system of the province to make it more accessible and affordable. Former Associate Chief Justice of Ontario Coulter Osborne has been asked to study a range of issues, including the growing number of unrepresented litigants as well as ways to decrease delays and costs.

In the spring, the Advocates’ Society released a report on Streamlining the Ontario Civil Justice System. This coincided with a policy forum called Into the Future that examined topics such as how to deal with the proliferation . . . [more]

According to a piece in today’s Red Herring, Blogs Face Privacy Showdown, there is a major showdown between a plaintiff, a school superintendent in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who wants to unmask anonymous bloggers critical of him, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The EFF website has the full pleadings including the (rather sketchy) Complaint, the Motion to Quash (which contains a spirited defence of the right to blog, as part of the right to First Amendment anonymous speech, and the subpoenas directed at the ISPs to force them to identify the bloggers.

The EFF’s press release states:

Tulsa, Oklahoma – . . . [more]

Toronto media lawyer Melissa Kluger (who was a student when I was at the University of Toronto Law School and who founded Ultra Vires, the law student newspaper) has started a blog called Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style.

She describes the site in these terms:

I’ve been a lawyer in Toronto now for four years. Over this time, a lot of law magazines, newspapers and newsletters have crossed my desk. Even though these are publications for lawyers, I never feel like they are really talking to me. They always feel a little old, a little

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The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has just published a discussion paper as part of the five-year parliamentary review of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

The issues it focusses on are:

Privacy Commissioner’s Powers

Consent

Disclosure of Personal Information before Transfer of Businesses

Work Product

Duty to Notify

Transborder Flows of Personal Information

Sharing Information with Other Data Protection Authorities

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An English site has a useful summary of the global legal initiatives that are being used in the fight against AIDS. It consists of an interview with Dr Matthew Weait, lecturer in law at Keele University, who recently organized a series of seminars entitled, HIV/AIDS and Law: Theory, Practice and Policy.

You can also listen to webcasts of Dr. Weait’s seminars. . . . [more]

Today’s edition of the British newspaper The Telegraph has an item about Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice, the top judge in England the Wales.

In the article entitled We’re in touch with everyday life, says the cycling judge, Lord Philips, who bikes to work [there’s a lovely photo of him on his bicycle, helmet and all], explains that many of his colleagues “travel on buses and Tubes and bicycles; we push trolleys around supermarkets; we have normal family concerns and commitments and neither are judges immune from the impact of crime”.

At the Lord Mayor’s annual dinner for . . . [more]