Yesterday, my partner Anne-Sylvie Vassenaix-Paxton gave a talk to ALAI Canada (L’Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale) on the impact the new French HADOPI laws no. 1 and 2, have had on peer to peer file sharing and protection of personal data under French law.

The acronym stands for the Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet (HADOPI), a body which co-ordinates a variety of legal measures against illegal downloading including sanctions against parents of downloaders.

Two points are interesting from a North American perspective. The French Constitutional Council threw out a draft of . . . [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]

Not only is Canada long overdue in its statutorily mandated review of PIPEDA, our federal privacy protection law, but it seems as though significant elements of the law may soon be undermined significantly, as the United States Trade Representative is reportedly pushing for strict limitations on privacy protections as part of the Trans Pacific Partnership that Canada recently joined.

Much has already been written about the copyright restrictions the USTR aims to foist on Canada and other signatories through the TPP. For Canada, these are particularly poignant, as they come right on the heels of Canada’s long and hard fought . . . [more]

According to lawsof.com,

On Thursday last week, eight judges in South Korea’s Constitutional Court unanimously struck down a law requiring the use of real names online on the grounds that it violated the constitutional right to free speech.

Would the Canadian Charter or other law produce the same effect if Parliament passed a similar statute?

Is there any remedy against a private service provider sought to enforce such a policy? I know that Facebook states that users must use their real names, bit I also know that that rule is not universally applied. (It is a bit hard to . . . [more]

Robb Gary Evans, a police officer in Arizona, drove to a bar, flashed his badge to avoid paying entry, and downed eight beers. He then proceeded to sexually assault one of the patrons, and when he was tossed out of the bar he threatened to have the bouncers arrested.

Following an internal investigation Evans was fired from the police force. He was also convicted by a jury for sexual assault and sentenced for two years probation. I’ve made the minute entries from the case available here.

Despite the disturbing nature of the facts, this case takes an even stranger . . . [more]

According to Steptoe and Johnson’s E-Commerce Law Week,

The U.S. Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and NASA last month proposed a change to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) that would require contractors to safeguard their information systems containing information provided by or generated for the government. The proposed rule … would require government contracts with all federal contractors and appropriate subcontractors to mandate basic information security measures.

Is this a good idea?

In particular, should Canadian governments be concerned about the security of the IT systems in place among businesses that contract with them? If so, should . . . [more]

On Wednesday September 5, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg heard arguments from four workers challenging British judgments over the expressions of their religious faith in the workplace. Two are arguing for the right to wear a cross at work, while the others object to dealing with same sex couples.

Way back in 1989 Canadian patent law changed from a first-to-invent system to a first-to-file system. Now the United States, a last hold-out along with the Philippines, will soon switch in the same way, pursuant to §3 of the America Invents Act, which will come into effect in March of next year.

A recent article in the New York Times (Steve Lohr, “In Canada, the Impact of America’s New Patent Law Is Seen“) points us to an article by two University of Pennsylvania professors (economics, law) that uses the Canadian experience in the years before and after . . . [more]

Last Friday the Globe and Mail carried a piece about how authorities here in Canada are dealing with threats made using the internet. In a somewhat confused article the question was raised as to whether our Criminal Code should distinguish between threats made using the internet and those conveyed elsehow. Currently the applicable provision is s.264.1 of the Code:

(1) Every one commits an offence who, in any manner, knowingly utters, conveys or causes any person to receive a threat

(a) to cause death or bodily harm to any person;
(b) to burn, destroy or damage real or personal property;

. . . [more]

One of the many highlights for me at last month’s American Association of Law Libraries 2012 Conference was the opportunity to meet Priya Rai of the National Law University in Delhi and to observe her presentation, Access to Legal Information in the Digital Age: A Comparative Study of Electronic Commercial Databases and Public Domain Resources in Law.

Ms Rai is an accomplished law librarian and legal research instructor trained in law. One of her accomplishments is participation in the Information Institute of India Project. She attended and presented at AALL 2012 as the recipient of the FCIL Schaffer Grant . . . [more]

Legal complexity is nothing new. The scope of its unhappy consequences, however, seems to be getting ever wider thanks to the internet. Now texts land right in the living rooms — or the pants pockets — of half the planet at a keystroke. And, as a colleague once complained, computers and the internet “grease the skids of prolixity” where lawyers are concerned: ten words can become a hundred or a thousand at no marginal cost.

The terms of service “agreements” governing almost all the software and services you use are famously long and impenetrable. Just to read privacy policies alone . . . [more]

AustLII, the Australasian Legal Information Institute, has launched the Australasian Colonial Legal History Library, a free online collection of databases containing legal information from the colonial period of Australia and New Zealand.

A recent article explaining the project, Digitising and searching Australasian colonial legal history, has been published on the Social Science Research Network:

“The paper explains the construction, content and features of the first version of the Library, which as of July 2012 contains 12 databases including one case law database from each of the seven colonies (including New Zealand), some of which are ‘recovered’ cases

. . . [more]