Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke announced today that Bills will shortly be introduced in Parliament to overturn prohibitions on cameras in the courtroom.

The media will only be allowed to film judges’ summary remarks only – victims, witnesses, offenders and jurors cannot be filmed.

Filming and broadcasting in court is currently banned under two Acts of Parliament and new legislation will need to be passed to allow cameras into the courts.

The Guardian reports that Clarke had intended to consult with senior judges but in recent days Downing Street had moved to circumvent this consultation process and support the change, whatever . . . [more]

A U.S. court has decided that a bank whose client lost money because someone hacked into its account and transferred funds out of it, was not liable to the client because the bank had used ‘commercially reasonable’ security. The case is described on the Goodwin Proctor website. The lengthy decision of the Judge Magistrate in Patco Construction v People’s Bank, later upheld, is available online. .

Is this the right standard of care for negligence? Does it matter that the bank is regulated strictly under the Bank Act? Does it matter that the U.S. bank could . . . [more]

Back in April, Apple filed suit in California against Samsung for patent violation, claiming that the latter’s Galaxy line of phones and tablets bore too much resemblance to its own iPhones and iPads. This is a tangled matter, as perhaps are most patent disputes among the biggies: for one thing, Apple is a large buyer of Samsung’s products, accounting for 4% of the the company’s revenue last year and likely more this year. At the moment, according to Foss Patents, where you’ll find a list, there are 19 ongoing lawsuits around the world between these two companies

Recently . . . [more]

Corruption in government and business can occur everywhere; no country is totally immune. (See, for example, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index.) But in some countries and in some industries the demands for bribes and kickbacks or the promise of favours for favourable decisions are a serious reality. Governments that wish to halt or hinder corruption have passed anti-bribery and corruption legislation, proscribing not only corrupt acts that take place within their jurisdiction but also acts that take place ex juris if committed by their nationals or businesses incorporated within their jurisdiction. Britain’s Bribery Act 2010, which came into . . . [more]

Offered in Beta from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives, this new website offers excellent access to the Code.

The US Code is an official consolidation of Federal US Laws by subject, and highly useful. Its various accessories, such as the indispensable Popular Name Tool make it a first resort of legal researchers. The online version, and various commercial print versions, are not considered official for US courts. However, this particular online version will likely be the most up to date version of the code, given its provenance. . . . [more]

These are notes are from a panel discussion session at the American Bar Association 2011 conference in Toronto on Saturday, August 6, 2011. Panelists included Dr. Paolo Balboni, Director, European Privacy Association, Milan, Italy; the Honorable Julie Brill, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC; Stuart Ingis, Venable LLP, Washington, DC, and Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Ottawa, Canada. The session was moderated by Saira Nayak, Nayak Strategies, Redmond, WA. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own. I welcome your comments and follow-up thoughts!

Introduction

Public.Resource.Org, a US non-profit started by Carl Malamud, among others, has launched a complaint against the Smithsonian Institution in a rather unusual way. The complaint is in behalf of Mindy Summers, “an artist who lives in a purple house in Vermont with her husband and two cats” and who copied and offers for sale photographs of vintage seed catalogs originally published on the Smithsonian website. The Institution sent her a take-down notice, claiming she had violated its terms of use, particularly because she was making commercial use of the images. PRO’s complaint is published on a special-purpose website named . . . [more]

The Section of State and Local Government Law of the American Bar Association (ABA) hosted a panel on cyberbullying at the 2011 Annual Meeting.

The panelists included James Hanks of Ahlers & Cooney, Grant Bowers, Legal Counsel for the Toronto District School Board, Dr. Jeff Gardere, a psychologist from New York with expertise in mental health, and Kathy Macdonald, from the Calgary police.

The panel discussed how changes in technology have created new ways for students to bully each other, creating new legal challenges for schools and communities. Regulating cyberbullying raises significant constitutional questions, especially in the U.S., . . . [more]

The British newspaper The Guardian has compiled data on who is being arrested for the recent riots in the United Kingdom.

It makes for a fascinating story:

In an indication of the tough justice being meted out to people accused of offences related to this week’s riots, a Guardian analysis of more than 120 cases before magistrates courts so far has found the majority of defendants being remanded in custody – even when they have pleaded guilty to relatively minor offences.

As hundreds of cases fly through specially-convened night sittings of magistrates courts, the Guardian is embarking on a project

Those of us who need to know such things know that the SCC granted leave to appeal in Clements v Clements 2011 CanLII 36004 (from 2010 BCCA 581) where the issue will be the meaning of the Canadian material-contribution doctrine (and maybe some other things about proof of causation in Canadian tort law should the Court deign to go there.)

In the meantime, a judge of the New South Wales, Australia, Court of Appeal has, conveniently, written a primer on the subject: Evans v Queanbeyan City Council [2011] NSWCA 230. . . . [more]

The ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security hosted a panel on Comparative Approaches to National Security moderated by Professor Harvey Rishikof, with Brigadier-General Blaise Cathcart from JAG, and Eneken Tikk of NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia. The panel looked at how different states have tried to resolve the tension of security and liberty in a variety of national security contexts, a topic recently covered by The Star.

Cathcart spoke on the virtue of the whole government approach of obtaining information, and Tikk recounted the challenge of the 2007 cyber attacks in . . . [more]

The US grants citizenship to anyone born within its jurisdiction, (as do Canada, Mexico and most South American countries). Recently, however, there’s been a growing debate about whether this practice is supported by the constitution and whether in any event it should be changed. A panel of immigration and constitutional law experts explored these issues this morning at the ABA meeting in Toronto. . . . [more]