A recent US decision held that a person’s browsing history on web dating sites – not just his profiles, which were clearly intended for public use – could be disclosed to police because the person had authorized the administrators of the sites to know what he was looking at. The case, People v Holmes, involved a high-profile defendant in a criminal case (the person who shot up the Colorado movie theatre – allegedly), but these cases should not turn on whether the person claiming a privacy right is sympathetic.

The key for the court is contained in this passage . . . [more]

It has been suggested to me, at a couple of levels of hearsay, that that “the US government had to implement a provision to require the financial institutions to accept electronic signatures on agreements of purchase and sale [of land] for the purposes of financing.”

Can anyone tell me what is behind this statement? I have several questions, besides this general one:

• ‘had to implement’ – meaning ‘as a condition of validity’? or ‘to make some particular policy effective’?
• ‘to require the financial institutions to accept e-signatures’ – really? Mandatory acceptance of e-signatures? *Any* e-signatures or only those with

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The Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. has published a new comparative report on the handling and adjudication of sexual offenses in the military.

The report examines how the military justice systems of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel and the United Kingdom deal with alleged sexual offending by service members.

The Library occasionally publishes reports that compare the laws on a given theme in a number of countries.

Earlier comparative law reports from the Law Library of Congress have covered topics such as:

• Bioethics
• Campaign Finance
• Children’s Rights
• Constitutional Provisions on Women’s Equality
• Education of Non-Native Language Speaking

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The amendments to the Defamation Act passed in the UK earlier this year will come into force on January 1, 2014. There is a draft regulation on website owners’ liability for defamatory comments posted on their sites. There is quite a back-and-forth process.

Is a scheme like this a good idea for Canada? It is a kind of ‘notice and notice’ system, in which the original poster of the allegedly defamatory statements have to identify themselves (via the website operator) for litigation by the complainant, or the statements are deleted.

Here is Pinsent Mason’s description:

[Website operators have

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Judge Denny Chin of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York today dismissed the copyright violation lawsuit that US author groups had launched against Google.

The search giant has been digitizing tens of millions of books to create a massive online library / bookstore but the project was opposed in a lawsuit by US publishers and author organizations that started in 2005. The publishers’ group split off and settled earlier.

The judge wrote that the ambitious project respects authors’ rights and is a case of “fair use” (equivalent to fair dealing in Canadian copyright . . . [more]

An attempt by a Canadian online dating service, Plenty of Fish, to buy the database of a bankrupt competitor has run aground on privacy considerations (in Texas, of all places).

This has echoes of a situation a decade ago where the database of a toy company was going to be acquired. My recollection (subject to correction by Slaw readers) is that the purchase was derailed by public outcry more than by operation of law.

How would you go about making sure that your clients’ databases of personal information are saleable assets – or can this be done in Canada (or . . . [more]

It has been held in a US case that allegations made in comments on blog posts are not sufficiently reliable to be used in cross-examination. In this case an expert was testifying in a product liability case that the defendant’s products had never caught fire before (as the plaintiff’s had). The plaintiff’s counsel wanted to point to a number of comments in blogs about fires in some of the same manufacturer’s products. The court denied the right to use those examples.

Is that right? How much reliability do you need? Are blog comments the cross-examiner’s Wikipedia? (It was not suggested . . . [more]

Almost exactly four years ago, the European Parliament passed Regulation (EC) No 1007/2009 restricting the marketing of products made from seals to:

only where the seal products result from hunts traditionally conducted by Inuit and other indigenous communities and contribute to their subsistence.

and incidentally:

the placing on the market of seal products shall also be allowed where the seal products result from by-products of hunting that is regulated by national law and conducted for the sole purpose of the sustainable management of marine resources. Such placing on the market shall be allowed only on a non-profit basis. The nature

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A class action lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York on Friday against BlackBerry and some of its executives, including chief executive Thorsten Heins and chief financial officer Brian Bidulka.

The lawsuit claims that the company misled investors about their financial situation and inflating the stock value by misrepresenting how BlackBerry 10 would fare on the market against competitors. The proposed class would include shareholders who purchased stack between Sept. 27, 2012-Sept. 20, 2013.

The suit claims that BlackBerry was aware of these challenges and lay off about 40% of its workforce . . . [more]

The baby panda cam at Washington’s National Zoo is not the only digital casualty of the shutdown of U.S. federal government services that started this week [awwww man, not the cam with the adorable baby panda!].

The websites of Library of Congress and the Law Library of Congress, the world’s largest law library, are also down, although THOMAS, the legislative information site is still functioning.

Even NASA’s website is knocked out of commission.

The Washington Post, the Ars Technica site, and the government transparency NGO the Sunlight Foundation have details. . . . [more]

The Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. recently produced a report comparing the legal situation of temporary or guest workers in 14 countries (including Canada):

“The report includes a comparative analysis and individual chapters on each country, the EU, and relevant international arrangements. It provides a general overview of a variety of immigration systems, and addresses issues such as eligibility criteria for the admission of guest workers and their families, guest workers’ recruitment and sponsorship, and visa requirements. The report further discusses the tying of temporary workers to their employers in some countries; the duration and the conditions that

. . . [more]

The European Court of Human Rights is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the entry into force of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was signed in Rome on November 1, 1950, by 12 member states of the Council of Europe, and came into force on September 3, 1953. The Convention was one of the first instruments to give effect and binding force to certain of the rights stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.