As of four days ago, websites wishing to set cookies for UK viewers are required first to obtain permission to do so. I talked about the largely neglected 2009 EU directive to this effect a year ago on Slaw, when the UK, needing to move on the matter, gave businesses a year’s grace to grapple with the law. Now that grace period is over.

The terms of the directive are spelled out here, in an excerpt from my post of a year ago:

The cookie law is paragraph 66 of Directive 2009/136/EC [PDF] and essentially mandates that computer users:

…be

. . . [more]

I am spoiled. I admit it. My brothers used to call me Precious – I am sure they were being facetious. This character flaw leads to severe disappointment when tools that I like to use are delayed or disappear.

One of my favourite, and hopefully to reappear soon, tools is the Daily Bill Activity Reports of the Alberta Legislature. Following this link, you may think, “There is a 2012 document at the site, why is she complaining?”

The daily activity report doesn’t include the 28th Legislature. We started the 1st Session of this legislature on May 23, 2012, and . . . [more]

Statistics Canada has released the latest batch of stats from the criminal courts (2010/2011). As usual, The Daily has a handy overview; those who are interested in the finer details will find them in the corresponding Juristat publication.

Some points of note:

• The caseload has remained pretty much the same as it was the previous year, at 403,000 cases.
• The great majority of cases involved non-violent offences (77%).
• The most commonly-occurring offence was impaired driving (12%).
• Young adults (18-24) are greatly over-represented: 30% of all accused vs. 12% of the population.
• Two-thirds of cases resulted in a finding

. . . [more]

The investigation into the G20 continues, and approximately 15 police officers have been identified to date for discipline hearings. The Toronto Star recently obtained non-publicized documents from the The Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) revealing the nature of discipline against Insp. Gary Meissner of 51 Division.

Police attempted to track down some of the violent protesters following some of the vandalism during the G20, including the “black bloc.” Early morning on June 27, 2010, Toronto police entered the Graduate Students Union’s (GSU) pub and gymnasium in the Koffler Student Centre at the University of Toronto in . . . [more]

This is an update to my recent post: Could Cellphone Use Constitute Electronic Presence at Crime?

The Supreme Court of Canada has refused leave to appeal the decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in Tucows.com v Lojas Renner 2011 ONCA 548

That decision had held that Tucows.com could bring an action for a declaration of its rights to a domain name in an Ontario court, on the ground that the dispute involved “real or personal property located in Ontario”. In this case, Tucows.com was the registrar and the owner of the domain name Renner. com. The other party was a Brazilian company that owned the trade mark ‘Renner’ (though not apparently in Canada.)

The Court . . . [more]

The Claude Robinson plagiarism case is not yet over! The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear the case on appeal.

The New York state legislature is reviewing two proposed laws that would seemingly make it mandatory for operators of blogs, websites, etc., to take down anonymous comments upon request “unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name and home address are accurate”.

Also included is an obligation for any website “where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages” must develop infrastructure and contact mechanisms for a.) allowing takedown requests to be submitted and b.) for contacting anonymous posters and seeking their . . . [more]

The National Post recently presented the interesting case in which a New Jersey judge must decide whether someone can be “electronically present” in a car, even if they physically aren’t there, and, if so, whether the person can be held liable for events that take place, or that are caused by their electronic presence.

On May 22 the B.C. Supreme Court issued an interesting ruling in Vilardell v. Dunham, 2012 BCSC 748, an application that arose out of a family law proceeding. The plaintiff had sought to be relieved of hearing fees, or fees for the use of the courtroom. It is important to note the fees in question were as existed under a version of the Supreme Court Rules that was repealed and replaced in 2009; hearing fees continue to exist (at least to the point of yesterday’s ruling) but are reduced.

The Courthouse Libraries BC prepared an excellent and short . . . [more]

On May 11 a US District Court issued its long awaited decision in the lawsuit brought by three academic publishers against Georgia State University for its use of copyrighted materials in its “electronic reserves” system. A practice at many universities is to post scans of required classroom readings to secure “student only” websites or course management systems such as Blackboard. The GSU had developed a policy on the use of copyrighted materials that attempted to balance the rights of copyright holders and the University’s fair use rights. The GSU policy includes a “fair use checklist” that is based on the . . . [more]

As the status of the various Criminal Code provisions concerning prostitution floats its inevitable way upward towards the Supreme Court, now that the Ontario Court of Appeal has struck down some of them, readers of Slaw might like to learn something about how the matter is handled in other countries. The ever helpful Legal and Legislative Affairs Division of the Library of Parliament’s Information and Research Service has released online a “Prostitution: A Review of Legislation in Selected Countries” (by Laura Barnett, Lyne Casavant, and Julia Nicol) [PDF].

The countries examined are Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sweden, . . . [more]