Perhaps the thorniest of emerging Internet legal and policy issues these days is the question of Internet intermediaries. It is a feature of the Internet that all online activity is intermediated through at least one and often several service providers, such as ISPs, social networking sites, blog hosting sites, etc. Standing at the crux of all this activity, intermediaries are uniquely placed to exert a great deal of control and surveillance over activities of downstream users, making them a compelling target for policy-makers and aggrieved plaintiffs alike. The Supreme Court of Canada’s recent seminal decision in Crookes v. Newton offers . . . [more]

What are you doing at 6:00 PM (ET) on Monday, November 14, 2011? If you’re in Toronto, consider coming to Fraser Milner Cagrain at 77 King Street West to hear Human Rights Adjudication in the 21st Century, a talk by Timothy Endicott, Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Legal Philosophy (for Lawyers and Non-Lawyers alike)

The timetable is 6pm Wine and Cheese Reception, 6.45pm Talk and Discussion. $20 at the door but please let us know if you’re on the fence so we know how many to cater for. Here is the log-in.

Timothy Endicott is a Canadian . . . [more]

Aaron Swartz is that rare individual who is prepared to risk imprisonment in order to promote the cause of open access. And we’re not talking about liberating “tunes” or movies or, indeed, anything of much “entertainment value”; Swartz goes for the serious, you might say earnest, stuff. At the moment the young man stands accused of various crimes associated with his downloading of 4.8 million articles from JSTOR. (Many, but by no means all, readers of Slaw will know that JSTOR stands for “Journal Storage” and is a not-for-profit, but paywall-protected, online archive for academic journals.)

There are good . . . [more]

Flags are being raised by numerous privacy experts about expected federal “lawful access” legislation. This legislation–expected to be reintroduced–was last seen in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session, which ended March 26, 2011 and includes:

• Bill C-50 – Improving Access to Investigative Tools for Serious Crimes Act
• Bill C-51 – Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act
• Bill C-52 – Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act

Excerpted from a commentary by Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario Ann Cavoukian published in today’s National Post:

At issue is the anticipated re-introduction of a trio of federal bills that will provide

This week the Ontario Suprerior Court of Justice ruled in the costs award in the online defamation case of Baglow v. Smith.

The plaintiff, who lost on summary judgment, sought only minimal costs based on public interest because he claimed the case dealt with a novel point of law and fact situation. He based this on the commentary in the decision on “removing the sting” in blogging, which as I’ve noted here before was a unique approach to dealing with online defamation.

Annis J. rejected this argument and stated that his decision was primarily based on two points:

1. the

A few days ago, Antonio Cassese, a renowned international war crimes expert, died at his home in Florence, Italy at the age of 74.

A well-known professor of international criminal law, he was appointed in 1993 as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, based at the Hague. It was the first international criminal tribunal since the ones that followed World War II.

Among his early decisions, seen as controversial at the time but widely accepted since, were several that changed basic precepts of international criminal law. One was that war crimes could be punished

In R. v. Barros, 2011 SCC 51, handed down yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled on whether the defence in a criminal matter is bound by the “informer privilege,” deciding that it is not so bound.

Mr Justice Binnie wrote the judgment for the 7 in the majority, and on the broad point just stated his first paragraph says it all:

The jurisprudence establishes that the identity of police informers is protected by a near-absolute privilege that overrides the Crown’s general duty of disclosure to the defence. This privilege is subject neither to judicial discretion nor any balancing of

I like to know things first. It’s a character flaw that is exacerbated by a desire to place the libraries first in the minds of my firm’s lawyers for being the source of current information. With all the technology available for learning things, it should be easy to learn what you need to know. Lately though, I find myself stymied in my desire to know things first.

Today is a good example. Being from an Alberta farming background and growing up with my great grandfather’s shotgun stored in my closet (unloaded of course), I thought I would write about the . . . [more]

Already the subject of Slaw posts in the past with regard to different jurisdictions (see here and here), it is now Quebec’s turn to recognize service via Facebook after the Court of Quebec authorized this past summer a plaintiff to serve its motion to institute proceedings via this social network ing site.

In Boivin & Associés c. Scott, 2011 QCCQ 10324 (CanLII), the plaintiff submitted evidence that it had made every effort possible to serve the defendant by traditional means, but to no avail. Indeed, the defendant had no known address in Quebec and her last known address . . . [more]

While Canada has not exactly had its bottleshock moment, over the last few decades various regions of Canada, including British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Ontario have become notable for their wine producing regions. These producers have developed to such an extent that demand for their products has grown to a point where requests for their wines come from all quarters (undeniably is a good thing) except for when the wine producers have to decline certain requests, which happens on a regular basis because of the Importation of Intoxicating Liqours Act, RSC 1985 c I-3. Specifically section 3(1) of . . . [more]

The British Columbia Supreme Court has recently given judgment for Century 21 Real Estate company against a company (affiliated with Rogers Communications) that scraped real estate listing information from the Century 21 sites and repackaged it on its own site: Century 21 v Rogers Communications 2011 BC 1196 .

The court thoroughly reviewed US and Canadian law on the topic and recited a number of factors that might support a finding that a ‘browsewrap’ contract (i.e. one that did not depend on any active assent to its terms, but that operated by mere use of the web site) would be . . . [more]

It’s an obvious feature of practice that a lawyer’s professional interest will generally gravitate towards the big, the powerful, and the rich — there’s a business side to lawyering, after all, (though I’m not yet prepared to agree with those who say, reductively, that practice is a business), and, as a long-gone uncle used to opine, “It’s gotta be fed and it don’t eat hay.” That said, it’s good, I think, even for those in big towers and Jimmy Choo shoes, to reflect on small wrongs and rightings from time to time, the matters at the bottom of the justice . . . [more]