Recently, the tech world has been buzzing with recent corporate blow-ups involving high level executives. Indeed, recently, Carol Bartz, the then-CEO of Yahoo, was fired over the phone and subsequently publicly denounced her boss as a “doofus”. As reported in Canadian Business magazine, Michael Arrington’s recent spat with his former employer, AOL, also went swimmingly. Both high-profile terminations had an effect on the employers.

Bartz mainly damaged her own career prospects, but her public outburst reflected poorly on the company. The incident almost certainly hurt employee morale, riled activist investors and added to Yahoo’s legal fees.

Less than a week

Recently, I had occasion to look at the speeches and presentations made by members of ultimate courts of appeal – the Supreme Court and its equivalents. And Canada ranks somewhat disgracefully last in terms of making the speeches publicly available.

Eugene Meehan has monitored the court too for speeches and presentations, but his pickings are similarly slim in recent years. . . . [more]

As an update to my posting of 19 September 2011, the Canadian government introduced on 29 September 2011, Bill C-11, An Act to Amend the Copyright Act. This bill is identical to Bill C-32 which was introduced in June 2010. Bill C-32 died in March 2011 when the Canadian government fell in a vote of no confidence. This is the 4th attempt at amending the 1924 Canadian Copyright Act in order to address newer ways in which we all create, distribute and use copyright-protected works, and in order for Canada to be able to join the two digital WIPO . . . [more]

Fenerbahçe S.K. is a football club based in Istanbul; aka the Yellow Canaries. Fenerbahçe are defending league champions in the Turkish Süper Lig. On July 21, 2011, Fenerbahçe’s fans rushed the field in a protest against perceived slights of the team by the media. As you might be aware international football has been plagued with fan violence in recent years and football’s governing bodies have taken steps to punish teams where such violence has taken place. In response to the incident on July 21, the Turkish FF (TFF- Türkiye Futbol Federasyonu) sentenced Fenerbahçe to a closed door match, . . . [more]

It is important that every business or organization has their domain names (eg slaw.ca) registered in their own name, and that the administrative contact is a senior person within the business.

There are a couple of reasons for that.

Domain names are often registered by an advertising agency, web designer, or IT provider for one of their customers. They should register it in their customer’s name, but often register it in their own name because it is simpler and easier for them.

Given that domain names are valuable assets, they ought to be registered in the actual owner’s name. The . . . [more]

This news story caught my eye yesterday: an elderly woman in British Columbia is suing her children for parental support. Ms. Anderson is asking that her two children each pay her $750 a month to make ends meet.

Most provinces in Canada have some legislative obligation for children to support their parents. For example, the Civil Code of Quebec stipulates that:

585. Married or civil union spouses, and relatives in the direct line in the first degree, owe each other support.

A few decisions in Quebec have been rendered under this section; however, it is clear that this provision does . . . [more]

One of the most fundamental of human rights is the right to participate in the making of the laws that govern you; and the basic right behind that is the right to vote. This might seem so clear to us now that it needs no mention, but equally clearly that hasn’t always been the case, one of the glaring illustrations being the relatively recent nature of women’s suffrage. Canada allowed women the vote only in 1917; the United States in 1920; France in 1944; and Switzerland in 1971. (There’s a good chart on Wikipedia that let’s you sort by country, . . . [more]

All of the papers from the 2007 Brooklyn Law School symposium on law, science and truth “Symposium: A Cross-Disciplinary Look At Scientific Truth: What’s The Law To Do?” as published in (2008) 73 Brooklyn Law Review are are available for downloading in one pdf here.

I recommend them (for whatever that’s worth).

Any Canadian lawyer-type reading any of those pieces should also read Mr. Justice Binnie’s “Science in the courtroom: the mouse that roared” (2007) 56 UNB LJ 307. The article is available on Carswell/Westlaw and can be found here and here.

He has more to say about science . . . [more]

The following post just went live on the VLLB, but it’s appropriate for the legal research community here at Slaw too. One of Stem’s clients, Quickscribe, has announced the relaunch one of BC’s most treasured legislative research tools, the BCLD. In the narrative below, you’ll find a brief history of the collection’s origin, custodianship, and how members of our West Coast law library community contributed to its digital rebirth.

The British Columbia Legislative Digest: A Brief History

The British Columbia Legislative Digest (BCLD) was conceived of in 1979 by librarians at the BC Courthouse Library, now Courthouse Libraries BC . . . [more]

Writers and publishers are continuously facing a changing landscape.  The Writers’ Union of Canada has developed 12 core demands for the digital age. Interesting list for authors in negotiations with their publishers.

1. Copyright legislation shall ensure the protection of intellectual property and appropriate compensation for rightsholders.
2. Exceptions to copyright shall be minimized.
3. The publisher shall split the net proceeds of ebook sales equally with the author.
4. The author shall retain all e-rights not specifically granted to the publisher or producer and shall have the approval of any modifications made to the work.
5. The publisher shall not exercise or sublicense ebook

The draft regulations under the anti-spam legislation have attracted a lot of comments, most them negative. See this article by Lorne Salzman and Barry Sookman for a detailed summary.

In essence, the common theme is that the legislation and draft regs will be a compliance burden on business and charities, and the regulations don’t do anything to temper that.

From the article:

Unless the proposed regulations are reformulated, many worry that CASL will impede rather than facilitate e-commerce. It will hurt small and large businesses, cause significant economic harm and stifle innovation in the use of electronic messaging systems. It