The report by Justice Richard Goldstone on the Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, released yesterday, is raising some interesting legal questions.

The report concluded that both Israel and the Palestinians had committed war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity. The most obvious question people are asking is the effect of this report on the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The Israeli media has stated that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel, as a non-signatory to the Rome Statute. Israeli legal scholars have generally taken a similar position, but this appears to be flawed. . . . [more]

Recently, I attended a session that brought together Legal Aid officials and representatives of legal clinics, among others, to discuss how to improve access to clinic services by members of racialized communities. I want to mention only one point that a participant raised at the meeting and that is the use of technology to provide information to people using the legal system (or wanting access to the legal system), ostensibly to increase their capacity for “self-help”. . . . [more]

In case you haven’t kept up to date with the Canadian Copyright Consultations, a grace period has been added to the period for comment, extending it to midnight tonight. Michael Geist has additional details on his blog. . . . [more]

New UK Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw is expected to announce later this week a three-month consultation process over lifting the ban on product placement in television programming in the UK. The move responds to plunging advertising revenues in the broadcast sector, and is a reversal of position from that of the previous Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham. Expect debate over the need to find alternative revenue sources for programming, and the erosion of programming quality, creative independence, and the public’s trust due to the blurring of advertising messaging and content.

Under current rules, programmes can show products used as props, but . . . [more]

Creative Commons published a study on September 14, 2009, Defining “Noncommercial”: A Study of How the Online Population Understands “Noncomemrcial Use”.

This Study was commissioned by Creative Commons in 2008-2009 from a professional market research firm to delve into the meaning of “commercial” and “noncommercial” use in relation to online content.

One quote from the Executive Summary:

Perceptions of the many use cases studied suggest that with the exception of uses that earn users money or involve advertising – at least until specific case scenarios are presented that disrupt those generalized views of commerciality – there is more uncertainty

Having taken Labour Day off, I present a double edition of biotech highlights:

Double Money:

• Genome BC and Genome Canada put $3.4 million into a grape and wine genomics project that will try to bring molecular techniques to bear on winemaking. And…
• The Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) is providing $50 million to BDC for direct investments in “early-stage firms in Southern Ontario” and for investments in VC funds “focused on Ontario-based opportunities.”

Double Caution:

• An article in the New York Times called direct-to-consumer genetic testing “fraught with potential dangers.” And…
• The FDA revised

I got done for speeding a while back and went to trial (a year later) to plead guilty to a reduced speed, so to speak. The brush with the (quasi)criminal system — my first since being put in the slammer for parking tickets way back when I was a callow scofflaw — was interesting, if only because there was a steady parade of semi-sheepish drivers from all walks of life passing through the same system on that day.

The speeding law is one of the most frequent points of contact between the public and “the law,” I’d say. Which makes . . . [more]

Members of the Slaw community might remember an article I wrote some weeks ago entitled Twittercles in which I marvelled at the impact Twitter had on our student recruitment this year.

As a follow-up, I invite you to read a wonderful piece authored by the student Twitter helped us to discover, Joel Welch. As a former RCMP officer turned defence lawyer, Joel has a fascinating perspective on both sides of the criminal law fence and I think you may be interested in hearing his musings.

Arrested Development. . . . [more]

I see one of the most-quoted posts today on Twitter is All publicly funded content should be in the public domain from popular blog Boing Boing, written by Jesse Brown, host of TV Ontario’s Search Engine podcast. Since he pulls CBC, Telefilm, the Canadian Television Fund and The Canada Council for the Arts into his argument, I thought we (as good Canadians) should have a look at the position he posits. It is:

I think that any publicly funded content should (within, say, 5 years of its creation) be released to the public domain.

Thoughts? (Un-Canadians welcome. Let’s open an

Danske Dagblades Forening, a Danish newspaper industry body, is suing Infopaq, a Danish clippings service, over its reproduction of 11-word snippets of news for sale to clients. The European Court of Justice stated that copyright law would apply to extracts even if they contained just 11 words. However, the Court has not yet ruled in this case. The Court stated that it is up to a national court to decide first whether a newspaper article has copyright protection (though generally newspaper articles are protected by copyright.) . . . [more]

When I got back from vacation just over a week ago I discovered there was an elephant in the room: a possible looming federal election that no one really wanted to discuss. Except, perhaps, the media. We’ve even avoided discussing it here on Slaw for whatever reason (are we just too polite to talk politics in public? How very Canadian). In the meantime we have a lovely trio of election-related controversies from which to sample: . . . [more]

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice released its decision on an application in York University v. Bell Canada Enterprises this Friday. The case is based on an allegedly defamatory e-mail about the President of York University, Mamdouh Shoukri, saying he had “perpetrated an outrageous fraud.”

A group calling itself “York Faculty Concerned About the Future of York University” protested the appointment of Martin Singer of the new Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, questioning his credentials and attaching a letter from other academics who did disclose their names.

But the University is more interested in the identity of . . . [more]