After doing online writing for about a year and a half now, one of my most read pieces is Employee Privacy in Canada. I also get plenty of legal inquiries by e-mail on it, and of course have to respond that I cannot provide legal advice.

It’s also a topic of interest to in-house counsel, who increasingly have to respond to managers about the checks and monitors they are allowed to use for their staff.

Perhaps then it’s no surprise that the subject was also prominently featured at the OBA 2009 Institute of Continuing Legal Education on Feb. 3, . . . [more]

Following up on Simon’s vaccines post from earlier this week comes the encouraging news that on Thursday (happy 200, Charles Darwin) the U.S. Court of Federal Claims issued decisions in three vaccine-related test cases rejecting any causal link between vaccines and autism.

Yet, much like with the Pennsylvania victory in the battle over teaching evolution, I can only manage a half-hearted cheer at this latest triumph of science over superstition and ignorance. That it is even necessary to take this to trial – to say nothing of the refusal of so many to accept the correctness of . . . [more]

The Supreme Court dismissed the appeals of the Ermineskin Nation et al. against the Federal Court of Appeal ruling that denied the plaintiffs’ claim that the federal government had a fiduciary role under Treaty Number 6 such that the oil and gas revenues resulting from extraction under the plaintiffs’ land should have been invested for their benefit. At stake were some two billion dollars. Justice Rothstein wrote the judgment of the 7 member court: Ermineskin Indian Band and Nation v. Canada, 2009 SCC 9 . . . [more]

Congratulations to Doug Cornelius who has started the new blog Compliance Building. You may remember last October we mentioned he had moved from his real estate practice and knowledge management law firm work to take on the role of Chief Compliance Office for Beacon Capital Partners, LLC, a real estate private equity firm. On the “About” page, he explains the new blog: “I focus on compliance issues applicable to real estate private equity firms.”

I love the dual meaning of the blog title! Very clever, even if it does stray from his “spaces” blog name theme. . . . [more]

As everyone knows by now, Amazon is poised to bring out Kindle 2 in the U.S. Apart from its other features, the Kindle 2 can read — out loud. This is, of course, no more than any competent computer can do nowadays, and in tones that are increasingly lifelike. But this ability to speak a book worries the American Authors Guild, which opines that an act of turning text to speech might violate copyright, or, more precisely, impinge on an author’s “e-book rights.”

(Most commentary you’ll read on this — WSJ, Boing Boing, and those quoted in . . . [more]

Courtesy of the Northern European law firm Roschier comes news of this most alarming decision from the Finnish Supreme Court: running an ice fishing competition without a lottery licence.

Supreme Court Rules on Lottery Offence in Ice Fishing Competition Case

The Supreme Court ruled on 30 December 2008 that an ice fishing competition can constitute a lottery in accordance with the Lotteries Act. […]

[T]he participants were entitled a prize of monetary value for each fish caught based on the weight of that single fish. The value of this prize rose substantially along with the weight classes, but at the

For those interested in the legal challenges posed by the “war on terror”, this Friday’s broadcast of “The Agenda”, on TVOntario, will have an interview with my good friend Ben Wittes, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and author of the recent book Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror. Well worth a look, especially for those who comfort themselves with the idea that maximal protection for human rights entails no trade-offs in terms of security – or vice versa. . . . [more]

SLAW has had some recent posts on the availability of the works of Charles Darwin being available online (here and here), presumably as a result of tomorrow being the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Likely because of that anniversary, PBS in Buffalo/Toronto broadcast last night a documentary called “Intelligent Design on Trial.” The documentary can be viewed in clips at the foregoing link where there are also transcripts and extra video clips and links.

The show was a documentary on the attempt by the Dover Area School Board (in rural Pennsylvania) in late 2004 to . . . [more]

Dr. Ben Goldacre writes a weekly column for the Guardian called Bad Science, in which he “skewers” journalists, politicians, advertisers and others who misrepresent, make up or ignore scientific evidence concerning the sorts of things that concern us all. He also maintains a blog by the same name, where he can (and does) expatiate on these issues. One of his recurring themes is the awful mishandling of vaccination data by the media and, consequently, the various vaccination panics that spring up around the world.

In this connection he writes about an interview he gave on LBC Radio in . . . [more]

I’ve been asked for more information about the LCO Symposium in May, so I thought I’d provide it here. We will be posting on the LCO website soon. The format is a series of conversations that are intended to encourage dialogue among panellists and audience (in the various configurations). I’m trying to avoid a “talking at” environment. The conversations are “What are We Talking About, Anyway?” when we’re talking about law reform;”How do We do It?”; and “What Challenges does Law Reform Face?”. Michael Tilbury of the New South Wales Law Reform Commission will give a free public lecture on . . . [more]

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that taking someone’s picture without their consent (or in this case, taking a newborn baby’s picture without its parents’ consent) is a breach of fundamental human rights, whether or not the picture is ever published. The story is on OutLaw.com. [The judgment in Affaire Reklos et Davourlis c. Grèce is available only in French.]

“The Court reiterated that the concept of private life was a broad one which encompassed the right to identity,” said an ECHR press release about the ruling. “It stressed that a person’s image revealed his or

There’s been some discussion about Facebook and privacy, but less, perhaps, about the matter of who may use the material posted to it. Remember the fuss when Google Chrome’s EULA claimed rights in everything that passed through the browser? Well, if you’re a Facebook user, you might want to take a look at their “contractual” offer.

Facebook’s terms of use make it clear that in using the site you:

hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to

(a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan,