From national politics let’s turn our sights to the local variety: Bob LeDrew over at Flacklife has picked up the newsdurhamregion.com story of Oshawa City Councillor Robert Lutczyk who claims to hold the copyright on the name “University of Ontario Institute of Technology” among other names. Thing is, the University of Ontario Institute of Technology already existed before he supposedly copyrighted the name in 2005. . . . [more]

The Register has an interesting report on crimes in virtual worlds.

According to a study [PDF] by the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), there is a lot of crime in virtual worlds, and it can be lucrative.

Quoth the author of the study: “While annual real-money sales of virtual goods is estimated at nearly €2bn ($2.51bn) worldwide, users can do very little if their virtual property is stolen. They are a very soft target for cybercriminals.”

There is of course an action plan – indeed a 12-step program – one step of which is “Clarification of virtual property . . . [more]

There’s an interesting exchange over at AdamsDrafting between blogger Ken Adams and a couple of lawyers from Cassels Brock, John Gillies and Kathleen Hogan. The issue is the use of “shall” and “will” in business contracts, having, of course, to do with the expression of obligation and futurity, and vexed by a possibly differing practice of interpretation of the legislative use of these words.

How do you use these two tricky words in contracts? Do you define them in the contract or leave their meaning to interpretation?

I shall be interested in what you will have to say. . . . [more]

Slaw is pleased to announce that the Toronto Opinions Group (TOROG) has agreed to make public on Slaw memos and precedents that may prove to be helpful to others. The Toronto Opinions Group consists of a group of lawyers, primarily practising with the Toronto offices of the larger Canadian law firms, with an interest in third party (or transaction) opinion practice. TOROG meets regularly to review current opinion issues with a view, where appropriate, to discussing problems, assessing best practices and developing common approaches to opinion issues and opinion language. It does not involve itself in specific transactions or opinion . . . [more]

The CRTC has just released its decision in the complaint brought by the Canadian Association of Internet Providers against Bell regarding Internet “throttling” or “traffic shaping”. It rejected CAIP’s request, which turned on the specific wording of Bell’s wholsale service agreement. However, it has also announced that it will launch a proceeding to examine Internet traffic shaping as a question of policy, to determine whether new rules should be imposed.

The news release is here; the decision on the CAIP complaint is here. The public notice regarding the new proceeding does not yet appear to have been posted, . . . [more]

The federal government’s Speech from the Throne was delivered today by Governor General Michaelle Jean in the Senate Chamber.

The Speech from the Throne outlined the recently re-elected Conservative government’s legislative agenda for the 40th Parliament.

As expected, the speech concentrated almost exclusively on the current worldwide economic crisis. Details of what the government plans to do about the slowdown will be unveiled next week by the Finance Minister.

Not that the government is relegating hot button law and order issues to the back burner.

The speech did mention justice initiatives, including added penalties for offences related to youth crime, . . . [more]

Statistics Canada has released data on divorces in Canada for 2005. . . . [more]

The University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre has put its archive of Colonial Despatches (The colonial despatches of Vancouver Island and British Columbia 1846-1871) online:

This project aims to digitize and publish online a complete archive of the correspondence covering the period from 1846 leading to the founding of Vancouver Island in 1849, the founding of British Columbia in 1858, the annexation of Vancouver Island by British Columbia in 1866, and up to the incorporation of B.C. into the Canadian Federation in 1871.

The online archive consists of three parts, a collection of photographed original documents, a collection . . . [more]

Those interested in European law or in freedom of expression might want to take a look at documents from “The European Protection of Freedom of Expression: Some Recent Restrictive Trends”, a recent seminar at the European Court of Human Rights, which was directed at the question: “Are recent developments in the Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights case-law undermining adequate guarantees for freedom of expression?”

Here’s a partial list of papers available in PDF, to give you a sense of what’s there:

Freedom of Expression and Article 10 ECHR – Summaries of 20 recent

It’s not the first time a city or location is suing for intellectual property in its name. But it’s probably the first time a major blockbuster has been the target of the lawsuit.

The city of Batman, located in eastern Turkey, is named after the river by the same name that flows into the Tigris. Both the river and the oil-producing city derive their name from the adjoining Bati Raman mountains.

Batman is known around the world for a much more popular comic book character, turned into blockbuster film. The $1billion box office sales for the Dark Knight . . . [more]

On Monday, November 17, 2008 Dr. Colin J. Bennett, Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Victoria, will be speaking at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto about identity cards in Canada. Details here and in the full press release below the fold. . . . [more]

Yesterday’s widely-reported story that the Obama administration-in-waiting is already drawing up plans to close the facility at close the facility at Guantánamo Bay and try the remaining suspects in the U.S. has generated a lot of buzz. In fact, the Obama team appears to be trying to temper expectations, as last night saw further stories emphasizing that no decisions have yet been made.

One should probably be skeptical about such reports in any event, given the incentive for anonymous “advisors” to the incoming administration to try to steer the agenda. But no reasonable person, in my view, should be . . . [more]