[Slaw editor’s note: John Gregory is, among many other things, a Slaw member and also the manager of a highly successful and interesting private email list, ULC_ECOMM, on e-commerce and related matters. He is kind enough to allow Slaw to republish his provocative contributions to that list. We hope that, as they do on his list, they will stir up some discussion here on Slaw.]

Internet Law News today tells us this:

YALE STUDENTS NAME ALLEGED HARASSER IN WEB LIBEL SUIT [Boston.com]
Two female students at Yale Law School who say anonymous, defamatory comments were made about

Although EISIL (Electronic Information System for International Law) has received a glancing mention here on Slaw, we haven’t pointed at it directly until now. From the “About” page:

EISIL offers the international law expert the depth of resources for sophisticated legal research. At the same time, EISIL can provide the novice researcher with the information needed to undertake a successful search. The comprehensive scope of EISIL enhances its potential as a research and teaching tool.

The search page is organized into the following main topic heads, each of which offers links to “basis sources” in the area and appropriate sub-topics . . . [more]

This is an important (though admittedly recherché) area of corporate practice, which has a great resource of background materials maintained by the ABA Business Law Section Committee on Legal Opinions.

The Canadian equivalents are (hélas) maintained behind firewalls. . . . [more]

CasemakerX announced today the development of a social networking site which will be available to American law students, law school faculty and law librarians who register as users ((CasemakerX is a free service supported by the Casemaker Bar Consortium and its 475,000 attorney membership consisting of State Bar Associations across the USA. The purpose of CasemakerX is to provide a conduit to network law students and legal professionals, creating an information portal for self-promotion, education, mentoring and future opportunities in the legal profession. Our mission is to help law students connect and use the power of group knowledge and professional/social . . . [more]

Over at TechDirt, a comment on the idea, now espoused by at least one patent lawyer, that multiple inventions of the same thing at the same time should be taken as evidence that the invention is ‘obvious’ enough not to warrant a patent. . . . [more]

Fascinating real-life stuff.

New York Post photojournalist Steven Hirsch writes a blog called Courthouse Confessions.

It is all based on his encounters in front of the Manhattan Criminal Court with criminal defendants leaving the building.

He snaps their pictures and asks them a few questions.

[Source: New York Times, August 3rd, 2008]

Cross-posted to Library Boy. . . . [more]

Simon Fodden noted in a post a couple of days ago that a couple of copyright commenters have stopped commenting because “the current state of copyright law is truly depressing”, or “ “corruption” of the political process”.

IMHO, one of the problems with the current state of copyright law is that legislators, lobbyists, interest groups and lawyers are for the most part all so bogged down in the details that they fail to see the big picture and fail to go back to the fundamentals to think things through.

As lawyers we are (or at least we should be) good . . . [more]

A tip of the SLAW hat to Richard (Rick) Sage (of the Ontario Legislative Library) who made me aware today of “Our Ontario” (http://www.ourontario.ca) (SLAW’s Neil Campbell mentioned a related initiative relating to Alouette Canada in his 17 April 2007 post here).

The Government Documents collection on the “Our Ontario” site at http://govdocs.ourontario.ca can be used to find old Ontario Legislative Assembly Journals (turn-of-the-century old, e.g., from 1867).

If you type in the following terms – ontario legislative assembly journals – using the “AND” connector radio button, the first link is to the “repository directory” being http://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/ser/23347/ . . . [more]

I’ve discovered through the latest Language Log column, “Trademark Insanity,” that Dell Computers has applied to have “cloud computing” registered as a trade mark in the U.S. and that, with the Opposition Period over, a Notice of Allowance has been issued. Slashdot has some information on who has used the term when, it seeming clear that Dell has no special claim. . . . [more]

That great Canadian blogger Rob Hyndman has a good piece on the sad news that William Patry is closing down his copyright blog. Patry has two reasons: first, because he can’t get people to treat what he says as personal, as having no connection to his work as Google’s copyright counsel; and second, more unhappy, because the current state of copyright law is truly depressing. Rob notes that Larry Lessig abandoned the field because of a “corruption” of the political process.

Read both entries. . . . [more]

Canadian lawyers should familiarize themselves with the Homeland Security policy on inspections of laptops at the border released a couple of weeks ago. Note the provisions at E (3) on claims of legal privilege. . . . [more]

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has made available free a 138 page e-book, “THE FBI: A Centennial History, 1908-2008.” You may read it online (HTML format) or download the PDF files for each chapter or for the book as a whole; I’d recommend PDF if only for the photographs throughout, which are absent from the HTML version. The various chapters are as follows:

Dedication/Foreword
The Nation Calls, 1908-1923
The FBI and the American Gangster, 1924-1938
World War, Cold War, 1939 to 1953
And Justice for All, 1954-1971
Crime and Corruption Across America, 1972-1988
A World of Trouble,