An announcement that’s appropriate, given that this weeks Column is on e-discovery:

The Sedona Canada E-discovery Principles [PDF] in English are now up on the Canadian E-discovery Portal, which is hosted by Lexum. The French version will be posted soon.

You will also be able to find Canadian e-discovery related precedents (common law, civil law) on the Portal.

Congratulations to everyone involved, particularly the “content managers” Peg Duncan, Dan Pinnington, Frédéric Pelletier and (Slawyer) Dominic Jaar. . . . [more]

We learn yet again, from a recent N.Y. Times piece that book titles can’t be copyrighted: there are now two books in print (one 30 years old, mind you) called The Saucier’s Apprentice.

Apart from the fact that Raymond Sokolov, the author of the older book, has done a brilliant job of promoting his work through this piece — it’s the work that comes up when you search for “the saucier’s apprentice” — what interests me is the question of why. Why can’t you copyright a book’s title? Or, to put it more broadly, why can’t you protect . . . [more]

Larry Lessig’s book “The Future of Ideas” is now free to download under Creative Commons attribution-non-commercial license.

Published in 2001 by Random House, the book addresses IP and the impact on it of the internet. You can read an excerpt here.

Lessig’s other books are also available free under a Creative Commons license:

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Creativity (Penguin Press, 2004).

Code And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0 (Basic Books, 2006).

[via Digital Koans] . . . [more]

It feels like I have been following the development of the Anne of Green Gables brand my whole life. The librarian in me can’t believe I didn’t take to reading until my grade 5 teacher introduced me to Anne Shirley and her cohorts Diana Barry and Gilbert Blythe. I read every book in L.M. Montgomery’s series, and then continued on with her other fiction series. I fondly recall a family trip to PEI to visit L.M. Montgomery’s childhood home. Later in life I discovered her adult writings and, as a student of English literature at the University of Guelph, . . . [more]

intellectual property or international business, trade, and competition- regulation lawyers.

The European Commission opened a new antitrust probe against Microsoft on Monday into whether it unfairly tied its Web browser to the Windows operating system and made it harder for rival software to work with Windows.

“This initiation of proceedings does not imply that the Commission has proof of an infringement. It only signifies that the Commission will further investigate the case as a matter of priority,” the Commission said.

And provide more billable work of for its lawyers and billable hours or work for Gates’.

I must say that . . . [more]

I don’t think Slaw has mentioned the International Judicial Monitor, an “international law resource for judiciaries, justice sector professionals, and the rule of law community around the world.” Published, or refreshed, every two months or so, this issue of the Monitor has a feature piece on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and notes on a dozen judicial developments in as many countries. There’s also a useful page of “international resources.”

The Monitor is published by the American Society of International Law in Washington, D.C. . . . [more]

I often consult WestlaweCarswell for electronic access to the Index to Canadian Legal Literature. I use the search template designed for that purpose. Usually I rely on general keyword searches. But today, since my research related to a specific piece of legislation, I thought I would use the “Legislation” field. Unfortunately, my various search term combinations did not easily yield the results I sought.

Here is a hypothetical example to illustrate my point:

If I entered Criminal Code 123 into the “Legislation” field, I got one hit, which actually related to s. 123 of another act and a different section

Comcast, AT&T, EarthLink, or whoever you send that monthly check to – could soon start sniffing your digital packets, looking for material that infringes on someone’s copyright.

The New York Times is speculating that the big ISP’s may be getting ready to filter what passes through their server to and from machines in the U.S., at least. Such a prying would place a premium on law firms’ either being their own ISP’s or using encrypted data when moving it via a commercial ISP. . . . [more]

Comcast, AT&T, EarthLink, or whoever you send that monthly check to – could soon start sniffing your digital packets, looking for material that infringes on someone’s copyright.

The New York Times is speculating that the big ISP’s may be getting ready to filter what passes through their server to and from machines in the U.S., at least. Such a prying would place a premium on law firms’ either being their own ISP’s or using encrypted data when moving it via a commercial ISP. . . . [more]

The Adbusters suit to get the major TV outlets to run its ads entered a new phase yesterday. The British Columbia Supreme Court began hearing argument on two motions, one to add the CBC as a party and the other by CanWest to have the case dismissed, presumably as showing no cause of action (the details are scarce, as usual when a lawsuit is involved). Adbusters has tried and failed to get the major networks to run its ads for Buy Nothing Day or those attacking the fast food and forestry industries. It seems–as I said, the details are scarce–that . . . [more]

There’s a U.S. wiki called Readable Laws that attempts to make American legislation come closer to plain speech than it does when leaving Congress. Because it’s an open wiki, this is a collaborative effort among those interested enough to join — which will make legal specialists shudder, no doubt.

Let me give you something of the flavour of the work being done. Here’s a passage from the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 (which seems sort of appropriate), a bill that has passed the House:

§2 (c) Limitations on Content of Information- The content of any testimony or document

The site Resourceshelf mentioned yesterday that the Columbia University website has posted videos of the presentations from an October 2007 international conference on Human Rights Archives and Documentation: Meeting the Needs of Research, Teaching, Advocacy, and Justice.

Scholars, human rights activists, legal advocates, librarians, and archivists from all over the world attended the conference to explore issues around how documentation of human rights situations is created, archived, preserved, accessed, and utilized.

The conference marked the formal opening of the Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research at Columbia University Libraries. The Center is the official repository for the archives . . . [more]