The Washington Post reported yesterday that the U.S. music industry’s knuckle rapper, the RIAA, has come up with a new argument in a lawsuit against a defendant it claims has violated copyright.

In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. [emphasis in original]

But Endgadget is now reporting that the Post and others got it wrong: the RIAA is . . . [more]

The announcement below was sent out today. Louise Hamel, Manager at the Judges’ Library, tells me there is new content which has also been translated into French. The real news, though, is the official new design of the site. Congratulations to the Judges’ Library!

I am pleased to announce that the Guide to Ontario Courts www.ontariocourts.on.ca has been re-launched.

This revitalized website was reorganized and updated in response to user feedback on content and design, and in consultation with the Office of each court. We have developed what we hope will be a more user friendly = website with each

Sad news from the Supreme Court today of the death of Gerald Eric Le Dain, law teacher and judge. He was educated at McGill University and the University of Lyon, where he became a Docteur de l’Université in 1950. He practised law with Walker, Martineau, Chauvin, Walker & Allison in Montreal, and taught at McGill University, before becoming dean of Osgoode Hall Law School in 1967.

On a personal note Gerry gave both of the Slaw Simons their first academic jobs.

For Canadians of a certain age, his name will be associated with the Commission of Inquiry into the . . . [more]

In its Dec. 21, 2007 issue, The Lawyers Weekly devotes a special section to reviewing the major news stories of 2007 in the legal field.

Perhaps the biggest story of the year is the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that has fundamentally changed Canadian society (see Library Boy posts Survey on Canadian Attitudes Regarding Charter of Rights, Feb. 8, 2007; Articles on 25th Anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, April 6, 2007; Top Ten Charter Cases, April 14, 2007).

The Lawyers Weekly article draws attention to a number of . . . [more]

The Canadian Labour Congress announced a “Victory for Workers” on Friday:

Workers finally have new law to protect their wages

OTTAWA – Canadian workers have finally won new legal protection for their wages and their pension contributions when their employer goes bankrupt. Bill C-12, a series of amendments to existing insolvency and wage protection laws, was approved by the Senate last night and received Royal Assent today. This was accomplished after an intensive three-year campaign by the Canadian Labour Congress and its affiliated unions to change bankruptcy laws that unfairly put workers last in line to get paid.

It seems . . . [more]

As most Slaw readers will know, there’s an important case coming up before the United States Supreme Court requiring the justices to interpret the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for the first time since the 18 paragraph decision in United States v. Miller 307 U.S. 174 (1939). The new case, District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290, will challenge a trio of D.C. gun control laws.

The poor Second Amendment has been the butt of a lot of tortured analysis, part of the fascinating (and to my mind somewhat bizarre) attempt of American judges and lawyers to . . . [more]

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court of Canada decision on aboriginal rights known as Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, [1997] 3 S.C.R. 1010.

For the first time, the Court directly addressed the issue of aboriginal title.

The Gitxsan Nation and the Wet’suwet’en Nation in British Columbia had started a lawsuit in 1984. Their claim covered 133 individual territories, amounting to 58,000 square kilometres of the northwestern part of their province. They claimed both ownership of the land and jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court did not rule as to whether the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en have aboriginal title to . . . [more]

The Canadian Parliament held emergency sittings of both the House of Commons and the Senate last night to pass through Bill C-38 on an urgent basis. This Bill is meant to force the re-opening of the Chalk River Nuclear Reactor, previously closed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in November on safety concerns. This reactor reportedly creates two-thirds of the world’s isotopes for use in medical evaluations or treatment, including for cancer. There is now a world shortage of these isotopes which has pressured the government to make this move. Bill C-38 was passed last night, but is not yet . . . [more]

Sun Microsystems, like other corporations that are involved in the development and use of open source software, requires those who contribute to their efforts to sign contribution agreements that set out the terms of their relationship. Sun’s general counsel, Mike Dillon, has a great piece on his blog, The Legal Thing, about these contribution agreements and how they ought to be “a model of simplicity and clarity.”

A man of his word, Dillon put a team onto the redrafting of Sun’s contribution agreement, with the result that most anyone who is literate can now understand it. Take a . . . [more]

In ebook form, with wonderful public domain illustrations, the full text of Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark”, here. Carroll’s is far more entertaining, far better than mine. More educational, too.

Anyway, this place supposedly being about things related to law, here’s an excerpt from “Fit the Sixth – The Barrister’s Dream”. The full text of “Fit the Sixth” follows after the break, together with the illustration that accompanies it.

He dreamed that he stood in a shadowy Court,
Where the Snark, with a glass in its eye,
Dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending a pig
On

It was always my understanding that QuickLaw’s Canadian case law coverage was equal, if not superior, to LexisNexis’. If you too were operating under that assumption, then the following may surprise you… 

I had found a reference to a case using the Nadin-Davis Sentencing Digest. Unfortunately, no citation was provided; it did, however, list the name of the case, the date (1986), the judge and the level of court. The digest entry also mentioned that the case had been appealed. So I set about to search for the case. 

I turned first to QuickLaw. I searched by case name and . . . [more]

I received a message from a library discussion list this morning informing readers of an open house and call-in event at Minister Prentice’s constituency office tomorrow, Saturday December 8. The message notes that rumours are that the forthcoming copyright bill will resemble the US DMCA in some controversial respects. More information about the open house and call-in is available here. . . . [more]