When was the last time you heard someone talk about NFTs? Was it when Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon showed off their Bored Apes on national television back in January of 2022? Or perhaps it was when Donald Trump unveiled his line of NFTs in December 2022. Or maybe, just maybe, you have that one friend who still insists, daily and with unwavering conviction, that NFTs are poised for a triumphant comeback, that the future of art is non-fungible, and that you’re a fool for not mortgaging your home to buy a JPEG of a doge meme. For the rest . . . [more]

On March 27, 2024, Windsor Law Professor Pascale Chapdelaine released her latest article on the very interesting topic of algorithmic personalized pricing.

Pascale Chapdelaine, “Algorithmic Personalized Pricing: A Personal Data Protection and Consumer Law Perspective” (2024) 102 Can Bar Rev (forthcoming, online via SSRN).

Here’s more information about the article:

“Price is often the single most important term in consumer transactions. As the personalization of e-commerce continues to intensify, the law and policy implications of algorithmic personalized pricing i.e., to set prices based on consumers’ personal data with the objective of getting as closely as possible to their maximum willingness . . . [more]

Customer service is in decline. In my opinion, the problem is worse with large organizations.

I skimmed the surface in my last post “The Robots are Already in Control (Part One)“.

Companies that are primarily internet-based are the worst. One of my major pet peeves is a corporate website that has no phone numbers. For many, at best the customer service phone line is almost unfindable – buried four clicks into the site. I’ve even gone so far as to phone the “company” side of the business (the side that deals with shareholders), because there was no . . . [more]

Last week, as I was preparing for our joint Windsor Law and EPICentre conference “Disruptive Technology: AI and Its Impact on the Legal Profession and the Automotive Industry – What Path(s) for Regulation“, this article flew by:

Jackie Davalos, Dina Bass, and Bloomberg, “Chatbots Keep Going Rogue as Microsoft Probes AI – powered Copilot that’s giving users bizarre, disturbing, even harmful messages” (Fortune, February 28, 2024). The original Reddit post shows a variety of outputs that interested users received.

First of all, some of them did acknowledge that the whole thing could be a hoax. However, Microsoft’s response, . . . [more]

Ever closed a browser tab accidentally and been unable to find it again? Sure, you could try to go through your browser history to attempt to locate it, but if you’re like me you likely keep your tabs open for days (sometimes weeks) at a time making a search through your history futile.

There are two ways that you can recover closed tabs. The methods vary between browsers and therefore, these tips will apply to Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome (sorry Microsoft Edge users!). The first method is to “Recover Last Session” or review “Recently Closed”.

In Google Chrome:

• Click

Today’s Tips Tuesday is a little trick that I use to save myself time when I need to reference a statute quickly. I use CanLII for the majority of my legal research and for all of my statute referencing. Instead of navigating to CanLII’s home page each time and searching the statute, I use bookmarks instead.

In my browser’s toolbar, I created a Legislation folder and have bookmarked all of the statutes that I might need to reference in my practice. For me this list includes:

• Alberta King’s Printer
• Alberta Rules of Court
• Civil Enforcement Act
• Condominium Property Act
• Employment

Prof Sean Rehaag recently published, “Luck of the Draw III: Using AI to Examine Decision-Making in Federal Court Stays of Removal”. This research entered my feed as it pertains to immigration and refugee law. Indeed, the research demonstrates interesting trends related to Federal Court decisions and Stay Motions. For example, Winnipeg has the lowest grant rates across Canada at only 16.2%. For immigration practitioners, I will briefly discuss the conclusions of this paper and my own analysis. Prof Rehaag focused this paper on statistics and his methodology. The paper offers scant analysis of the underlying numbers. The paper is invaluable . . . [more]

I am always on the lookout for innovative ways that libraries have found to create great stories about complex legal or historical issues that have many moving parts.

This one is quite remarkable: the Leddy Library at the University of Windsor has created a site that tells the story of the Missing Children of Indian Residential Schools using maps.

This intereactive visual representation of the residential school locations across Canada uses data from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report to document the experience:

“The recent discoveries of more than 1,700 unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools in

I don’t know if you’re like me but despite being a heavy user of e-mail, I am still often puzzled by it. More specifically, by how we often fail to use it to its full potential.

How many times does it happen that you receive an e-mail from a professional contact, a client or a supplier/vendor, perhaps even from an important work colleague, and you have so much trouble deciphering its meaning that you pick up the phone or get on chat to ask the sender what exactly they want you to do?

Given how insanely busy so many of . . . [more]

To many people’s delight, the Law Society of Ontario has stated that it is interpreting section 9 of the Commissioners for Taking Affidavits Act to include virtual commissioning. Reponses to a Slaw post by Pulat Yunusov from last November, in support of the LSO’s then position against virtual commissioning were dismissive of his concerns about virtual commissioning; they also illustrate the eagerness with which people are keen to throw off the bonds of in-person commissioning. (Yunusov stressed the importance of the ritual, as well as the inability of meeting some requirements through technology.)

However, the LSO is not the only . . . [more]

Encrypting our data and devices keeps our information safe. It keeps thieves out of our banking information, protects our personal health info from prying eyes, prevents fraud, lets us have candid private conversations, and helps keep the surveillance state at bay. 

But far too often law enforcement and governments view encryption as a hindrance, and call for backdoors to encryption so they can circumvent encryption when they want access. 

Security experts are adamant that backdoors to encryption would cause far more harm than good. It’s like a team of people with sledgehammers trying to kill a fly in a . . . [more]

As it does every year, December 1st has snuck up us. The date arrives just as the holiday busy season is heating up, and folks are packing their days and evenings with holiday shopping, parties, card-writing and travel plans. In the midst of all this, we ask the Canadian legal community to add one more thing to their plate: participating in the Canadian Law Blog Awards, fondly known as the Clawbies, now in its 14th year.

Thankfully, no one ever complains about this “one more thing”. In fact, many folks say they are grateful for the opportunity to reflect on . . . [more]