In a decision dated June 21, 2012, the Federal Court made it clear that, for purposes of copyright, using a hyperlink is not copying the material it points to. That seems obvious, but its nice to see it recognized by the courts. The Warman and National Post v Fournier decision also said that – at least in the circumstances of the case at bar – reproducing 1/4 of an original article was not a substantial part for copyright purposes, and was thus not a copyright violation.

This follows a Supreme Court of Canada decision last fall that said that a . . . [more]

Online survey tool Zoomerang has been acquired by Survey Monkey, and will move all their client accounts (and surveys) over to the new platform by year’s end.

I remember choosing Zoomerang because I thought the lack of a “monkey” in the name would be mildly more acceptable to business audiences. Feature wise, the two products were pretty much on par; so the next best differentiating factor I could come up with was how business friendly the name was.

In hindsight, I did later realize that “zoomerang” wasn’t all that conservative of a name either. Not that the online survey . . . [more]

It’s darn near impossible to keep up with the changes Facebook makes to your privacy and configuration settings. The latest change is a big one: Facebook just removed everyone’s contact email address from their profiles and replaced it with an @facebook.com address. This was done without asking your permission.
Apparently Facebook’s internal email address – the one they use for notifications and password resets – was not changed, just the one listed on your profile in your Timeline.
Facebook has had its own email since 2010. Almost no one uses it. Presumably this is an attempt to get more people . . . [more]

The ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 is seeking comments on a newly released Issues Paper entitled “Issues Paper Concerning Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.5 and the Limits on Virtual Presence in a Jurisdiction.” They are seeking comments to assist their consideration of the issues that come up when lawyers establish a presence and practice virtually in a jurisdiction that is away from their physical location. Responses are requested by July 31, 2012. See the above link for instructions on where to send them.

Remote virtual practices raise all sorts of interesting questions:

• How do you ensure the

An article soon to be published in the Virginia Law Review caught the eye of the Boston Globe, from where it came to my attention. In “Confronting Supreme Court Fact Finding” Alli Orr Larsen criticizes US Supreme Court judges for doing internet research on their own in order to supply legislative facts they feel are needed to resolve a case. I must say I hadn’t appreciated the degree to which, facilitated by the ease of access to data on the internet, the justices do this supplementary fact finding on their own.

The issue isn’t new, of course . . . [more]

The May 2012 issue of Connected is available online. The bulletin covers news about the impact of new social media on the courts.

It is published by the Virginia-based National Center for State Courts and the Conference of Court Public Information Officers.

According to the inaugural April 2011 issue:

“This newsletter will provide news, information and resources on topics such as how courts are using new media, the impact of new media on court proceedings, ethical implications of judges and court staff using new media, and court policy issues relating to new media.”

Most of the stories are about . . . [more]

Last week I attended a course at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria. I was one of several librarians in a class consisting mostly of digital humanists learning about digital pedagogy. We created hypothetical or real learning assignments relevant to our own fields.

In one of our exercises, the class explored an excellent (beta) site of digital research tools, a site new to me: Project Bamboo’s DiRT, which evolved from an earlier DiRT wiki. The site is a categorized collection of research tools, some of which were familiar but most of which were new . . . [more]

June 6, 2012 was chosen by the Internet Society as the world IPv6 launch day. Major ISPs, web companies and home networking equipment manufacturers have now turned IPv6 on permanently.

IPv6 is a new internet addressing scheme that will replace IPv4, the current scheme. The main issue was that IPv4 only allows 4.2 billion addresses, which is not enough to meet world demand – especially given the number of smartphones, computers, servers, and the future of the internet of things. IPv6 allows for 340 undecillion addresses (3 followed by 38 zeros).

More information can be found in this cnet . . . [more]

Last week LinkedIn suffered a major security breach where millions of “hashed” passwords were leaked. Dan Pinnington wrote an excellent post last week outlining how you can tell if your LinkedIn password has been compromised.

This security breach has prompted many to reset their password at LinkedIn and other sites. However, as Dan points out, you shouldn’t reset your password to a password you use at other sites. Why? The LinkedIn password leak gives us a perfect case study.

What was leaked at LinkedIn was not your exact password, but rather a hash of your password. A hash is . . . [more]

There has been a bit of discussion on a couple of Canadian lists lately of the appropriateness of commissioning an affidavit (or declaration or affirmation) by video link or by Skype (which is just another form of video, at least for the purposes of this question, is it not?).

Ontario law, and most other Canadian common law at least, requires that the person making the affidavit must be “in the presence of” the person commissioning it (notary, lawyer, commissioner for taking affidavits). See Commissioner for Taking Affidavits Act (Ontario) s. 9.

Question: Is one sufficiently “in the presence” of . . . [more]

As traditional computers and laptops increasingly compete against mobile devices like Apple’s iPads and iPhones, every business that operates online will be forced to reevaluate the effectiveness of their delivery. Asking questions like, “How well have we replicated our web experience on mobile devices?” Or, in cases where the mobile interface has been completely re-engineered, “What’s missing when comparing the two experiences?”

Admittedly, the necessity for this kind of comparison is still in its infancy in the legal market. But probably not for much longer; higher percentages of mobile visitors may be here in as little as 12 to 18 . . . [more]

This year, at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12), the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITR)s will be renegotiated. The ITRs are set of regulations set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nations entity tasked with overseeing, well, international telecommunications standards. It has been widely rumored for some time now that the upcoming WCIT-12 will see a vote to amend the ITRs to expand their scope so as to more clearly include matters of Internet governance. An amendment of this nature would potentially create a new venue for international Internet law — one that operates very differently from existing . . . [more]