One needs to do little else than glance at the ABA TECHSHOW 2012 conference schedule and exhibitor list to get a sense of how quickly and dramatically cloud computing is reshaping the legal technology industry.

Four years ago at my first ABA TECHSHOW, there was one or two companies doing what we today call “cloud computing” on the exhibit hall floor (I remember this fondly because this is where we launched Clio). This year I count over 30 companies on the exhibit floor that either provide cloud-based software or cloud-enabled applications.

In 2008 there were no conference tracks on the . . . [more]

A Committee of UK Members of Parliament has recommended that search engines should have to remove material from search results that infringe privacy. Here is a news report on the committee’s recommendations. Here is The Committee’s document.

It looks as if they are talking about material that has been found by a court to be an invasion of privacy, rather than having to make that initial decision. But once a court has found a story or a picture to offend privacy interests, the search engines should have to develop a method of hunting down that story or picture and . . . [more]

The Government has recently announced its intention to focus on Bill C-12, the Safeguarding Canadians’ Personal Information Act, its attempt to update PIPEDA in accordance with the statute’s last 5 year review (which incidentally was conducted over 6 years ago). Bill C-12 is a lackluster piece of privacy protection that, in spite of its name, arguably does far more to erode privacy than it does to enhance it. One commentator even dubbed it’s last incarnation the ‘anti-privacy privacy bill‘. As the legislation can be expected to reemerge as early as two weeks hence, a few of its . . . [more]

JURIST, the legal news and commentary website based out of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, needs money. Your money.

The well-known, pioneering news site explains that it is “anticipating a significant reduction in funding (meaning several tens of thousands of dollars) from our primary benefactors”.

It needs funds to:

• Redesign the JURIST.org website
• Fully develop a mobile version of JURIST.org, as well as iPhone and Android apps
• Increase outreach efforts to JURIST’s audience
• Develop new programming, including audio and video coverage, seminars and conferences that will directly benefit our community
• Cover costs associated with managing our

. . . [more]

Last week I wrote on The High Cost of Cloud Computing Due Diligence, and asked readers what thoughts they had on how the burden of cloud computing due diligence could be reduced.

In his post on The Myth of Due Diligence, David Whelan questions the assumption that we should apply more strict due diligence requirements to the cloud than to traditional desktop-based software:

If due diligence is called for – and something is, whether it needs that name or not – then it should apply equally to the wireless routers, operating systems, and locally installed software within law

. . . [more]

Blogger Attempts to Protect Content by Country: Redirects .com Blogs to Country-Specific Domains

Here’s a good review of the law on shrink-wrap, click-through and ‘browse-wrap’ contracts . I expect the law of New York is much like the law in at least common law Canada on the topic. The comment is inspired by a recent dispute about Facebook’s ability to enforce its forum-selection clause. The author says that most lawyers would have thought that FB’s sign-up process was ‘bullet-proof’, but the court still made a thorough analysis of it.

The process required the person signing up to click on the terms of service to see them, In other words, the assent to those . . . [more]

I’m uneasy about the creeping commercialization of Google results, and its privacy policy revisions since Larry Page took over directing the company. That impression seems to be confirmed by this widely read description of the new culture at Google by James Whittaker.

Under Eric Schmidt ads were always in the background. Google was run like an innovation factory, empowering employees to be entrepreneurial through founder’s awards, peer bonuses and 20% time. Our advertising revenue gave us the headroom to think, innovate and create. Forums like App Engine, Google Labs and open source served as staging grounds for our inventions.

[…] . . . [more]

GPO Access, the online disseminator of official U.S. government publications, is shutting down permanently tomorrow, March 16th. It has gradually been replaced over the past two years by the new FDsys or Federal Digital System.

FDsys offers authentic, digitally signed PDF documents from dozens of different collections of U.S. Federal Government information (Congressional, Presidential, judicial and federal agency materials)

Some of the new system’s highlights:

• Information is preserved for permanent public access
• Search multiple publications at once
• Conduct complex searches
• Narrow, sort, and filter search results
• Access documents in multiple file formats
• Access metadata in standard XML formats

. . . [more]

In anticipation of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries 2012 Conference, May 6-9 in Toronto, I have been thinking about the word innovation. Rebecca Strange, Librarian Specialist, Office of the Medical Officer of Health, Peel Public Health and I are preparing a session called Innovate. I hope to see Slaw readers at the conference.

A news release from Google offers some innovation inspiration. Google has teamed up with Historypin to launch an interactive online gallery to celebrate The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Check out the Google Blog post here. Historypin is a not-for-profit archives sharing project. Think Pinterest with . . . [more]

An ever-increasing body of ethics opinions and reports on the suitability of cloud computing for lawyers aim to provide guidance that may appear deceptively straightforward. Take the following as an example:

Cloud computing is acceptable, but make sure you first undertake an appropriate level of due diligence on your prospective cloud computing provider.

While this doesn’t appear onerous on the surface, the cumulative expense of performing due diligence on multiple cloud providers could prove to be prohibitive for solo- and small-firm lawyers – the very demographic that benefits most directly from cloud computing.

Take the simple task of reviewing privacy . . . [more]

The unique and indefatigable Tom Bruce is the Director of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell – no need for a geographical adjective when you were the first on the block.

Yes, LII was the first – and it’s coming up to its Twentieth Anniversary – or at least an excuse for a party in Finger Lakes.

Tom explains:

The LVI conference started out as a rather clubby event for a smallish group of open-access publishers largely based in the academic world. More recently, we’ve been joined by some academic researchers in legal informatics and by a few government

. . . [more]