In mid-May, the Council of Canadian Academic Law Library Directors adopted the Calgary Statement on Free Access to Legal Information.

The Statement, that promotes the principles of open access in legal scholarly publishing in Canada and free access to legal information in society, follows the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship adopted by the law libraries of major American universities in late 2008.

The Durham statement called for two things: (1) open access publication of law school–published journals; and (2) an end to print publication of law journals, coupled with a commitment to keeping the electronic versions . . . [more]

The Canadian Blog Directory, by Mark Evans and Seth Singer, aims to create a directory of the thousands of Canadian blogs out there. Each blog is reviewed and has to meet a quality test, and the directory can be searched by name or subject. Since its launch, the project has added about 300 blogs.

Be sure to submit your own blog to make it that much easier for Canadians to find you. . . . [more]

From a CBC story

A website that lets people check whether their email addresses, usernames and passwords have been stolen in a cyberattack and posted online has been launched by an Australian who is a former IT security consultant.

This new website, shouldichangemypassword.com, allows concerned internet users to enter an email address and see whether it appears in stolen information posted online by groups such as Lulz Security. If an email is listed in the database of stolen data, the site will list what information among your email, username and password have been compromised, how many times it has . . . [more]

Last week I asked if Apple’s forthcoming iCloud service spells doom for Dropbox. My conclusion was no, iCloud does not pose a critical threat to Dropbox, but this week I’m worried about a new threat to Dropbox’s viability: Dropbox themselves.

Yesterday Dropbox disclosed a “bug” they’d introduced that allowed users to log into any Dropbox account using an arbitrary password. That is, if you have a Dropbox account, all a potential hacker would have to know was your e-mail address, and he would have unfettered access to your entire Dropbox.

Although the impact of the bug on users was . . . [more]

What do Estonia and Denmark have in common that sets them apart from the rest of Europe?

They’re the only two of the 27 countries in the European Union that have complied with a directive on privacy that came into force on May 26. [The Register has the story.] The directive — a 2009 amendment to the broader directive on privacy — concerns cookies, those tiny bits of script that web servers can lodge on your computer in order to record your preferences, report back on your choices, or perform other relatively simple acts of communication between your machine . . . [more]

CBC is reporting that Facebook was hacked again. While it doesn’t look like huge numbers of accounts were compromised, it is worth changing your password to protect yourself.

And regardless of whether your account was compromised or not, changing your passwords regularly is one of the best things you can do to protect your online identities and accounts. You can learn about other password best practices in this article from Law Practice magazine. . . . [more]

In the wake of the 2011 edition of the Vancouver riots, a new website called Identifyrioters.com was quickly assembled to publish scraped photos from social media. Users are encouraged to identify individuals, log into their Facebook accounts, identify the person in question, and then relay the assembled information back the the VPD. It’s also worth noting that this is a citizen led effort, and not a production of the VPD. It will be interesting to see how effective it is.

Unlike the ’94 edition of the riots, things have changed dramatically in how digitally inclined our society has become. Being . . . [more]

Loads of people writing, speaking, blogging and consulting on search engine optimization or SEO. Some of them even have good advice, but often in snippets. They just don’t give the big picture on all the things that go into SEO.

Thanks to Bob Ambrogi who tweeted about the Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors. As a one-time student of chemistry, I think using a periodic table layout is a brilliant way of grouping very different but related things in a logical way. And don’t be scared off if the last time you saw a periodic table was when you . . . [more]

A report to the United Nations from special rapporteur Frank La Rue suggests that the Internet is a key means for individuals to exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression. The document is Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression (May 16, 2011).

The report references Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and

Last week Apple released iCloud, a new cloud-based service for syncing documents, calendars, e-mails, photos, music and more across your desktop, laptop, iPad, and iPhone.

iCloud represents one of the most important and risky strategic shifts Apple has ever taken. Prior to iCloud, Apple’s “digital hub” strategy promoted the PC as your central data store, with the various “spokes” of the digital hub – your iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, etc. – synchronizing with your PC. With iCloud, the PC has been, in Jobs’ words, “demoted” to just another device – with the cloud taking its place.

The shift . . . [more]

This is World IPv6 day – a day that Wired calls the Nerdiest Holiday ever. 

Many organizations – including Google and Facebook – are trying out the new IPv6 protocol today. The current addressing scheme for the internet uses IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4). But we are running out of addresses. An IP address is the numerical address for devices on the internet (such as computers or smartphones) that allow them to communicate. The concept is similar to the telephone number for your landline phone using POTS (plain old telephone service). IPv4 uses a 32 bit address, which allows . . . [more]

At today’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple’s Steve Jobs announced a new set of cloud services, dubbed iCloud, that will integrate with iOS-based devices, such as the iPad and iPhone, and Mac OS X. The new services will bring tight cloud-based data synchronization to Apple’s desktop, laptop and mobile device lineup.

iCloud will allow you to store all of your documents, calendars, emails, photos, and more in the cloud, and will automatically synchronize this data to all of your devices. Additionally, iCloud will make your music available across all your devices.

Backup services will also be incorporated into iCloud. . . . [more]