Last week I mentioned a survey about the proposed UK 3 strikes law that concluded that it would not significantly deter filesharing behaviour. And added my views on why such laws are not a good idea.

Here’s a Reuters article that starts off by saying:

U.S. Internet service providers, including Verizon Communications Inc, Comcast Corp, Time Warner Cable Inc, Cablevision Systems Corp and AT&T Inc agreed to alert customers, up to six times, when it appears their account is used for illegal downloading. Warnings will come as e-mails or pop-up messages.

If suspected illegal activity persists, the provider might temporarily

With a hat tip to my colleague Ben Keen, who spotted the story below on the Torstar website.

“Internet Archive Canada, a small non-profit company, fired 35 of its 47 employees on Wednesday due to a massive drop in donations. Most will leave Aug. 12 unless a white knight appears soon”.

It’s difficult to find out exactly what the issue is – the website offers no explanation.

The story ends:

“The loss will be felt by more than those who will be out of work.”

Here they all are – they’ve made a major contribution in digitizing Canada’s . . . [more]

Fellow law library consultant Kathie Sullivan and I have been working together to track new collaboration tools and document the challenges that groups face in using them. New project management platforms such as Basecamp, collaborative mindmapping, and wireframe/mockup tools like Mockingbird and Balsamiq join familiar tools like wikis and Google Docs to make teamwork easier, regardless of where everyone is located. We are specifically interested in how these might be used in library and legal settings.

We are building a wiki that will document the tools and related stories (still to be made public), and will be speaking at two . . . [more]

Google’s new black navigation bar is the first outward-facing component of a massive social networking project the company’s been working on for over a year: Google+. I’ve been using Google+ during its “field test” (what we’d normally call a beta I think, but Google has forever ruined the public’s expectations of a beta), and I’ve come away impressed. It may be the first social networking tool I use, and enjoy using, on a daily basis.

While I have a personal Facebook and Twitter account, I find I rarely use them. Yes, Facebook’s endless privacy follies have given me cold . . . [more]

Here’s an interesting question, arising out of a case before a Colorado court: may the state require a defendant in a criminal trial to enter the password that will decrypt a computer drive with full disk encryption? The Electronic Frontier Foundation has entered a brief in the case of US v. Fricosu arguing Friday that to require the defendant either to hand over the information on the drive or to provide the password enabling the prosecution to get access to the data would infringe her constitutional right against self-incrimination. Apparently the authorities have offered a limited form of immunity to . . . [more]

Set out below is one technique I use to make doing legal research on the iPad easier. If readers have other suggestions, I would welcome comments.

Rather than create Safari browser “Bookmarks” on my iPad, I instead found it more useful to use the option of “Add to Home Page.”

What I have therefore done was this: I use a customized HTML “home page” at work and on my home laptop that is organized into 6 “boxes” providing links (and password information) to web resources covering such things as reference tools, books, publishers, journals, research databases, news, case law, precedents . . . [more]

A survey by British ISP BE Broadband shows that if the three strikes proposal in the UK Digital Economy Act becomes law, it won’t significantly deter behaviour. Only 5% of those surveyed said they would reduce or stop using filesharing software. 47% said they would simply take steps to conceal their IP address. 

This article at TorrentFreak.com talks about some of the concerns about three strikes laws, such as putting innocent users at risk, and a UN report that says such laws breach human rights.

Three-strikes laws are a controversial proposal to address download infringement concerns of creators and publishers . . . [more]

When it comes to purchasing things, I research things to death. One of my favourite resources is Consumer Reports magazine. It provides independent information, advice and reviews on just about any and every product or service you can purchase (televisions, cameras, cell phones, small and large appliances, cars, food products, hotels etc.).

The articles review the features you should know about in so far as selecting between different models and they have helpful charts that rate and compare the top-rated options. They provide information on pricing and other tips to save money. There is also great reliability and repair info . . . [more]

TED Curator Chris Anderson suggests that we help curb the proliferation of emails by subscribing to a Charter that he and fellow TEDer Jane Wulf have devised. He argues that in some sense we have all joined spammers in contributing to the modern “tragedy of the Commons” that our summed-up bad behaviours have produced. You’ll get a much better idea of what he means by reading the actual Charter, set out below. (It’s available as plain text and as a PDF, also, in case you want to pass it around the office — not by email.) . . . [more]

The latest in metasearch engines appears to be Fastoise (presumably rhymes with “tortoise” if the graphic is any indication). Fastoise searches across search engines Yahoo! and Bing (both of which use Bing’s search tool), YouTube and Twitter.

Results are separated into four columns, with images from the search across the top. I could not see any related RSS feed or alert service, but results can be shared across Twitter, Facebook and Google+ (the newest social network).

. . . [more]

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]

A few weeks ago when the postal strike was looming I wondered if a strike might be a tipping point that leads to even less mail being sent. 

A Globe and Mail article says that has indeed been the case. The article says, for example, that 350,000 ING Direct customers have switched online in the past 2 weeks. The impact of that?

“Canada Post will lose at least $2,352,000 a year in revenue from ING Direct on stamps alone, assuming the company sends each of those 350,000 people one letter a month at the commercial price of $0.56 a stamp.” . . . [more]