This post concludes with the last two draft recommendations of the CCCT IntellAction Working Group on Court Web Site Guidelines:

• Site Features – Keep It Simple
• Publication of information – Make It Simple

The previous draft recommendations can be found here:

• Court Web Site: Use a Web Content Management System
• Court Intranets: Use the same Web Content Management System
• Recommended content of court web sites
• Search, Navigation & Taxonomies – Keep It Simple

Grateful for any comments and suggestions that you may have – merci! . . . [more]

Google’s Gmail service is suffering an outage that has left 120,000 of its 150 million Gmail users without e-mail, contacts, labels and other content since the weekend. While some will no doubt use the incident as a basis to proclaim the cloud as unreliable, the truth of the matter is more complex. Both on-premise and cloud-based services can, potentially, suffer from data loss. With on-premise services, you (or your IT staff) are typically 100% responsible for backing up your data, securely storing it, and testing recovery procedures. All (or at least most) cloud-based services will take care of this for . . . [more]

Last Saturday, I shared on Slaw the first two recommendations of the CCCT IntellAction Working Group on Court Web Site Guidelines. In this post, I’m sharing our draft recommendations 3 and 4.

(note: in the next few days, I will share our two remaining recommendations, 5 and 6)

As usual – your comments and suggestions are welcome! Please let us know if you think we are in the right direction… . . . [more]

Last Thursday, Ryerson University hosted a symposium entitled “Exploring the Future of E-mail, Privacy and Cloud Computing at Ryerson.” It was co-hosted by a Ryerson administrative committee and Ryerson’s Privacy and Cyber Crime Institute for the purpose of seeking input on Ryerson’s own plans to upgrade its e-mail and collaboration systems, including its open consideration of cloud based services. Ryerson was kind enough to open the event to individuals outside of its own community, and attracted a number of interested observers from other Ontario post-secondary educational institutions, many of which are also intrigued by the clear benefits of outsourcing to . . . [more]

This posts continues to expose on Slaw the draft Court Web Site Guidelines produced by the CCCT IntellAction Working Group on court web sites. In this post, we present recommendations 1 and 2 contained in Part IV of the guidelines, together with related context information. The context information is taken from Part I of the guidelines.

In short, the CCCT IntellAction Working Group on Court Web Sites recommends to courts using the same Web Content Management System (WCMS) to power their public, internet web sites and to power their internal, intranet web site.

A Web Content Management System is . . . [more]

The administrative control of court web sites can be a sensitive issue, because it often cuts across the independence of the Judiciary and resources of the Executive. In consideration of this issue, we felt that our guidelines had to address the issue. The following text is our draft on topic. . . . [more]

Earlier in the month (the other) Simon alerted us to IBM’s development of a natural language savvy (and trivia stuffed) machine that ran rings around the human competitors in Jeopardy.

But no sooner had the victory occurred when lawyers started thinking … what if.

What if they hadn’t cleared copyright on the encyclopedias they stuffed Watson with?

But the best analysis is contained in a provocative and imaginative piece by IBM GC Robert Weber in the National Law Journal, summarized in the ABA Journal.

“Imagine a new kind of legal research system that can gather much of

. . . [more]

I attended a webinar today by the CBA entitled Safeguarding your Client’s Confidential Information – Tips and Traps. Presented by David Fraser and Dominic Jaar.

 Here are some of the highlights.

Quote from security expert Bruce Schneier:

“Hardware is easy to protect: lock it in a room, chain it to a desk, or buy a spare. Information poses more of a problem. It can exist in more than one place; be transported halfway across the planet in seconds; and be stolen without your knowledge.”

This is primarily a people issue – requires training and understanding. It’s not just about technology. . . . [more]

The Office of the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court of British Columbia recently released a policy statement [PDF] regarding public and media access. A few sections of the policy are directed at using computers and other digital devices to transmit information during proceedings:

e. Computers
Members of the public and the media are permitted to use portable computers in Provincial Court provided that they do not disturb the proceedings or interfere with the operation of the court’s own electronic equipment, and that the computers are used solely for the purpose of note-taking.

f. Cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDA’s)

. . . [more]

A few days ago, I presented the issue of copyright & licensing of information found on court web sites. In this post, please find – please feel welcome to comment! – our draft on the topic of “Balancing Privacy and Public Access to Court Information: The Need for Confidentiality Rules”. Essentially, our recommendation on topic is to follow the Canadian Judicial Council Model Policy on topic. . . . [more]

The HB Gary email leak just keeps on giving. First reported over a week ago, the leak of more than 50,000 internal emails was made by Anonymous, and revealed planned attacks by HB Gary on Wikileaks. The attacks were to be made at the behest of Bank of America, as it girded its loins in preparation for a promised exposure. Apart from demonstrating government involvement in the plot, which included targeting journalists the email have also shown a similar conspiracy in service of the US Chamber of Commerce. Now the emails have revealed the extent to which . . . [more]

3D printing would seemingly be mind-blowing for Access Copyright