In addition to the anti spam provisions of CASL, it contains provisions against malware starting in January 2015. It imposes disclosure and consent requirements for software providers in certain situations.

Unfortunately, those provisions are perhaps more ill-advised and unclear than the anti-spam provisions. They have the potential to make life difficult for software companies, create additional record keeping responsibilities where none are needed, and could even hurt Canadian consumers if foreign software developers simply don’t sell their products in Canada to avoid compliance.

The IT law bar is collectively scratching their heads trying to understand what the provisions mean in . . . [more]

In September, at the Opening of the Courts, a very similar speech was given by the Chief Justices of Quebec and Ontario to their respective audiences. Unknowingly in tune, the highest ranking provincial judges of both provinces deplored the heavy, inaccessible and saturated court system.

Chief Justices Nicole Duval Hesler, François Rolland and Élizabeth Corte pleaded for the augmentation of judicial staff. But more importantly, they came to the conclusion that despite the current efforts to use staff more efficiently, the court system can simply not satisfy the increasingly high demand. Thus, as per Justice Rolland, “[n]ous n’avons plus le . . . [more]

Toronto lawyer Ernst Ashurov was born with limited vision, and an eye injury in childhood left him almost completely blind; yet he runs a criminal and general litigation practice. In the first few years of his career, he was able to read print using extreme magnification glasses; but by 2006 he could no longer read. These days, he relies on two key software products to work with documents and to conduct internet research. Since software has its limitations, he has also developed a personalized set of strategies for dealing with the specific demands of court attendance, and for working with . . . [more]

Anyone who wants the latest and greatest tablet is in luck.

Google just announced the release of its new Android 5.0 Lollipop OS, and a new Nexus 9 tablet, Nexus 6 phone, and Nexus Player streaming media player. Lollipop will be available for existing Nexus 5, 7, and 10 devices “in the coming weeks.”

If you are an Apple fan, Apple is launching new iPads and other devices tomorrow.

I think I “need” a Nexus 9. My iPad 2 is getting a bit slow and tired, and it would be a better companion to my Nexus 5. . . . [more]

It seems Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) version 4.0 could be more than it appears. If you thought it was just an innocuous little digital rights management tool for balancing intellectual property interests with your modest entitlement to enjoy downloaded ebooks from public libraries and vendors in rustic peace and seclusion, you might think again. Last week news started to spread that Adobe Digital Editions version 4.0—released about a month earlier in September— was actually an overactive and prolific snitch, reporting back to Adobe on a daily basis about every ebook title you downloaded, every ereader device you used, every page . . . [more]

The goal of Cyber Security Awareness Month is to remind us to guard against cyber threats. The Canadian Government getcybersafe website has resources to describe the risks and suggest ways to protect against things such as cyberbullying, scams and fraud. It covers both personal and corporate risks for smartphones, social networking, online banking, online shopping, and more. It also explains the differences between common threats such as pharming, phishing, and spoofing.

If you’ve ever wondered how many people actually fall for what appear to be blatant phishing attempts, take a look at this infographic that shows that even a very . . . [more]

The biggest question I’ve been getting lately from clients and potential clients is why they need to bother with things like organizing documents or content, and why taxonomy and metadata needs to be applied. Why can’t they just drop in a search tool like Google to work its magic instead? Why bother spending time cleaning out irrelevant stuff and getting the useful material into good order?

I tell them essentially it is things like the structure, organization, and metadata such as keywords, taxonomy, author names, dates created and modified, that help the search engines do their job. The better things . . . [more]

“The legal profession should be on notice: the computers are coming.”

Ryan McClead, over on the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, has just finished up a great series of posts called, “The Exponential Law Firm.”* He’s also gathered these posts into a single paper with the added subtitle, “An Exploration of the Technological in Law Practice.”

He begins by attempting to answer the question, “What do we sell?” He frames this question in terms of what lawyers and law firms think they sell and what their clients expect when they seek . . . [more]

Since 1998 when I worked with a whiz named Russell, I have been a proponent of automation. Pushing information to myself with RSS, using autotext and macros in Word, subtotaling in Excel, and Outlook Rules have all made it possible for me to automate bits of my own work. As a law firm KMer, I build and advocate for tools that automate, or at least reduce steps, to work done in my organization. I am certain that many Slawyers have similar stories about how the way they use computers (or phones, or tablets, or other devices) in their work has . . . [more]

The Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives and Museums (LODLAM)* training day videos have been posted. The presentations focussed on “hands-on applications and examples” sharing “approaches to both publishing and reusing Linked Open Data in library, archive, and museum settings.” The organizers saw this session as an “amazing prototype” and plan to apply the experiences gained here to their first official LODLAM Training Day in 2015.

The session was organized by Jon Voss (Historypin and co-founder of the International LODLAM Summit) and took place at the 10th Annual Semantic Technology & Business Conference (SemTechBiz), August 19, 2014 in San Jose, . . . [more]

You have to admire Rich McCue’s curiosity and generosity. For the 11th year, the UVic educational technologist and systems administrator has surveyed the law school’s incoming students on their technology use in terms of hardware, software and habits, and shared the results online.

Rich has drafted the results up nicely with helpful graphs, and also identified implications of the results: both suggestions for profs and faculties, and ideas for future surveys.

Here’s the executive summary:

•  Smartphones: 100% of incoming law students surveyed own “Smartphones” that can browse the internet (up from 96% last year and 50% four years ago), with

A BMO poll released today shows the unsurprising result that the business world is becoming more reliant on mobile technology.

Lawyers were early adopters of Blackberries, for which email was the killer app. At our firm there are only a handful of lawyers still using Blackberries. The rest of us are split between iPhones and Android. While Windows phones are technically as good as the others, they just can’t seem to gain ground.

Blackberry has not given up, though. It just launched a new phone called the Passport. Blackberry has moved from touting email as its killer feature to touting . . . [more]