Earlier this year I posted about a French case that held Google liable for search suggestions that pulled up defamatory senses. (Courts in other countries have also held Google liable for this; others have not.)

The highest court in France, the Cour de Cassation, has now held that Google was not liable after all. The search results were completely automated, thus not the expression of anyone’s intention, and thus not able to be the basis of an intentional illicit act like defamation.

As the court said:

la fonctionnalité aboutissant au rapprochement critiqué est le fruit d’un processus purement automatique dans

Access to justice, according to some definitions, includes a public that has some legal literacy – people who are aware of their rights and obligations under the law.

Technology helps promote a form of legal literacy, but some lawyers say it’s a double-edged sword – clients are more willing than ever to participate in the process, says one contributor to the CBA Legal Futures consultation, but they “lack the practical understanding of the limitations of the judicial system to fully appreciate risk.”

Just as some medical patients will research online and then ask their family physician to confirm Dr. . . . [more]

In a decision released yesterday, HM Attorney General v Davey [2013] EWHC 2317 (Admin), the High Court of England and Wales gave leave for applications for committal orders for contempt of court against two men, each of whom had sat as a juror in a criminal case and each of whom had used the internet in contravention of instructions not to do so.

Davey posted the following message to his Facebook account at the end of the first day of the trial:

Woooow I wasn’t expecting to be in a jury Deciding a paedophile’s fate, I’ve always wanted to

The Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL – the French privacy authority) has recently found a company in breach of its duty to protect the personal information of its employees because the company used unduly short passwords that were too easy to guess and that were not changed often enough. (See the story on Le Village de la Justice)

According to the CNIL, the employer should have had a password policy that required longer passwords composed of letters, numbers and special characters, and that also required that the passwords be changed frequently.

It was not demonstrated that . . . [more]

Lawyers tend to think of themselves as strong communicators, but they don’t always get their message across to clients.

It doesn’t help that clients aren’t always clear about what they want from lawyers.

This was evident at the mid-winter meeting of the CBA Council, when the Legal Futures Initiative took advantage of the gathering of lawyers from across the country, representing most sizes and types of practice, to find out what lawyers think clients want.

Presented with results from the Initiative’s own survey of client expectations, some lawyers present were a bit taken aback by the idea that clients wanted . . . [more]

Following the tragic death of Rehtaeh Parsons, a special meeting by the Provincial and Federal Ministers of Justice decided to investigate the state of the law around the distribution of images of an intimate nature without consent. Many observers believed that the provisions under the Criminal Code are insufficient in dealing with this growing problem among young Canadians.

The subcommittee of the Cybercrime Working Group (CWG) responsible for this released their report this week. The report notes that the traditional response in Canada to cyberbullying relies heavily on education initiatives and promoting public awareness and support among families and communities. . . . [more]

Is clicking ‘OK’ on a web site the equivalent of a signature, or just an act of assenting with legal effect, e.g. to accept an offer to contract? Is there a useful or meaningful distinction any more between a signature and an act of assent (at least when the signature is intended to show assent)?

Recently an appellate court in the US found that clicking OK to a web form satisfied the requirements of the Copyright Act (US) that a transfer of copyright had to be in writing and signed by the transferor. The court relied on the Electronic Signatures . . . [more]

According to CNET, Google may be experimenting with the encryption of files stored within its Drive service. If true, Google would be following the lead of services like SpiderOak and encrypting the files they store. One possible intention here being to restore user confidence in a post-Prism environment.

It’s a nice idea — that users can encrypt files that the cloud-company cannot access; and subsequently is unable to turnover to the government (or courts?) — but this seems like an “optics” play to me. It’s also likely not possible, at least for now… The CNET article interestingly identifies the . . . [more]

SmartChicago is a group formed with the aim of using technology to better the lives of Chicagoans. Among other things, they support centres that help citizens get access to their health records, they promote free broadband access, they work to improve citizens’ technological skills — and they try to make relevant laws easier to understand.

To assist with this last aim, they’ve done a very practical and perhaps surprising thing: they’ve opened an account on the Rap Genius site, a place to go to learn the meaning of a lot of rap lyrics — or poems, or items in the . . . [more]

One of the final sessions at this week’s American Association of Law Libraries conference offered participants a guided opportunity to work with the yet-in-beta Congress.gov. As THOMAS “himself” confirmed, the venerable THOMAS.gov — now the ripe age of 18 years — is looking to retire:

THOMAS will be retired! Tomorrow at 2:30 PDT we'll tweet about its replacement, #Congressdotgov. #aall13 http://t.co/FIOKzk6K7Q

— Congressdotgov (@congressdotgov) July 15, 2013

As we noted and discussed at the time, the Congress.gov public beta was launched several months ago. It has received several iterative updates since then: inclusion of the Congressional Record, . . . [more]

Some retailers are following customer movement in stores by tracking cell phone movement. From a legal perspective it raises issues around privacy and perhaps wiretapping laws. To a great extent whether or not such activities comply are dependent upon the subtleties of how it is being done, and how anonymously it is being done.

The other issue – as is often the case when dealing with privacy related issues – is the customer acceptance or “creepiness” factor. Some people would welcome getting a coupon on their phone while wandering through a store. But for others it feels like surveillance and . . . [more]

As law firms tackle the new reality of the economy and the changes being demanded by corporate clients, they should look to those within the firms who are already well-versed in strategy for business change: librarians.

I am currently in Seattle at the American Association of Law Libraries annual conference, including the Private Law Libraries’ Summit on Saturday. The message we are hearing from a number of different perspectives is clear: lawyers would be advised to seek help in re-developing their firms so they are better positioned for competitive advantage, and librarians are well suited for the C suite, . . . [more]