I think we are going to see over the next while some interesting technical developments with some equally interesting legal issues to ponder around big data and wearable computing.

One of the things I like about being an IT lawyer is that I get to see interesting new technology and businesses, and with any luck do their legal work.

Earlier this morning I was at a business that has some cool technology around social media and big data. It has the ability to turn into a 5 minute project what can now take months to do manually, if you can . . . [more]

Technology is often cited as the game-changing factor in the future of the legal profession. There’s an endless parade of new devices, plus software is being developed that can do some of the work lawyers used to do. Legal entrepreneurs harness the power of the cloud to power new business models.

What it’s doing to the legal profession is just one side of the equation. For clients – actual and potential – rapidly changing technology can both expand their reach to consumers, and be a legal minefield.

People who conduct any part of their business over the internet, for example, . . . [more]

Microsoft Windows 8.1 will be available later this year through the Windows store, and is available today as a preview.

8.1 addresses criticisms about Windows 8 and brings many improvements. It also brings back the start button, and allows a choice of booting to the Metro interface, or to the traditional desktop. (For some reason only Apple seems to get away with getting rid of things we are used to.)

Microsoft is giving the full details today at its Build 2013 developer conference. I watched a live stream of part of it. Some of the enhancements are . . . [more]

Like many people, I suspect, I’ve been thinking about the lack of privacy in my comings and goings on the internet and wondering what, if any, steps I should take to prevent or impede the collection of data about me and my acts. Thanks to a tip from David Collier-Brown, a frequent commenter on Slaw, I’m exploring a site called PRISM Break that lists and gives a brief explanation of nearly eighty free alternatives to the more popular “proprietary” applications and operating systems. By and large the thought here is that these popular systems and software are likely to be . . . [more]

On Thursday, the retiring English Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, published final guidelines for crown counsel on the approach they should take in cases involving communications sent via social media. The approach they take could be usefully read by Canada’s prosecutors.

First step is to assess the content of the communication and the conduct in question. It distinguishes between :

Communications which may constitute credible threats of violence to the person or damage to property.

Communications which specifically target an individual or individuals and which may constitute harassment or stalking.

Communications which may amount to a breach

Earlier this month, a controversy erupted over a proposed deal between Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and Canadiana.org, a not-for-profit partnership of major research libraries in Canada, to digitize the LAC’s vast collections of print and photographic material and make it available to the public via a new online portal.

The so-called Héritage Project, a 10-year initiative, involves the digitization of approximately 60 million pages of primary-source documents from the 1600s to the mid-1900s and will include making digital copies of such material as: immigration records, church records, land records, family histories and papers, voters’ lists; documents relating to . . . [more]

Yesterday the Digital Public Library of America launched a partnership with HathiTrust, marrying the preservation mission of one with the access strengths of the other. The partnership will have the DPLA—itself only a couple of months post-launch—employ HathiTrust’s metadata to improve discoverability of and access to that content in HathiTrust that is in the public domain or otherwise freely available. HathiTrust’s own discovery and access platform will continue to develop as well. As has been noted previously here and elsewhere, HathiTrust preserves a fair amount of content useful for legal research.

Details of the partnership are in yesterday’s . . . [more]

Unfortunately, Project Loon doesn’t have anything to do with Canada — yet. But there’s potential here for a great benefit to Canadians in rural areas, particularly in the far north.

Google, where people are paid to brainstorm and pursue ideas that are often “wacky,” has initiated a project to place a chain of balloons into “orbit” around the globe and to use them as a way of providing internet connectivity for people who would otherwise not be able to access the internet.

Of course, being balloons, these relay stations won’t actually be in orbit. They will be in the stratosphere, . . . [more]

Twitter has been ordered by French courts to reveal the names of people responsible for anti-semitic tweets (using a standard hashtag) to a number of public interest organizations. Though Twitter said it would cooperate if it received an order from the American courts acting on the request of the French courts, the Court of Appeal said it has to cooperate because the direct order of the French court.

Would such an order be made in favour of private parties here? Would the private bodies first have to begin a legal proceeding against the pseudonymous tweeters – a civil action? a . . . [more]

So do I need to point out that the NSA cell phone snooping story broke on the 64th anniversary of the publication of Orwell’s 1984?

By all accounts, privacy is dead, the question is do people care? Personally, I do; but I cannot deny that if you go online then you must accept that you are leaving a trail, but that does not mean that we have to exchange our love of the interwebs and mobile computing in exchange for our privacy.

I observed this comment by a friend of mine and I feel it needs to be spread more . . . [more]

With today’s release of The Future of Legal Services in Canada: Trends and Issues, the consultation phase of the CBA’s Legal Futures Initiative begins.

Trends and Issues puts data and insight from original research commissioned by the CBA into a single document meant to provide an overview of major challenges facing the profession. The report – and the questions it raises – form a starting point for discussions and further consultations with stakeholders in the legal services industry.

We’ve been showing you bits of those papers here, and on the interim Futures website, for the last seven weeks. If . . . [more]

The Online Dispute Resolution Working Group will hold its 12th annual meeting in Montreal next week on June 16-18. This conference brings together ODR scholars and practitioners from around the world. As you might imagine, among the stellar cast of speakers (Fabien Gélinas, Colin Rule, Ethan Katsh . . .) you’ll find Slaw columnists Karim Benyekhlef and Nicolas Vermeys, who have been informing our readers about ODR for some time now. And among the discussants are Slawyers John Gregory and David Bilinsky.

The full program can be downloaded here. From that document: