This past Friday Aaron Swartz took his own life at the age of 26. In his short but remarkable life, Aaron had helped technologies many of us use every day, including RSS, Markdown and Reddit.

Aside from his substantial technical contributions, Aaron also made a lasting contributions to web and data freedom. He co-founded the non-profit group Demand Progress, which played an instrumental role in the fight against SOPA. He fought against public data being placed behind paywalls, and used his technical know-how to compromise such systems. In 2009 he downloaded and released over two million documents from PACER, . . . [more]

The Annual Consumer Electronics Show is underway in Las Vegas. Despite some commentary that the show is old or outdated, it occupies floor space equivalent to 393 basketball courts and attracts 150,000 people.

The tech press, such as CNET, is of course there in droves.

Some of the interesting things so far include:

• Laptops that convert, flip, slide roll, …
• Next generation Intel chips that boost ultrabook performance and battery life
• Massive 4K (very high resolution) TVs
• Flexible screens
• Internet of Things gadget makers announced the creation of the Internet of Things Consortium to promote their emerging industry and

Twitter is a-buzz today with the announcement that Thomson Reuters is acquiring innovation darling of UK law, Practical Law Company.

According to the Thomson Reuters press release (Jan. 3, 2013):

Practical Law Company has more than 750 employees, with principal operations in London and New York, and will be part of the Legal business of Thomson Reuters. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2013. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

PLC has been making an impact over the last couple of years in North . . . [more]

The Superior Court of Justice of Ontario has issued a ‘protocol’ that will (as of February 1) allow lawyers, licensed paralegals, law students, self-represented parties, and ‘media or journalists’ to use electronic communications devices (broadly defined to include laptops and smart phones) in court without express permission. Naturally there are some conditions, including:

• don’t disturb the proceedings
• don’t distribute any information that is subject to a publication ban
• don’t take any pictures
• don’t distribute recordings (though lawyers and journalists may make recordings for their own use)

However, “Members of the public are not permitted to use electronic devices in the . . . [more]

The Canadian anti-spam act was passed in December of 2010 – but is still not in force. Current speculation is that it will be in force later in 2013 – or perhaps not even until 2014.

The act contemplated 2 sets of regulations that are crucial for how the act works in practice. Regulations from the CRTC are final. We have been waiting for regulations from Industry Canada. 

Industry Canada announced on Dec 24 that its regulations will be published in the Canada Gazette on January 5th 2013 for a 30 day consultation period.

Stay tuned for more detail. . . . [more]

From time to time we bring you news of technological developments that, though they have no current or even imminent application to law, are interesting in and of themselves. It’s also the case that today’s novelty can easily become tomorrow’s staple, and we like to do what we can to ensure that our readers are as quick off the blocks as everyone else when it comes to the adoption of nifty new apps and gear. (I understand that the reality where lawyers are concerned looks something like the reverse of the power law graph, and that the long tail of . . . [more]

A German state has declared that Facebook’s policy requiring that a user identify himself by his real name violates that state’s law allowing the use of pseudonyms and contravenes the fundamental right to freedom of expression on the Internet (see here for an Associated Press article).

The Facebook Name Policy states:

Facebook is a community where people use their real identities. We require everyone to provide their real names, so you always know who you’re connecting with.

It further explains that this helps keep the Facebook community safe. Given this concern for safety, Facebook will remove all fake accounts. . . . [more]

A LinkedIn group pointed me to an article titled “10 Ways to Completely Ruin Your Intranet“. The article, a blog post by a company that offers a turnkey intranet solution, has some good tips about frustrating navigation, stale content and lack of collaboration.

My team is responsible for a significant amount of content on our Intranet, and skimming this vendor humour-based post got me thinking more about deep links. We have talked about deep links on CanLII and using CiteBite to link to quotes within in webpages here at Slaw. My team has been focusing on deep links, . . . [more]

2012 has not been a good year for RIM. The company became a favorite punching bag for technology pundits as it continued to delay products and fail in everything from marketing to developer relations. RIM’s co-CEO’s lost their job, and the company’s new CEO, Thorsten Heins, promised the company’s new operating system, BlackBerry 10, would catalyze a turnaround for the company, something many tech experts thought was delusionally optimistic.

The company has finally pinned a release date on BlackBerry 10: January 30th. Rogers and other carries are taking pre-orders today, and RIM is sending out preview hardware and software to . . . [more]

One of the challenges with Twitter, especially once you start to accumulate a following and engage thousands of people, is that it appears as if the information is fleeting and quickly gone forever.

What happened to that interesting legal case in that other jurisdiction that we were discussing on Twitter last month? If only I had bookmarked the page…

Twitter announced earlier this summer that users would be able to download Tweets, a promise that was reiterated last month with a deadline of the end of 2012. Some users are sharing that the feature has already been rolled out on . . . [more]

Only a few short years ago we all received a deluge of holiday cards by snail mail this time of year from clients, lawyers, and others we work with. The thought of sending a card digitally was thought to be tacky by many. Those of us who wanted to send a card digitally had to either get the original digital file from the creator of the card, or scan it in ourselves (and depending on the situation turn a blind eye to possible copyright issues).

Fast forward to 2012 and the number of cards we get by snail mail has . . . [more]

Back in August I posted a column on Slaw about a Quebec administrative tribunal decision that referred to Facebook and Wikipedia evidence.

The tribunal, the Commission sur les lésions professionnelles (CLP), has returned to the social media admissibility question Campeau et Services alimentaires Delta Dailyfood Canada inc., 2012 QCCLP 7666 (CanLII).

A worker was injured and had to take a lot of time off work. At one point her injuries caused her a case of depression that also kept her off work. To test whether this was serious, the employer created a fictitious account on Facebook, giving the alleged . . . [more]