The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the telecommunications arm of the United Nations, is hosting a World Conference on International Telecommunications starting Dec 3. The agenda includes gaining a role for the ITU on Internet governance. This is in part fueled by repressive government regimes wanting more control over the internet and its users. It has drawn huge opposition from human rights and free speech advocates. Also from companies such as Google. Vint Cerf – now with Google but considered the father of the internet – has come out very strongly against it.

This is a very bad idea. One . . . [more]

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) which many law firms belong to jointly produced a white paper in October 2012 entitled The New Librarian. 

According to Steven Lastres via the On Firmer Ground blog:

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) recently released a joint white paper that acknowledges the strategic alliance that has developed between law librarians and technologists in driving efficient and effective legal information management.

Kate Hagan, Executive Director of AALL says, “As legal professionals retool and reskill through innovation and

You may remember the Belgian newspapers’ lawsuit to prevent Google from linking to their sites, or from running short extracts from their sites in a Google News aggregation – a lawsuit that (if I recall correctly) the papers succeeded in, then found that they had a lot less traffic on their sites, so they made an arrangement with Google. It appeared that they really had intended to dip their ladles into Google’s revenue stream. It’s not clear how well they succeeded.

German newspapers seem to be taking a different route but probably to the same intended destination. They have apparently . . . [more]

Here is a summary article from Outlaw.com, reviewing the law in the UK and elsewhere as to whether Google’s ‘autocomplete’ function for search topics could be defamatory if one or more of the suggested completions for the search term entered had a nasty meaning. A number of countries have held Google liable, including France and Japan. The brief linked to here concludes that there would probably not be liability in the UK.

The Australian courts have followed the French – but not the UK opinion mentioned above – and have found Google liable in defamation for the suggestions that . . . [more]

Ok, it’s not an iPhone, but it is a very old computer from the 1950’s. One of the first dozen ever to exist, weighing in at 2.5 tons; and it has been restored back to life by the National Museum of Computing in Buckinghamshire, UK.

Here’s a clip:

It’s called the Harwell Dekatron (aka ‘WITCH’ — ‘Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation from Harwell’ ). The NMOC website describes its original purpose:

“The Harwell Dekatron computer first ran at Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment in 1951 where it automated the tedious calculations performed by talented young people using mechanical hand calculators.

What’s that? The stuff you say online has no consequences in real life? I bet those officers at your door felt real. torontopolice.on.ca/newsreleases/r…

— Steve Murray (@NPsteve) November 21, 2012

It’s so easy to type words into a little box and hit send. Sometimes the words are backchannel chatter, during a broadcast of something everyone’s watching sort-of together. Other words are ill-considered remarks or comments perhaps more easily posted on a screen than spoken to a face. Sometimes words are directed at someone—or someone’s avatar—but not really to the person. These words can seem virtual, but they’re real and . . . [more]

I had the pleasure of seeing Bill Nye speak last night at Western with my son. It was gratifying to see a scientist treated like a rock star in a sold out hall of more than 2000 people – mostly Western students. People lined up hours to get the best seats, and there was a standing ovation when he walked on stage. The twitter hashtag #BillNyeWestern was trending nationally before it even started.

Between his talk and questions, he spoke for about 2 ½ hours on various topics including sundials, his involvement with the Mars Curiosity Rover, global warming, nanotechnology, . . . [more]

Clio’s third annual Apple in Law Offices Survey is a wrap with over 1,200 respondents. The survey’s results show Apple products, ranging from the iPad to MacBooks, are rapidly increasing in popularity among lawyers.

iPad

The iPad continues to be a game-changing device for lawyers: over 57% of respondents indicated they currently use an iPad in their law office. Of those that don’t, nearly 60% planned on purchasing an iPad in the next year:

Enthusiasm for the recently-announced iPad mini was also high: 23% of respondents indicated they plan to purchase an iPad mini in the next twelve months.

Mobile . . . [more]

The Director of Public Prosecutions in the UK may establish a policy about when ‘grossly offensive’ messages on social media would be prosecuted that would consider the reach of the message, i.e. how many people may have been exposed to it. One noted media lawyer has said that’s a bad idea, and the better test is just how offensive the message is, regardless of how many saw it. A discussion of the topic is here.

Under section 127 of the Communications Act it is an offence if someone ‘sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message . . . [more]

Sharing a WiFi access point among too many devices can shut down access for everyone. At some point, the high congestion levels overload the WiFi router, making it in effectively useless. This isn’t a common problem for home networks, but it does occur (frequently?) for events such as legal conferences or when you stay at a hotel.

An interesting software solution from NC State Engineers looks to be on the horizon. It’s called WiFox and based on tests of 45 concurrent connecting devices, reported a 700% speed improvement, and a 30-40% reduction in network latency. The performance increase comes from . . . [more]

Because law is a matter of words and because multicultural, multilingual Canada has a bilingual legal system for the most part, I think you might want to take ten minutes to watch a particular video from Microsoft. It shows Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid on a stage in China demonstrating their latest voice recognition, machine translation, and machine speech technologies, all working in concert.

Simply put, Rashid, speaking moderately slowly, has his talk perfectly accurately transcribed as he talks in English; then towards the end of the video the written English is translated as he speaks into proper written . . . [more]

We brought you timely news about Iceland’s crowd-sourcing of constitutional reform. Now we invite you to look at what Finland is trying. This time it’s not the constitution but rather legislative initiatives that well up from the citizenry. A project called Avoin Ministeriö (Open Ministry) funded by the Ministry of Public Affairs invites citizens to place a legislative proposal online, where others can then vote to approve or disapprove of the idea. A successful idea will be put before the legislature.

The Slate magazine story on this experiment explains “success” this way:

Each suggested law gets six months to gather