The Canadian Centre for Court Technology and the Association of Canadian Court Administrators are pleased to announce an extension of the Early Bird Registration deadline for the Canadian Forum on Court Technology (“Forum 2012”), which is being held October 24 – 25, 2012 in Montréal, Québec.

The theme for Forum 2012, “Revitalizing Courts with Enhanced Technology and Thought-Provoking Reforms: The Modernization Challenge”, is designed to challenge attendees with leading edge sessions, including Enhancing Access to Justice Using Technology and Going Beyond Technology: Revisiting Fundamental Assumptions About Traditional Litigation. Another highlight of Forum 2012 will be the Canada Showcase – . . . [more]

WIPO appears to have resurrected negotiations over its broadcast treaty, which would grant broadcasters a new property right in content they transmit. This treaty has been contentious in the past for obligating signatories to provide a completely unnecessary, redundant and at the same time over-expansive right to guaranteeing broadcasters over the broadcasting of content. This may seriously impact on individuals, particularly as it will be applied to online retransmission:

Granting broadcasters and cablecasters exclusive rights to authorize retransmissions of broadcasts over the Internet will harm competition and innovation by allowing broadcasters and cablecasters to control the types of devices

Some colleagues and I are toying with Chatter. Chatter is enterprise social collaboration. We are testing it to see if we have a need for instant message like communication. Chatter is an interesting to use for this experiment because it has some features that could fit with our culture.

• mobile apps for Blackberry AND Android AND iPhone and iPad
• a desktop app
• a web tool
• domain based grouping

The domain based grouping means that:

A company’s individual, private Chatter network is created based on email domain name. To protect your company’s private and sensitive business information, all participants in

My friend Mike Seto came a across an interesting survey that lists the main functional technology products that the 200 largest UK firms are using. Many familiar names there – but some news one too.

I am not aware of a survey that specifically lists the technologies used by the the largest North American firms, but (thanks to Catherine Reach), can mention these two surveys that provide global technology use and trend information for North American firms: the ILTA survey (free content) and the Am Law Tech Survey (free and paid content). . . . [more]

The Fastcase 50 for 2012 was announced on Thursday, earlier than last year presumably to coincide with AALL 2012, the American Association of Law Libraries conference currently taking place in Boston.

According to the press release, the Fastcase 50 “recognizes the smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries, and leaders in the law” and were nominated by legal and legal technology industry leaders, law firm managers and other individuals.

From Ed Walters, CEO of Fastcase: “We get to recognize our heroes, the great thinkers, creators, and risk-takers who make this such an interesting time to work in legal tech. . . . [more]

A court in Massachusetts last month refused to dismiss a case brought by the National Association of the Deaf against Netflix, claiming that Netflix is required by the Americans with Disabilities Act to provide closed-captioning on all its products, including streaming of broadcasts. Netflix was held to be a place of public accommodation within the meaning of the Act.

Does this strike you as a reasonable result? What would happen in Canada, under our various access statutes, one of the most extensive of which is the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act? Governments tend to have standards about . . . [more]

An Ontario lawyer notified us that his office started receiving emails from Florida from people who had responded to a Craigslist ad advertising for a local office assistant. The ad said the lawyer was Ontario-based but looking to conduct transactions in Florida and needed someone to run an office, book flights, etc. Because the ad used a Hotmail address instead of a proper law office domain name, some responders grew suspicious and contacted the lawyer directly.

Here is the message received by those that replied to the ad (which has since been removed). . . . [more]

While lawyers and academics will surely be allocating a significant amount of short term resources to analyzing the SCC’s pentology of copyright decisions issued this morning, a quick look demonstrates a vindication of fair dealing, online innovation, technical neutrality and general common sense.

In brief and lacking any nuance, the Court’s decision in Entertainment Software Association v. SOCAN, 2012 SCC 34 seems to imply some interesting developments in copyright law:

Online distribution of video games should not be impeded with additional tariffs for musical works embedded in the games simply because the games are sold ‘by means of telecommunications’. The . . . [more]

The UK government has a new website in beta aimed at improving citizen access to official services and information. Gov.uk hopes to be “simpler, clearer, faster,” as its tagline says.

By the look of things, the site succeeds. The design is plain and appealing. (I’d dump the set of scrolling options. It could be that they’re aiming to give viewers something engaging to do; but I think that a simple list of half a dozen FAQs would work better.)

As is often the case on the internet, there’s no top level entry for “Law.” (There is one for Crime and . . . [more]

The Canadian Judicial Council has launched a sleek new website. Over the years, the Council has put more and more information online. For some time, there have been links to previous inquiry committee decisions, annual reports and news releases. There is a publications section which is a treasure-trove of information including an interesting Reference Guide for Judges Appointed to Commissions of Inquiry. I’m not sure if the site is just more user-friendly and I discovered hidden information or the CJC has actually posted new material. Either way, one can now find a sample of complaints (anonymized) . . . [more]

I’ve spent the last week trying out Google Chrome on my iPhone and iPad, and I have a simple recommendation for anyone who hasn’t tried it yet: install it now. You’ll love it.

Google Chrome provides several significant benefits over the built-in Safari browser:

• Google Account Sync. Logging into your Google Account automatically syncs your bookmarks, browser history
• The OmniBar. The Omnibar (the unified address / search bar) is my favorite features of Google Chrome’s desktop web browser. On my mobile experiences, I frequently frustrated myself by typing search terms into the Safari address bar. No more: Google Chrome