Of the eight Canadian provinces and territories that have passed laws calling for fixed-date elections, five call for general elections to be held in October every four years. Those five jurisdictions will all hold general elections this October, as follows:

Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg and inventor of the idea for the eBook way way way back in 1971 in the pre-WWW, pre-smart phone, pre-Kindle, pre-commercialization of everything on the Internet era, died earlier this week. He was 64. Librarians (and computer geeks) thought the world of him.

The Project Gutenberg website has published an obituary:

Hart was best known for his 1971 invention of electronic books, or eBooks. He founded Project Gutenberg, which is recognized as one of the earliest and longest-lasting online literary projects. He often told this story of how he had the idea

. . . [more]

Paul Venezia of InfoWorld asks why the fax machine refuses to die. In what is a bit of a rant rather than a reasoned analysis, Venezia advises:

Consider what a fax machine actually is: a little device with a sheet feeder, a terrible scanning element, and an ancient modem. Most faxes run at 14,400bps. That’s just over 1KB per second — and people are still using faxes to send 52 poorly scanned pages of some contract to one another. Over analog phone lines. Sometimes while paying long-distance charges! The mind boggles.

A few reasons come to mind as to . . . [more]

Canada – either the Government or the Parliament of the day – has issued public apologies for its treatment of various groups, primarily ethnic communities for the mistreatment they endured in the hands of previous Governments: Japanese Canadians during WWII; Italian and Ukrainian Canadians during WWI.

Certainly the most dramatic apology was the one offered to the Aboriginal peoples of Canada for the mistreatment of their children over many decades through the residential schools run by various churches under contract with the federal government. Some other time I would like to argue that Parliament needs also to apologize for the . . . [more]

Symantec, the makers of Norton antivirus and anti-spyware software, released a report today containing a plethora of statistics on cybercrime.

As with any report containing statistics and poll results, we should take some of it with a grain of salt, but the stats make interesting reading. The report is set out in infographic style, so its easy to skim through it. It points out the types of online behaviour that tends to be the riskiest.

The most common – and most preventable – type of cybercrime is computer viruses.

After that comes online scams and phishing.

What is surprising is . . . [more]

The European Court of Justice has issued a ruling in Case C‑442/09 Bablok et al v. Freistaat Bayern (Monsanto intervening) that might well cause difficulty for food producers and for Monsanto, the owner of patents to many genetically modified organisms used or sold in the food chain. The plaintiff, a beekeeper, sued the Bavarian state for compensation because pollen from a government owned test field of Monsanto’s GM corn (maize) found its way into his honey, polluting it.

The court agreed that the trace amounts of pollen from the Monsanto corn, even though the pollen was no longer alive or . . . [more]

Is the practice of law predominantly a business or a profession? The debate is an old one. When Governor General David Johnston spoke of the practice of law at the recent Canadian Legal Conference in Halifax, he described it as much more than a profit-driven business. He portrayed a noble profession with duties to the client, to justice and to the public interest. He saw a social contract as existing between lawyers and society:

“There are three principal elements to any profession’s social contract. First, the profession is characterized by specialized knowledge that is taught formally and obtained by experience . . . [more]

I would like to draw the attention of all Slawyers to an important conference being held at UWO next year. It is being organized by Jason Neyers and Stephen Pitel. From my past experience with conferences organized by UWO, I expect this one to provide very useful papers and discussion.

Sixth Biennial Conference on the Law of Obligations: Challenging Orthodoxy
Hosted by The Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada
July 17-20, 2012

The Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario is pleased to be hosting the Sixth Biennial Conference on the Law . . . [more]

1) Updates to law-related movies:

Thanks to law librarian Christina López at Pitblado LLP in Winnipeg for mentioning a 1931 movie directed by Fritz Lang called “M.”

I have added an entry for this movie to my list of law-related movies, which sort of makes a nice counterpart to the movie “Z,” earlier recommended by one of the Simons.

I haven’t seen the movie and I suspect it may be hard to rent (Christina mentioning she saw it years ago at a revival movie theatre in Montreal).

It tells the story of a child murderer in Germany and . . . [more]

A newly minted partner that I know, was hit with the realization that while she has a robust group of clients, she can no longer look to her firm to send her work as they did when she was an associate. Lisa knows that developing new business is now completely up to her. She also now has a responsibility to make sure that associates in her medium-sized firm are given sufficient work that they too are profitable.

When Lisa looks at her marketing plan, it includes all the right activities. She regularly contacts existing and old clients. She gives client . . . [more]

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke announced today that Bills will shortly be introduced in Parliament to overturn prohibitions on cameras in the courtroom.

The media will only be allowed to film judges’ summary remarks only – victims, witnesses, offenders and jurors cannot be filmed.

Filming and broadcasting in court is currently banned under two Acts of Parliament and new legislation will need to be passed to allow cameras into the courts.

The Guardian reports that Clarke had intended to consult with senior judges but in recent days Downing Street had moved to circumvent this consultation process and support the change, whatever . . . [more]

You know it is September when:

• The College and University crowd adds 15 minutes to your commute
• You hear yourself saying “put some protein in that lunch girls”
• Life suddenly resumes warp speed

September is proving to be interesting on the eBook front.

Sarah Glassmeyer posted to the Law Librarian Blog today about some free eBooks. These include Federal Rules of Evidence, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. The books were compiled by the Legal Information Institute and made available through CALI‘s eLangdell Press.

There are interesting questions on a CanLII survey . . . [more]