What do Estonia and Denmark have in common that sets them apart from the rest of Europe?

They’re the only two of the 27 countries in the European Union that have complied with a directive on privacy that came into force on May 26. [The Register has the story.] The directive — a 2009 amendment to the broader directive on privacy — concerns cookies, those tiny bits of script that web servers can lodge on your computer in order to record your preferences, report back on your choices, or perform other relatively simple acts of communication between your machine . . . [more]

We IT consultants are sort of a mystical bunch. People don’t seem to really understand what we do or how and in many cases we get called when people are desperate because all else has failed. Not many people call me when everything is working great. I want to take this opportunity to clear up three misconceptions people have about working with consultants:

1. We usually don’t need your passwords…and just as often don’t want them.

It amazes me how often I’ll show up at a site and the client will just hand me a sheet listing everybody’s account name . . . [more]

At yesterday’s inaugeral Law Tech Camp in Toronto, Prof. Daniel Katz of Michigan State University College of Law spoke on “Computing and the Law.” The topic was covered in The Globe earlier this week,

The crucial question for anyone heading into a court battle – whether a mighty corporation or a mere slip-and-fall victim – is the same, every time: “What are my chances?”

Depending on the answer, a client will decide to settle, or to stand and fight. The answer generally comes from across the oak-panelled desk of a lawyer, who draws on wisdom gained from years of

CBC is reporting that Facebook was hacked again. While it doesn’t look like huge numbers of accounts were compromised, it is worth changing your password to protect yourself.

And regardless of whether your account was compromised or not, changing your passwords regularly is one of the best things you can do to protect your online identities and accounts. You can learn about other password best practices in this article from Law Practice magazine. . . . [more]

…For Ice Cream or more properly “Iced” Cream, (this is one of those words that we have slang-ed much like Web Log to Blog). As we approach the Summer Solstice, the first day of summer, on Tuesday of next week, it’s time to celebrate our (all-too-brief) summer, notwithstanding that many of us have not experienced much summer-like weather yet. Nonetheless, I have already experienced more than one ice cream headache aka. brain freeze, cold stimulus headache or more accurately sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia (say that 3 times fast). It is generally agreed that the feeling of someone driving an ice pick into . . . [more]

This is a tale of two women separated in time by just about a century and in age by more than three decades — unlikely companions, you may think.

The first woman I might have come to know if I’d ever entertained 10,000 Maniacs, but for some reason, likely having to do with the badness of the eighties and maniacs of other sorts, I missed that group — and Natalie Merchant, the lead singer and, of course, the woman I’m on about. I’ve just now come across the latest albumn in her solo career, Leave Your Sleep (thank you, CBC) . . . [more]

Research on the high degree of lawyer burnout, depression, substance abuse, divorce and suicide make for discouraging reading. Lawyers consistently score much higher than either the general population or other professions when it comes to managing the impact of stress on our lives. (Susan Daicoff “Lawyer Know Thyself: A Psychological Analysis of Personal Strengths and Weaknesses”.) It is one of the reasons that so many younger lawyers entering the profession are pushing back against what they experience as a highly stressful work environment that is dangerous to their health. It is not just the long hours that are . . . [more]

No law here. Just a post to honour the fact that it’s Bloomsday, the anniversary of the day on which Leopold Bloom perambulated in Dublin. And I’m glad to say that it gets easier and easier to come to grips with Joyce’s Ulysses, something of a difficult beast for more than a few. So whether or not you’ve read the great novel, you might like to hear Irishman Frank Delaney (whom NPR has called “the most eloquent man in the world”) devote five minutes to each chapter of the first book. He’s just now finishing his first year of podcasts . . . [more]

The Canadian Centre for Elder Law marked World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (June 15) by publishing a discussion paper entitled Moving From Scrutiny to Strategy: An Analysis of Key Canadian Elder Abuse and Neglect Cases.

The Centre is affiliated with the British Columbia Law Institute.

The discussion paper “reviews a number of recent elder abuse and neglect cases that have been recorded in Canadian court decisions – largely criminal cases. The cases serve as a backdrop for highlighting social dynamics at play in elder abuse cases, comparing relevant legislation across the country, clarifying legal obligations to respond to elder . . . [more]

In the wake of the 2011 edition of the Vancouver riots, a new website called Identifyrioters.com was quickly assembled to publish scraped photos from social media. Users are encouraged to identify individuals, log into their Facebook accounts, identify the person in question, and then relay the assembled information back the the VPD. It’s also worth noting that this is a citizen led effort, and not a production of the VPD. It will be interesting to see how effective it is.

Unlike the ’94 edition of the riots, things have changed dramatically in how digitally inclined our society has become. Being . . . [more]

Most Canadian jurisdictions (except PEI and the Territories) have Class Actions statutes and our courts are increasingly having to deal with the complex issues that class litigation presents. One of the most difficult issues is the co-ordination of litigation that involves class members in multiple jurisdictions. Because our federal courts (with a statutory jurisdiction) have not the sort of diversity jurisdiction that facilitates the consolidation of multi-state proceedings) our courts must fashion solutions within the structure of provincial superior court primacy over civil litigation.

The defects of the current system have been described as follows:

Overlapping, multijurisdictional class actions

A New York Times article from Monday has been prompting some comment on the blogs and blawgs. In “Justices Turning More Frequently to Dictionary, and Not Just for Big Words,” Adam Liptak wrote about the considerable frequency with which U.S. Supreme Court Justices refer to dictionary definitions in their opinions, much to the concern — not to say derision — of linguists and lexicologists. This should come as only a mild surprise to lawyers, perhaps, who are used to the various and contestable ways meaning in statutes is determined and justified by judges.

As the linguists point out, . . . [more]