We here in Canada hark with yearning for the likes of Pandora or Spotify. (I exaggerate slightly.) And we likely will for a while, because the Canadian arms of the big music copyright owners can’t seem to strike a deal with the internet. Which, some might think, only leads to circumnavigation.

One such music-purveying “wide sailor” has made available a bunch of Illustrated Mixtapes that you might enjoy. Gigawatt, a designer, has created sets of mixtape albumns designed to offer you listening pleasure throughout the various stages of your day. Thus, each of the five (soon to be six) . . . [more]

Here’s a story pointing out that the phone ‘hacking’ that has caused so many headlines (and resignations) lately in the United Kingdom was possible because of a simple default setting on mobile phones sold in the UK, that no one took the trouble to fix and that no regulator was prepared to take responsibility for. It’s a fascinating sad story:

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-hacking-loopholes-remain-consumers-deserve-better/?elq_mid=15051&elq_cid=995446

As I understand the story, all phones provided by particular providers had the same default password for checking messages, so that if you called somebody and they didn’t answer, you could use the standard password to access their messages . . . [more]

OpenGovernment.org is a new, free site providing online access to information about proposed legislation in U.S. states. Funded by the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation (PPF) and now covering six U.S. states, OpenGovernment.org — which launched in January 2011 — enables citizens and organizations to learn about and track pending state legislation, the activities and votes of state legislators, issues that are the subject of proposed legislation, and campaign contributions to state legislators.

In July I spoke with David Moore and Carl Tashian — respectively PPF’s Executive Director and Director of Technology, and the developers of OpenGovernment.org — . . . [more]

This is a post in a series to appear occasionally, setting out some articles that contributors at Slaw are reading and that you might find interesting. These tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

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With the Canadian Law Blogs List now surpassing 300 entries (100 in the past year), along with the continued growth of law firms and lawyers using Twitter, Canadian legal web-commentary is definitely on the rise. One segment that’s lacked exposure, however, is the number of in-house perspectives from north of the border.

Happily, that change has started, with the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association (a Stem client) providing a foot in the Twittersphere door. Launched earlier this month to coincide with a website redesign, @CCCA_News will provide a mix of:

• news stories relevant to corporate counsel from Canada, the United

. . . [more]

IQT's closure: A fine example of poor corporate values!

[Colin Lachance is the President of CanLII.]

In his recent column on Slaw entitled Funding the LIIs, Sean Hocking wrote of the challenges faced by BAILII, the successes of AustLII and, to the extent information was available, the various funding models pursued by other legal information institutes. In referencing CanLII, he noted:

They don’t tell us much just that “CanLII is funded by the members of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, in other words, the law societies of Canada’s provinces and territories and the Chambre des notaires du Québec.”

It’s true, our site does . . . [more]

The magic words that every associate wants to hear from a partner is that the associate is now “thinking like an owner”. These words mean that the junior lawyer realizes the difference between being an employee and becoming a partner in a professional services firm. It means that the associate has grasped the difference between a partnership structure and a corporation. 

Many young lawyers starting out believe that being smart, skilled and working hard will naturally lead to partnership. While this may lead to promotions within a corporate structure, in a professional services firm such as law, accounting or consulting, . . . [more]

Must, or should, a declaration permitted under an international convention be expressly ‘implemented’ in Canadian law, or is implementation of the convention as a whole sufficient to give legal effect not only to the convention but also to any declaration made by Canada?

It is commonplace that in our legal system, treaties are not self-executing. This means that Canada’s ratification of or accession to an international convention has an effect only in international law, creating an obligation that may be enforceable by remedies provided in the convention itself but not in Canadian courts.

However, the convention will have domestic legal . . . [more]

On 25 July 2011, AALL hosted a panel discussion attracting at least 250 attendees. Coordinated by Michael G. Bernier, Director of Library Relations, BNA and moderated by Christine L. Graesser, Head Legislative Librarian, Connecticut Legislative Library, the speakers were:

• Lesley Ellen Harris, lawyer, author and educator, Copyrightlaws.com
• Katherine Lowry, Director of Information Resources, Baker & Hostetler
• Tracy L. Thompson-Przylucki, Executive Director, New England Law Library Consortium, Inc.

Bernier described the discussions “like listening in on a living room conversation between three experts!”

Some of the many questions discussed:

How should the license define licensed content? Usually falling under “Subject Matter” . . . [more]

My post earlier this morning complaining about “and/or” has got me on a roll.

Here are a few more pet peeves or commonly seen grammar errors:

1) Commas in Pairs (Rule 6.17, Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed)

Whenever a comma is used to set off an element, a second comma is required if the phrase or sentence continues beyond the element being set off:

– Incorrect: Judy went to Italy on June 15, 2004 to eat pasta.
– Correct: Judy went to Italy on June 15, 2004, to eat pasta.

You need a comma after the year in . . . [more]

As reported last week internet activist Aaron Schwartz “was charged … with sneaking into a computer closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and making unauthorized downloads of more than four million journal articles” from JSTOR. While there is a long list of charges (a copy of the 15 page indictment from the US District Court can be found here), the charge that has generated the most online debate is “intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access” 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2).

Academic libraries pay for access to JSTOR – an enormous repository of . . . [more]