The British Columbia Supreme Court released Loychuk v. Cougar Mountain Adventures Ltd., 2011 BCSC 193 on Friday, clearing the Defendant zipline company located outside of Whistler Mountain from injuries sustained by the Plaintiffs on August 18, 2007.

One of the Plaintiffs was proceeding down the zipline, which places users in a harness that travels up to 100 km an hour, but did not reach the next platform. She was essentially stranded about 500 metres before the end of the run, which formed the basis for the Plaintiffs claiming a limited measure of control.

The second Plaintiff, who incidentally . . . [more]

The HB Gary email leak just keeps on giving. First reported over a week ago, the leak of more than 50,000 internal emails was made by Anonymous, and revealed planned attacks by HB Gary on Wikileaks. The attacks were to be made at the behest of Bank of America, as it girded its loins in preparation for a promised exposure. Apart from demonstrating government involvement in the plot, which included targeting journalists the email have also shown a similar conspiracy in service of the US Chamber of Commerce. Now the emails have revealed the extent to which . . . [more]

Those of you who get your Slaw via email or RSS may not visit the website often enough to know that a little dot has caused a big fuss here at Slaw. Lexum’s post, “Are We to Live with Useless Periods Forever?,” has elicited 18 comments as of Friday noon. It’s always a puzzle to me what prompts a reader to comment, and I must say that I’m a little surprised that a proposal about a period has generated debate. At any rate, go and have a look at the discussion, and add your 2¢ if you feel . . . [more]

The European Union has been thinking about the disharmony of its consumer laws and the disincentive that this can pose to cross-border commerce, particularly e-commerce. This disincentive may be greater because the Rome Treaty requires that consumer disputes be resolved in the courts of the consumer’s residence according to the law of that place. B2C e-commerce among EU countries is not expanding along with domestic B2C e-commerce.

The EU has come up with a proposal to have a ‘28th law’ (in addition to the law of the 27 member states), being a common consumer law that could be opted into . . . [more]

Did you know that if you attach a rock to a lightbulb and drop it into the ocean, the bulb will implode at about 100 metres with a peculiar “bang”?

I didn’t either. (If you’d like to hear that “bang,” click on this.)

More interesting, I suppose, is the fact that the undersea is a “blooming, buzzing confusion” of sounds, most of which are made by living beings. We, unfortunately, are responsible for noise pollution, causing distress to some ocean creatures, among them whales. These great beasts moan and whoop and click and pop, typically beneath the range of . . . [more]

3D printing would seemingly be mind-blowing for Access Copyright

How often do you have to capture the contents of websites, for use in presentations, as trial exhibits or to illustrate your fabulous slaw.ca posts? You can do the usual “print screen” function that’s built into your operating system, but that usually snags a whole bunch of other stuff (like your toolbars or other tabs that are open). Usually you want to show the web page only, without other distracting stuff that detracts from what you want to convey. In addition, using “print screen” it only captures the portion of the webpage what’s visible on the screen, not the entire . . . [more]

About a year ago, I announced the creation of a Canadian Centre for Court Technology (CCCT) “IntellAction” working group with the mandate to promote the modernization of court web sites in Canada by way of producing guidelines on topic. We have now finished our first draft and invite you to take a look, in upcoming weeks, to selected parts of the guidelines. Your comments and suggestions are welcome! . . . [more]

In a previous article, I discussed some issues with loose-leaf subscriptions and suggested that a number of them might well be replaced by eBooks. The term ‘eBook’ is used for electronic material produced in a wide range of formats. These formats include, but certainly are not limited to, HTML, PDF, AZW (Amazon’s proprietary format for the Kindle), EPUB (an open e-book format used by the iPad) and Mobipocket. Not all these formats are compatible with all devices. Wikipedia has an excellent list of the various formats, along with a table showing which format will work on what device. . . . [more]

It’s an issue that divides both generations and the tech-savvy from the not so tech-savvy… Gizmodo asks: Is it Ever OK to Leave Voicemail Anymore? Some of their acceptable uses included:

• When you want to stand out [against the noise of the email inbox]
• When dropping important news
• When you have many questions to ask
• or when you’re dealing with people who aren’t tech-savvy

For those under-30, voicemail usage is almost as loved as having to wear a watch — i.e. it’ doesn’t happen. And really, there’s must be a good percentage of older generations that feel the same way . . . [more]

Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin spoke last week at the University of Toronto’s Access to Civil Justice for Middle Income Canadians Colloquium about how ordinary people risk being priced out of the justice system. In her speech, she called on governments, academics, judges and lawyers to work to ensure better access to justice for all Canadians.

Her speech and the colloquium attracted some media attention:

• Access to justice becoming a privilege of the rich, judge warns (Globe and Mail, February 10, 2011)
• Legal system doesn’t work for ordinary people, top judge says (Vancouver Sun, February 14, 2011)

. . . [more]

Life lags a little behind CSI and the other forensic fantasies on the tube — but not so far behind as you might imagine. We’ve all heard about government-employed facial recognition software that, in theory, can pick a putative bad guy out of the madding crowd. Now that sort of knowing eye is headed everywhere, thanks to the race to employ face recognition capacity in mobile devices.

It’s all part of the current lust to know and be known — to “befriend,” “follow” and “share with” a wide range of people in (or near) one’s life. To see what will . . . [more]