I previously covered the Vigna v. Levant decision, where Ezra Levant was ordered to remove defamatory blog posts against Giacamo Vigna.

At least one reader expressed interest in costs, as Vigna is a lawyer and was self-represented for part of the action. Justice Smith released the costs decision on January 26, 2011 and awarded Vigna over $32,500 plus taxes in costs, exceeding the $25,000 damages awarded in the judgment. . . . [more]

The Real Estate industry can rest a little easier knowing that Google won’t be coming to their rescue. Earlier today Google announced that they will be discontinuing their Maps Real Estate Search feature on Feb 11th; citing “low usage” as the major factor in the decision.

The change won’t disrupt those organizations that rely on Google as their mapping backbone, however — see the map-based filtering provided on MLS.ca as an example. Google will continue to offer their maps API for developers to innovate. Though I’ll presume the CREA will continue to be protective over its data, so that . . . [more]

Wired has an article today about how exactly Egyptian officials managed to shut down the internet there, in an effort to suppress speech. This happened yesterday, and while news is not hard to find (Al Jazeera seems to have the most complete coverage), I gather the shut-down has hampered protesters considerably.

As a result, the “Obama’s Internet Kill-Switch” issue has taken on new profile. Here are some leads into the Lieberman-Collins Bill.

And in related news, corporate control of internet traffic in the US faces an encouraging initiative from Senators Maria Cantwell and Al Franken: A . . . [more]

This Friday it’s about friends. No, I mean real meat friends, not the phrends on phacebook. And my overbold assertion is that I know something about your friends. Here’s what I know:

Your friends have more friends than you do.

Nothing personal. Just statistical. And, almost paradoxical, given that friendship is by definition a reciprocal relationship (which is part of the reason that “Our Mutual Friend” is as wrong as the phrase “mutual agreement”: “friend in common” for the first, simply “agreement” for the second. But I digress.).

My assertion is known as the friendship paradox, and the statistical truth . . . [more]

(with apologies to Simon F. for the resonance)

Once upon a time in the last millennium – as it happens, the first year of the first decade of the last century – a judge of the now-defunct judicial branch of the House of Lords decided to let a not-too-small cat out of the bag. He wrote:

“[A] case is only an authority for what it actually decides. I entirely deny that it can be quoted for a proposition that may seem to follow logically from it. Such a mode of reasoning assumes that the law is necessarily a logical code,

. . . [more]

 In the business cycle of the Legislative Library, the planning process has begun once again. In the dark days of winter, it’s time to plant the seeds of the future. 

 “Innovation” has emerged as an important theme for our management team, and it has featured prominently in our discussions. We’re challenged by our senior executives to scan the horizon, to detect emerging issues and suggest possible responses. Exciting stuff! Our clients, on the other hand, expect the information infrastructure to remain intact. If the division doesn’t carry out its core functions: providing information management, IT and library services – we’ve . . . [more]

The latest issue of the Yale Law Journal contains a supremely sane and caustic attack by Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on the tendency of the Blue Book (Uniform System of Citation) to proliferate increasing thickets of rules and increasingly trivial sub-rules.

In an earlier essay, Goodbye to the Bluebook, 53 University of Chicago Law Review 1343 (1986), Judge Posner suggested four principles to guide the design of such a system:

“to spare the writer or editor from having to think about citation form,”

“to economize on space and the reader’s time,”

“to

. . . [more]

Just A Click Away, a Canada-wide initiative on public legal education and information (PLEI) being coordinated by Courthouse Libraries BC, is organizing a two-day intensive conference in Vancouver, British Columbia on February 23 & 24, 2011.

The conference is about how to use Internet and social media technologies to better educate the general public about the law and provide resources for individuals to solve legal problems.

As a run up to the conference, Just A Click Away has been running a webinar series that features different approaches being used to provide online PLEI.

So far, 2 webinars have been . . . [more]

People have expressed concern about behavioural advertising, in which advertisers watch what one does online in order to send out ads that are likely to appeal to the person watched. A number of big online services are now developing a ‘do not track’ command to allow their users to prevent their information from being collected for that purpose.

A more interesting, and more intrusive, usage of behavioural information collected online is by insurance companies that may decide whether someone is a good risk to insure based on that information. Fans of XXX’s double-cheese-and-bacon deep-dish pizzas may find themselves having a . . . [more]

On Tuesday, in a decision called Kaptyn v. Kaptyn, Justice D.M. Brown strongly criticized virtually all parties involved in an estate dispute, who collectively claimed $4.4 million in costs arising out of a four day hearing and 14 pre-hearing motions.

Concluding the two trustees were “unable to work together in any reasonable and effective way,” Justice D.M. Brown said the competing sides “cannot reasonably expect that unlimited judicial resources are available to devote to their internecine quarrels,” adding (with apparent frustration) (i) that the Commercial List in Toronto is “chronically short of judges,” (ii) that the “scheduling of criminal . . . [more]

As of February 2, 2011, only members of the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC) who are registered with the government of Quebec, lawyers and Quebec notaries will be able to offer consulting services for Quebec immigration.

From an announcement on the Facebook blog yesterday, Facebook has taken a big step to make your Facebook browsing experience far safer. I suspect this at least in part because someone was able to hack into Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook fan page.

If you’ve ever done your shopping or banking online, you may have noticed a small “lock” icon appear at the lower right of your browser or that the URL starts with a HTTPS. The HTTPS indicates that your browser is using a secure connection to communicate with the website you are on. This ensures that . . . [more]