Brian Coldin, a naturist and owner of a nude resort in Barrie, Ontario, considers clothing optional even in public places. Coldin has launched a constitutional challenge of the Criminal Code provisions against public nudity, saying the Code limits freedom of expression and is too broad. Coldin’s lawyer, Clayton Ruby, calls the Code’s nudity provisions an oddity, meaning they are outdated and improperly worded.

Unicode 6.0.0

Unicode 6.0.0 was released on October 11, 2010. Mainstream journalists didn’t take much notice, if the results of a search for "Unicode Consortium" in the Google News Archive are any indication. There was a bit of an exception in India: "Typing the Rupee symbol set to get easier". Since a significant number of the items retrieved were in languages that I don’t understand, and since I didn’t search at all for translations of "Unicode Consortium", I can’t say for certain what other exceptions there may have been. The Consortium itself noted the following highlights:

• over 1,000

. . . [more]

When can a unionized employer discipline an employee for off-duty conduct?

This question is age-old, but is particularly relevant today given the frequency of disputes about off-duty internet expression. The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal issued a decision yesterday that addresses the so-called “nexus test” for employers’ disciplinary jurisdiction. It held that an arbitrator did not err by finding harm to reputation but failing to find a sufficient nexus to the workplace to warrant discipline.

The matter underlying this finding is about a 40-year-old school caretaker who a school board discharged for having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl. . . . [more]

I just finished listening to another IT-Can teleconference on the anti-spam act, this one presented by Barry Sookman and Lorne Salzman of McCarthy Tetrault. For those wanting more detail, slides will be posted soon on the IT-Can website, the McCarthy Tetrault website, and Barry’s blog.

It reinforced my earlier concerns that this legislation is going to affect almost every business or organization. Many of its provisions strike me as a sledgehammer to kill a fly approach. Some of the highlights from the teleseminar are as follows:

Why be concerned?

There are large penalties for violations. They include extensive awards for . . . [more]

Taking an oath… and re-writing it. Should the language be clear and plain or quaint and evocative?

In what seems like another age I wondered about the same question and decided to start publishing an online newsletter that most readers of this article will be aware of, Law Librarians News.

Then to keep up with trends and technology I also started publishing the House Of Butter blog and subsequently a Law Librarians News Twitter both of which appear, I hope, to be popular with an online readership.

It might appear that I’m doing my utmost to blow my own trumpet but it has always been somewhat of a surprise that it’s only those from the U.S. and . . . [more]

Legal project management. Three words that are appearing together in sequence more and more often. I got a tip from a colleague recently about Onit. What is Onit?

Onit is a light-weight project management and business collaboration tool for legal and business professionals.

I signed up for an Onit account to gather information about what legal project management would look like on a day to day basis using a software tool. I learned a little more than I bargained for. The Onit website offers some good arguments for implementing an LPM structure over the provision of legal services under . . . [more]

This is just a reminder about our new sister site, SlawTips — tips.slaw.ca — launched last week.

It’s Tuesday so that means it’s a tech tip today. Research tip tomorrow, practice tip on Thursday. That’s how it goes. So go and take a look. . . . [more]

Confidentiality obligations are a fundamental part of all outsourcing agreements. As part of an outsourcing transaction, the customer and the service provider each agree to make Confidential Information available to the other but subject, in each case, to the limitations on use, disclosure and retention that are agreed to in the contract. Unfortunately, customers and service providers don’t always get it right and the parties sometimes find, after signing the agreement, that information intended to be kept confidential need not be or that information intended to be freely available is subject to unwelcome restrictions that limit its usability. In this . . . [more]

The problems aren’t always caused by unrepresented litigants.

• The Attorney General of Canada v. Maria Valde, 2011 ONSC 328
• “In the Matter of an Application pursuant to section 29 of the Extradition Act for an order committing the Respondent to await the Minister’s decision on whether the Respondent should be surrendered to the Republic of Hungary”
• [1] The Republic of Hungary seeks the extradition of Maria Valde a.k.a. Maria Ramsay to face charges for conduct considered criminal in Canada, namely fraud. For the reasons that follow, I dismiss the application.
• [7] The test for committal

. . . [more]

I’ve set out excerpts from just-released reasons. The words in square brackets are my comments.

Farrell v. The General of the Salvation Army, 2011 ONSC 317

• [2] The Plaintiff’s Amended Statement of Claim (“the Claim”) comprises 226 pages and 2,589 paragraphs, some incorrectly numbered. The Claim names 62 Defendants but contains repetitions of some of them. The claims against eight of the Defendants have been dismissed.[1] There are currently claims against only 13 Defendants.
• [3] The damage claim is $1,030,681,760. The Claim arises from alleged experiences the Plaintiff had during an 18 month stay at the Hope Shelter, an

. . . [more]

I read with great interest a recent article by Chris Anderson in Wired Features how video on YouTube is having the unexpected effect of allowing people to learn–and innovate–at an accelerated rate. He gives the example of people learning from one another how to dance, developing skills previously unheard of. Take for example the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers:

According to Anderson, many of these dancers were self-taught through Internet video, bringing together tricks and moves previously unknown in dance. Part of this is accelerated learning and innovation, he says, comes from people sharing what they know, so that others who . . . [more]