For about nine months now, HeinOnline has been running webinars, aiming to host at least one per month. The upcoming webinar, on Wednesday, February 24, is on “Using and Searching the United Nations Law Collection” and will run for 30 minutes. There’s an excellent list of points that will be covered on the relevant Hein wiki page, along with instructions as to how to participate.

All of the previous webinars are archived and available for viewing online or for downloading. Most are concerned with U.S. resources, naturally; but a number are of general interest — “Getting Started” in HeinOnline . . . [more]

Back in November John Gregory wrote about Dealing with Digital Assets After Death and a New York Times article quoting Montreal marketing consultant Adele McAlear. Adele happens to be a friend, so I took the opportunity to speak with her in detail about the topic on behalf of Slaw readers. Our full interview (held in December) is below. Since that time, she has launched her new website DeathandDigitalLegacy.com to better track this wide-ranging subject. Adele will also be speaking on “Death and Digital Legacy in Social Media” at the upcoming PodCamp Toronto 2010 (of which I am . . . [more]

A 5-member panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal released a significant, 150-paragraph reasoned decision this morning involving conflicts of laws and when Ontario should take jurisdiction over out-of-province defendants – see:

Van Breda v. Village Resorts Limited, 2010 ONCA 84
http://www.ontariocourts.on.ca/decisions/2010/february/2010ONCA0084.htm

At issue were claims for personal injury damages occasioned as a result of accidents suffered by Canadian tourists at resorts in Cuba and whether the plaintiffs could sue in Ontario.

In paragraph 109 (pasted below) the Court has “re-formulated” their own test in Muscutt from 2002.

[109] To summarize the preceding discussion, in my view, the Muscutt

The government of South Australia has recently adopted a law that requires people commenting on the forthcoming state election to use their real names, and media will have to retain the names and addresses for six months. The requirement appears to apply to bloggers and comments on blogs etc.

Unsurprisingly, not everyone likes this.

Is it fair to say that requiring people to give their real names is a “gag” on debate?

Would the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms prevent such a law in this country? In other words, does the freedom of expression protect anonymous speech? . . . [more]

I’ve been playing with start.io lately, a web tool that allows you to easily create your own custom homepage. You can fill your homepage with links to your favorite websites, and you can customize the way your page looks. Useful features include:

• You can choose to be notified when a site you have included has new content.
• You can create groups and add links to each group.
• You can pick from themes to customize the way your page looks.

Susan Cartier Liebel has written a thoughtful blog post on the high prevalence of depression in the legal profession.

The ABA reports that “about 19 percent of lawyers experience depression at any given time, compared with 6.7 percent of the general population. About 20 percent of lawyers have drinking problems, twice the rate of the general population.”

The Lawyers Assistance Program of BC states that “research shows law to be the occupation most susceptible to clinical depression. Legal professionals are now three times more likely to be diagnosed with depression than the general population.” Further, “substance abuse among lawyers is . . . [more]

One of the reasons I started the Cross-Border Biotech Blog a year ago was that the industry in Canada was in terrible shape. In the face of a global financial crisis, biotech as an industry was attracting some attention and some bailout funding, but by July last year, 70% of Canadian biotech companies reported having under 6 months of cash remaining.

This year has started with some new, and better, data. Equicom’s year-end review shows that although several Canadian biotechs did go under, the surviving companies overall outperformed market indices. BIOTECanada updated the July survey recently as well, . . . [more]

ROOTS

The Legality of an American Slavery

Introduction

February 1 is known as National Freedom Day in the U.S. It’s also the start of Black History Month, the annual celebration and triumph of the descendants of African-Americans. This year, President Obama has also indicated that National Freedom Day will also be the first ever National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. For this reason, Blawg Review #249 will follow the theme of African slavery in America, using the model of Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family.

Haley’s novel traces his family roots back six generations to . . . [more]

Not that this will surprise anyone, considering the retraction the Lancet made in 2002. This BBC report of the ruling of the General Medical Council also includes a nice graph showing the enormous impact on measles infection rates that the doctors who conducted the shoddy research had. Most of them have issued their own 2004 retraction, though not Wakefield, the lead author. I wonder if they are now vulnerable to a malpractice action of some description, as lawyers are for inadequate research. I don’t know if any deaths have occurred, but this account by Roald Dahl is not fun . . . [more]

The Real-time web has been a popular topic in recent times as we all try to figure out how it is changing, and will continue to change our work lives. I’ve recently started Yammering here at Dalhousie; no not prattling on endlessly, but using the service Yammer or enterprise microblogging. In simple terms think Twitter, without the 140 character limit and limited to your workplace or business email domain. The product has been around for a couple of years and has been referred to in passing here at Slaw previously. In the short time that I’ve used Yammer at . . . [more]

Canada (Premier ministre) c. Khadr, 2010 CSC 3, (29 janvier 2010)
Le pourvoi etait accueilli en partie.

K a droit à une réparation en vertu du par. 24(1) de la Charte. La réparation demandée par K — une ordonnance intimant au Canada de demander son rapatriement — est suffisamment liée à la violation de la Charte survenue en 2003 et 2004 parce que les incidences de cette violation persistent jusqu’à présent et pourraient influer sur son procès lorsqu’il sera finalement tenu. Bien que le gouvernement doive disposer d’une certaine marge de manœuvre lorsqu’il décide de quelle manière il doit . . . [more]

This fillip revisits something I blogged about two years ago (Flogging). Microsoft researchers are working with computer scientist Gordon Bell to develop a system that will record, annotate, and make available to recall, nearly every aspect of his daily life. A number of videos describing the project and showing aspects of it have emerged since I first blogged about it. And Bell and co-author Jim Gemmell published a book last year about this long-term experiment, Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything (Roughcut). (Amazon lets you peek inside the book at a few of the . . . [more]