We’ve blogged recently on studies showing the colossal waste of time and energy that spam causes. But fret not, the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, today announced that the Government of Canada is delivering on its commitment to protect consumers and businesses from the most dangerous and damaging forms of spam. The proposed Electronic Commerce Protection Act (Bill C-27) will deter the most dangerous forms of spam, such as identity theft, phishing and spyware, from occurring in Canada and will help drive spammers out of Canada.

“Our government knows how damaging spam can be to Canadians and Canadian . . . [more]

Here are a few interesting projects, ideas, and initiatives highlighted on library blogs over the last couple of days. First, from Instructibles, how to build a high-speed book scanner from spare parts, trash, and cheap cameras, for about $300. According to the author, this is for a “greener future with more books rather than fewer books.”

Next, Free Green, a place to get free building plans that are energy efficient and green in other ways. Each one comes with detailed stats on energy consumption, materials, etc. They also offer advice customization, and finding builders. The site is a . . . [more]

Yesterday’s Federal Court decision of Mr. Justice O’Reilly, Omar Ahmed Khadr v. The Prime Minister Of Canada, The Minister of Foreign Affairs, The Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and The Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police 2009 FC 405, is available in PDF.

[3] I am satisfied, in the special circumstances of this case, that Mr. Khadr’s rights under s. 7 of the Charter have been infringed. I will grant his request for an order requiring the respondents to seek his repatriation from the United States. Given my conclusion regarding s. 7, it is unnecessary for

It’s hard for some of us to read a book without feeling compelled to comment as the author’s argument unfolds. It may be that you scoff or cheer out loud. Or you may be one of those who read a book with a pencil or pen at the ready, leaving your remarks on the page to persist beside the printed marks, in which case you create what are known as marginalia.

It seems that this urge to annotate has existed for as long as Gutenberg’s gifts have been around — longer, indeed, as you see in the picture below, where . . . [more]

The notice from Quicklaw about legislation that Shaunna just mentioned has been causing a fair bit of discussion in TALL‘s listserv. As a result, Louis Mirando, Chief Law Librarian at Osgoode Hall Law School has described the Ontario historical legislation digitizing project that is currently underway. With a slight bit of editing, here is Louis’ message, reprinted with permission:

most recent efforts have been undertaken as part of, and are funded by, the “Ontario Digitization Initiative” (ODI) of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). As its pilot ODI project, OCUL is digitizing Ontario legislative materials from the

This notice is making the rounds:

Notice to Quicklaw Customers:

Please be advised that the bills sources will no longer be available on the Quicklaw™ service starting in May.

However, customers can still access a full annual statutes service for Canada (English and French), Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario on the Quicklaw service. Full-text versions of the annual statutes are made available on Quicklaw upon receipt of royal assent. The annual statutes sources contain the commencement information for each annual statute, as well as a list of the acts amended by any particular statute.

Hopefully someone will fill the void . . . [more]

Or will be, if Bill 42 [PDF], introduced into the Alberta Legislature two days ago, is passed into law. The bill would amend the Gaming and Liquor Act to permit licensees, i.e. bar owners and their employees, to take down the names of any patrons they suspect of being gang members and to share these names with other licensees and the police. Specifically:

69.2 (1) A licensee may, before allowing a person to enter licensed premises, collect the person’s name, age and photograph.

(2) If a licensee has personal knowledge or reasonably believes that a person referred to in subsection

I would like to raise again whether Canada should ratify the UNCITRAL Electronic Communications Convention (ECC). The ECC sets out in treaty form some of the basic rules of the 1996 Model Law on Electronic Commerce about how legal requirements that appear to need paper writings can be satisfied by electronic communications. The Convention operates only for international contracts, though it can be used as well to interpret other conventions to which the ratifying country is a party.

Thus the Convention says that information shall not be denied legal effect solely because it is in electronic form; that a legal . . . [more]

A NJ Appellate Division court says that Wikipedia is too malleable to be used as evidence in Palisades Collection v. Graubard, A-1338-07.

Mary Pat Gallagher of the New Jersey Law Journal reported yesterday,

“[I]t is entirely possible for a party in litigation to alter a Wikipedia article, print the article and thereafter offer it in support of any given position,” an appeals court held. “Such a malleable source of information is inherently unreliable and clearly not one ‘whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned,'” such as would support judicial notice under New Jersey Evidence Rule 201(b)(3).

The decision reversed an . . . [more]

This teaser from the National Law Journal Web version caught my eye:

Are you interested in legal issues but shudder at the thought of wading through massive law review articles riddled with footnotes? A new Web site just might be the answer. Legalworkshop.org aims to bring content from some of the most prestigious law reviews in the nation to a wider audience by offering condensed version of articles translated from scholarly language into plain English, and at no cost.

This is a very interesting idea. First a new and free aggregated source for accessing peer reviewed legal research. Second a . . . [more]

Today (being both Shakespeare’s birthday and Shakespeare’s and Cervantes’ deathday) seems apt for some comment on World Book and Copyright Day.

Last month, at the Second Global eIFL-IP conference in Istanbul, librarians from thirty-nine developing and transition countries decided to highlight the importance of users’ rights for libraries and education to mark the occasion. eIFL.net is an international foundation, which supports national library consortia in approximately fifty transition and developing countries to negotiate and advocate for the wide availability of electronic resources to education, research and professional communities as well as governmental organisations and civil society. This global . . . [more]

We’ve mentioned the practice of having a web adjunct to conventional law journals. A collective was announced yesterday. I’ll let them speak for themselves:

Law Journals Band Together to Launch Web Magazine

The Legal Workshop Aims to Revitalize Legal Scholarship

STANFORD, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–A consortium of America’s most influential law reviews today launched The Legal Workshop, a free, online magazine featuring articles based on legal scholarship published in the print editions of seven participating law reviews: Stanford Law Review, New York University Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, Northwestern Law Review, and University of Chicago