Senator Goldstein has reintroduced his anti-spam bill in the Senate, as of last month. It is now Bill S-202. A similar bill (I have not compared them) was on the order paper before the last election. (It’s interesting that Senate bills die too when elections are called, considering that the Senate is not elected and the Senators all continue in office despite elections for the House of Commons. Yes, I understand the principle, but its application is not inevitable – though it is not going to change, either.)

You can read the Senator’s comments as he began second reading debate . . . [more]

Netlegal.ca is the latest legal service company to cross my radar. This Canadian company (headquartered in Charlottetown with servers inside our borders) offers several services through their site surrounding the premise of connecting people and paper electronically. The main components of their platform of services include:

NetService – firms, lawyers, and judges can choose to upload files that can then be served BY CONSENT through another Netlegal member or by fax. The fax service to the courts uses the correct forms for all Canadian jurisdictions. Judges may also set up e-filing on a case making an order that parties file . . . [more]

Starting today, the New York Times online edition is linking to stories from outside sources, including blogs. Sort of. Clearly nervous about sending you directly to news from outside sources — something that was verboten until now — the Times offers a link on its main web page to something called Times Extra. Clicking that gives you the same front page, but now each story has a suffix of links to other news sources’ take on the tale. So, for example, the opening paragraphs of the story on the cutting of rates by the central banks of Europe are followed . . . [more]

Internet Law News this morning reports that Australia will propose national legislation to criminalize identity theft.

I am not sure I understand the story. Presumably Australia has laws against fraud. The story mentions using another person’s credit card and stealing personal information to open bank accounts and take out loans in the name of the victim. Would not such actions already be illegal? They certainly would be here.

It is arguable that it should be illegal simply to acquire the personal information, without actually using it – but then would protective or limiting measures be needed to prevent abuse, or . . . [more]

There have been a couple great BigLaw blog lists that have come out over the past week, and both are well worth noting here on Slaw.

First up, 3 Geeks and a Law Blog have published a list of officially sanctioned BigLaw law blogs, with the term sanctioned being defined as a link from the firm’s main website. A good metric, IMO. This list now totals 141 blogs from 56 law firms, and is based on looking at the NLJ 250 firms.

The second list comes from the crew over at Law Blog Builders Lexblog, and is an . . . [more]

If you follow us by RSS or email and don’t visit the website, you’ll likely be missing a couple of interesting conversations in the comments to recent posts. (You can, of course, subscribe to the comments either by email or RSS, though many readers haven’t yet done that.)

Alex Manevich’s post on arbitral awards and limitations periods has generated an interesting series of exchanges between him and John Gregory. Well worth taking a look.

And Dave Bilinsky’s post, Shouldn’t It Just Work?, sparked a bunch of comments on tablet PC’s.

So drop by the website for a good read. . . . [more]

A recent WSL Blog posting on legal outsourcing to India (a topic covered quite extensively on SLAW), reminded me I was going to mention the panel that spoke on this topic a few weeks back at the Canadian Law and Technology Forum in Toronto. One speaker discussed offshore outsourcing and the other speaker discussed outsourcing domestically to Canadian lawyers.

The offshore outsourcing speaker was lawyer Gavin Birer of Legalwise Outsourcing Inc. (who wrote a good introductory article on the topic here on SLAW earlier this summer). Given good high-speed Internet, secure communications and a body of qualified lawyers in India, . . . [more]

For all the great info including speakers, location and plenty of details, visit:
http://podcamphalifax.ca . . . [more]

Announcement today from the Library of Congress: here is the Press Release

The Global Legal Information Network Offers New Features . . . [more]

This from our Slaw friend Jim Milles… It seems that a new study from comScore is showing Canada as the number one nation in the world in Social Networking adoption.

Here’s a screen capture of the chart:

. . . [more]

Librarians often debate the prices of law books, wondering why pricing soars beyond normal trade publishing prices. The suspicion is that editorial and marketing costs are not higher than trade costs. Of course one factor is the small size of print runs. Canadian publishers faced with demand for an out of print book (like Bill Estey’s Legal Opinions in Commercial Transactions) will often print just a couple of hundred copies.

Now we’ve actual evidence of a major legal publisher going for print on demand. The costs are, of course, high in relation to page count.

OUP have recently re-issued, . . . [more]

Some background on the current fun and games / constitutional crisis / surrealist psychodrama on Parliament Hill:

• A Q&A on coalition governments (Toronto Star)
• Going where no Governor-General has gone before – In an unprecedented use of her reserve power, Michaëlle Jean could leave the Tory government with its hands tied behind its back (Globe and Mail)
• The Governor-General’s options (Globe and Mail)
• Manoeuvring puts GG in ‘untenable’ position: Expert (Ottawa Citizen)
• The delicate role of the Governor General (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)
• Ce que peut faire Michaëlle Jean (La Presse)

And then my head exploded… . . . [more]