An arbitrator under the WIPO domain name dispute resolution policy has held that Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay for ten years, has no remedy against someone who registered several domain names relating to a possible attempt by Ms Whitman to run for governor of California in 2010. The report on OutLaw.com has a link to the decision itself.

Some of the domains were megwhitmanforgovernor.com and meg2010.com.

The essence of the decision is that Ms Whitman did not have a custom of commercial use of her name and thus had not established a ‘common law trademark’ in it. Mere fame was . . . [more]

for Counter-feiting, fa la la la la, la la la la. Interestingly enough there are not many catchy carols about the counterfeiting season. But as I was about the other day, I saw a sign at a particular business to mark the season, the sign was to the effect that the business would no longer be accepting 100 dollar bills. Which got me to thinking, can they do that? So I headed straight for the Currency Act, R.S.C. 1985, c.C-52 in order to figure it out. And what to my wondering eyes did appear? …. well, not the answer to . . . [more]

As winter sets in, all grey and grim, it’s natural, I think, to find your thoughts wandering to warmer climes, or, if you’re nostalgic, warmer times. Well say no more. Today’s fillip does the work for you, taking you to a place (very) long ago and (very) far away.

The place: the Ténéré desert in what is now Niger. The time: oh, about 9,000 years ago.

And the way there (and thence) is photographs. Photographer Mike Hettwer went with an archeological expedition to Gobero, where once the Sahara was wet and hippos roamed the mud. They uncovered evidence not . . . [more]

Last week Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a collaborative service of Britain’s Internet Service Providers, banned a page of Wikipedia that contained a picture of a record album cover (in the UK called the ‘sleeve’) from 1976. The picture showed a young girl, about 10 perhaps, naked, in a sexually suggestive pose.

The ban was done by putting the page on a blacklist that IWF updates twice a day to help British ISPs avoid making potentially illegal images available.

An unintended consequence of the ban was to prevent any British internet users from editing any page on Wikipedia. This consequence comes . . . [more]

Yesterday, UVic Libraries announced the launch of The British Colonist, an online archive of The British Colonist newspaper, one of the earliest newspapers published in British Columbia. From the UVic Digital Collection page:

When complete, the archive will consist of approximately 100,000 page images spanning 52 years from the newspapers beginning in 1858 until 1910, when the paper changed its name to The Daily Colonist. The above link will connect you with the database allowing you to search by keyword or browse by date.

The project is sponsored by Victoria Times-Colonist, University of Victoria Libraries, University of British

The ubiquitous Karlheinz Schreiber has lost his latest round of legal whack-a-mole. This morning, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected his application for leave to appeal the most recent court decision allowing his extradition to Germany.

Germany initially requested Mr. Schreiber’s extradition on August 27, 1999. Since then, he has sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada no fewer than five times, and obtained it once (not counting his earlier trip to the SCC in 1998, challenging Canadian assistance to a Swiss investigation). He managed to delay the first court decision on the merits of his extradition . . . [more]

There was an article in a recent number of the Law Times on a conference at Ryerson on legal education. The focus seemed to be on whether law schools should stick with their current model of education, i.e., teaching students “how to think”, not what they need to know to be lawyers—what I call the “Harry Arthurs” model. This attitude was juxtaposed with “clinical” legal education.

It seems to me that this is a false dichotomy and that there is an alternative—whether it’s called a “middle way” or not. One such alternative would be to require students to undertake . . . [more]

Shortcuts, those little things that make our tech-life easier, have been making headlines this week.

Here at Slaw, Dan Pinnington posted about his excellent article on essential technology skills. David Canton followed up with more shortcuts and some pet peeves that came to mind. Technolawyer offered up some iPhone shortcuts (Blackberry users can look here) and the Legal Writing Prof Blog mentiond Dan’s tips. My colleagues in the Field Law library learned and shared some useful shortcuts for our Microsoft Access database: Contrl ‘ (moves to the line above) and Control ; (pastes todays date).

I find . . . [more]

The BBC is currently offering its program, “The Draftsman’s Contract,” online. It’s an examination in two parts of “the people who actually write our country’s legislation…” The first part, 15 minutes in length, is available now and for the next 6 days — after which it disappears, I suppose. The second part will be broadcast on December 17 at 20:45, and will presumably be similarly available for a number of days afterwards as streaming audio.

The BBC uses its own iPlayer format, which contains DRM restrictions, and has been the object of much criticism. . . . [more]

I’m not enough of a sucker for punishment that I’ve ever actually read a credit card application – a terrible thing for a lawyer to admit, I know. The pages of dense text full of words I’m not likely to really comprehend just discourage me. So I just look at the annual fee and rewards offered and go from there.

But it looks like that may change. The government of Canada has teamed up with Mastercard to produce a credit card agreement in plain English. It looks quite simple, readable and informative – like it’s goal is to inform rather . . . [more]

If you’re ever in danger of thinking that you’re a gadget freak who’s gone a phone too far, console and correct yourself by looking closely at Stephen Fry. This renaissance eccentric, one of my faves, is so deeply into the tech of it all that you’ll wonder how he finds any time at all for his acting, writing and film-making. His latest blog post, Gee, One Bold Storm coming up…, is a long, long lovely ramble about the stuff he’s taken with him to New York (it’s his desk you see above), where he is for the next few . . . [more]

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Amnesty International Canada is inviting people to get involved by participating in Write-A-Thon events taking across in hundreds of locations across the country.

More background:

• The 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Worth Celebrating! (Canadian Human Rights Commission)
• Amnesty International Celebrates 60 years of Universal Human Rights Protection