I stumbled across an interesting story about the intersection of law, ethics and technology. Workers at an internet security company called TippingPoint discovered a way to gain control of a network of computers remotely – and secretly – controlled by spammers (a so-called “botnet”). The botnet is made up of 400,000 computers and used to send out huge volumes of spam.

The researchers are now capable of sending out a signal to the infected computers to remove the virus. However, like the way the program installed itself, it would have to be done without the consent of the computer owner. . . . [more]

Toronto is gearing up for the social media conference Mesh starting tomorrow. This is the first time I have seen a mobile application created for a conference: Sweet Caesar has created an application for both Blackberry and iPhone that:

* gives full conference schedule
* shows speaker pictures and bios
* provides Floor plans and surrounding area map
* allows participants to give feedback for speakers and events

This is ideal for participants relying on hand-held devices rather than laptops or macbooks. Early reaction has been extremely positive.

. . . [more]

June 2 is the deadline for submission of entries for the 2008 InnovAction Awards. From the website:

The InnovAction Awards is a worldwide search for lawyers, law firms, and other deliverers of legal services who are currently engaged in some extraordinarily innovative efforts. The goal is to demonstrate to the legal community what can be created when passionate professionals, with big ideas and strong convictions, are determined to make a difference. Each year, we present the coveted InnovAction Awards to those unsung heroes and rising stars within the legal profession who dare to think differently and succeed by doing

In a bit of a twist on recent practice, it seems that the state of Oregon is aggressively asserting copyright over statutes and legislation. In late April the legal resource website Justia, was served with a cease and desist order ((As Blog-ed at Justia.com)) by the Legislative Counsel of the State of Oregon pursuant to Justia posting Oregon laws. Interestingly, the state is not claiming copyright on the text itself but on such things as the “arrangement and subject matter compliation… the leadlines and numbering for each statutory section, the tables, index and annotations…” ((From the order posted . . . [more]

The Association of College & Research Libraries publication C&RL News has a current article by Anne Blecksmith pointing to open access digital image collections on the deep Web (you won’t find these collections via search engines or Flickr). The article links to and describes a wide array of digital image collections, including collaborative collections as well as those from universities, public libraries and archives, and historical societies. See the post on this article from one of my favorite blogs ReadWriteWeb. . . . [more]

According to a recent article in The Economist, the advent of e-discovery may be the single most significant change to the legal system in the last half century. This is principally due to the huge volumes of material that can be involved and the sometimes staggering cost of processing it. It has been aptly put by Ken Withers, Director of Judicial Education and Content for The Sedona Conference,

More money is probably spent litigating electronic discovery problems than in litigating class actions…this is part of potentially every case in the 21st century

Approximately 60 billion emails are created and . . . [more]

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has launched a new website called A Nation’s Chronicle: The Canada Gazette:

“Often referred to as ‘the official newspaper of the Government of Canada,’ the Canada Gazette has been an important instrument in the Canadian democratic process for more than 160 years. It has served to inform Canadians of the operations of government and to involve them actively in the legislative process. With this site, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), in co-operation with the Canada Gazette Directorate, Public Works and Government of Services Canada, will make the Gazette available online, in its entirety, for

Simon has written a few times here about Powerset, a developing search engine that attempts to analyze web pages by looking at their meaning rather than just as a set of keywords.

Well, the site has finally gone live this week. So far, it indexes only a small set of pages – those found in Wikipedia and Freebase. They have plans to index more data sets in the near future.

The site is getting quite a bit of publicity for a search engine – see articles from ABC News and the NY Times.

The consensus seems to be . . . [more]

With Simon F being in Spain and all, it seems we fell down a bit on one of our regular editorial items – the Friday Fillip.

While I won’t even try to fill Simon’s shoes, I would like to offer up my latest web-experiment as a Monday pseudo-fillip: legalvoices.com… A site showing the most recent twitter entries from individuals connected to the legal industry; around 150-ish at last count. If you’ve heard of twitter, and want to see what the service looks like without the investment, I’d encourage you to check it out.

Also related & potentially helpful . . . [more]

CALL/ACBD’s annual conference is quickly approaching. This year we are meeting in beautiful Saskatoon. There is still time to register if you have not yet done so! Also, the pre-conference workshop on Saturday, May 24th is the Law Library Leadership Institute looks outstanding.

If you go, please say hello. . . . [more]

Some interesting developments on legal scholarship at Harvard: . . . [more]

Roy Mersky may not have been the first person to ride a horse through a major law library but he was likely the smartest, shortest and most published ((His bibliography is awesome in its length)). . . . [more]