Today’s Prospect Magazine has an impassioned (though at times conflicted) assessment of Google by Jonathan Rée as the tool of American imperialism, which must be resisted on principle.

The author marvels over the Google Books engine – and its ability to help him browse through Hazlitt, in the NYPL collection. Then he stops himself:

Thank God for Google, I said to myself. But I nearly choked on the words: in the company I keep, praising Google would be on a par with shopping at Tesco, eating in McDonald’s or speaking up for the political astuteness of George W Bush.

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University of British Columbia President Stephen J. Toope today announced a $6 million grant from the Law Foundation of British Columbia to benefit public access to justice and student learning in B.C.

“The pivotal nature of the Law Foundation’s contribution cannot be underestimated,” says Toope. “The impact on UBC Law Faculty’s ability to contribute to the needs of our society will be profound.”

The $6 million grant will contribute to a new building to house the UBC Faculty of Law, the UBC Law Library, the Law Students Legal Advice Program (LSLAP) and the British Columbia Law Institute — a public . . . [more]

What may prove to be the longest, and most constroversial trial, in BC after the Air India trial began today in New Westminster for the accused serial killer Robert Pickton. There has been a lot of interest by the media, and for the first time there will be coverage of the opening and closing statements of the Crown and the Defence. There are already a number of blogs dedicated to the trial, none I could find that were much use, and coverage on the Globe and Mail . The best and most comprehensive site I have found so far is . . . [more]

A new article describes changes in legal scholarly communication as a shift from long, rights-protected mediated forms to short, open-access, unmediated ones. The author, Lawrence Solum, also considers the causes of the change, and the future. His comments are based mainly on his experiences as a blogger.

Solum, Lawrence B., “Download It While Its Hot: Open Access and Legal Scholarship” . Lewis & Clark Law Review, Vol. 10, p. 841, 2006 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=957237

The article appears in a special issue on open access and the legal world. . . . [more]

Ce n’est pas vraiment une actualité brûlante; en fait, c’est une actualité tous les jours depuis bien longtemps tant le phénomène est récurrent. Personnellement, disons que cette actualité est dû à ce que la même semaine, j’ai eu deux interviews sur le phénomène eBay et une de ses excroissances, Paypal. La première mardi à La Facture; l’autre vendredi soir à J.E.

Pour voir les deux reportages, aller ici:

– La Facture
– J.E.

Dans les deux cas, on évoque le problème suivant: un vendeur vend un produit par eBay; produit ayant suffisamment de valeur pour justifier d’utiliser l’intermédiaire . . . [more]

The latest social software application (so-soap?) to come to my notice is Twitter. I’m no fan of these things — my friends and I stay in touch by phone or email and by exchanging shouts at the pub from time to time — but I can see that even for the not-young, some so-soaps might have practical applications. And in the case of Twitter, that application would be reporting on your location or status to those who have a need to know.

A Twitter account let’s you send a simple line or two to a website or to certain . . . [more]

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So here’s what I’d like: a way to write multi-ended links with simple indirection, and a reasonable way for users to display them in whatever browser they’re using.

The author of the Search, John Battelle, has made 14 predictions about developments in search-enging technology in 2007.

I agree with the challenge to Google’s perceived dominance, and to some of the possible corporate mergers, but much of the rest seems to be speculative. . . . [more]

There’s been a lot of talk about phishing recently, and there’s always a low level growl about those spam emails that pass themselves off as some missive from work. It’s just a fact of life: people lie. At least some people do, and when there’s money in it, the lies get as big as the Brooklyn Bridge. But of course, we’d never lie. At least not like that.

We might adopt a transparent untruth, however. Just for fun. Such as a Super Hero Cycling Jersey. Svelte Slawers (try to say that six time quick) could choose between the Spider . . . [more]

Most of you are familiar with, WestlaweCARSWELL’s Litagor service. Until recently, those of us in the academic setting were able to use it and found it very useful from a number of different perspectives. Students taking part in moot court competitions, civil procedure study and paper writing all found Litigator to be an excellent tool for use in their research and learning experience. Faculty members were also finding it most useful as an access point for material that was not otherwise readily abundant. I’ve used the past tense in describing Litigator’s use in the academic context, because it is no . . . [more]

Thanks to Steve Matthews for clearing up some misconceptions over at Vancouver Law Librarian Blog.

In his post RSS and Viruses? he clarifies:

Are RSS feeds a virus risk for law firms? or any other company? I’ve had this question before, so let’s clear this up. The answer is NO!

RSS is an xml file, which by definition is an ASCII text file with mark up. It is an interpreted file. By itself, it cannot execute a virus. The only potential risk would be within the feed’s description field, which can carry html data. Viruses can be embedded within

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