Must be something in the Antipodean water. Following on the controversy concerning McLachlin CJC’s speech on Unwritten Constitutional PrinciplesGiven at the 2005 Lord Cooke Lecture in Wellington, New Zealand., which led to such a dust-up after Maurice Vellacott, MP misread it, comes a lively story in the Sydney Morning Herald.
This one involves Justice Mason’s rejection of much of the judicial role under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that would be familiar to everyone of Slaw’s readers within Canada. It’s all in the context of how much courts should touch issues of religion.

The swipe at . . . [more]

Well before there was Web 2.0, General Electric — yes, GE — put up a lovely timewaster that let you draw in your browser. Now it’s back reborn as a whiteboard and sporting the essential element of a Web 2.0 whiteboard, shareability.

Imagination Cubed offers you various tools — text, pencil, shapes, backgrounds — and each with a menu of possibilities — to let you draw your way to clarity, when text in row after row just won’t do. Unfortunately you’re not able to upload or paste in a graphic, which would have been handy, allowing for collaborative markup. But . . . [more]

Blogger and law prof, Michael Geist, is already in day three of his “30 Days of DRM” [digital rights managementI plan to spend the thirty days before the House of Commons reconvenes to highlight some of the exceptions and limitations that should be included in the event that a Canadian DMCA is introduced. Each day, I will post a new provision, focusing broadly on marketplace concerns, public protection, and fair circumvention. The postings will be collected on a single page to form a compilation of DRM policy issues.

Somewhere in between “Cest la vie”, “Whattya gonna do?” and “Shit happens” falls my new zen koan “Snakes on a Plane”.

WIFE: “Honey you stepped in dog poop again. ”
ME: “Snakes on a Plane…”
DOCTOR: “Your cholesterol is 290. Perhaps you want to mix in a walk once in a while.”
ME: “Snakes on a Plane…”
WIFE: “Honey while you were on your cholesterol walk you stepped in dog poop again.”

You get the picture.

Josh Friedman’s blog “I find your lack of faith disturbing”

I’ll never see the flick, but I might use the line if milk ever . . . [more]

One of our lawyers pointed out the IDI, a European-based service, to me. I haven’t had a chance to use the subscription service myself, but it looks like a fabulous resource. From the English brochure:

The main purpose of the IDI Project is to set up, develop and keep updated a website (www.idiproject.com) on international distribution, where those who are engaged in establishing distribution networks and in drafting, negotiating and managing distribution contracts:

• can find all the legal information they need for doing their job, and
• can exchange views and share experiences with other people having the same

. . . [more]

Looks like Google has finally opened the doors to new Writely accounts.

[Hat tip to Grace] . . . [more]

…gets earnest, might be an even better way to put it. Perhaps stung by the various recent slurs on Wikipedia’s accuracy, the folks at the top have decided to construct the wherewithal for what seems to me will become a self-improving authority machine, harnessing the same distributed, free “improving” urge that got the ‘pedia ballooned to great heights in the first place.

The sharp end of the planned scholar’s movement is Wikicite, the aims of which are to:

Facilitate the citation of all factual assertions. Ideally every non-obvious factual assertion should connect to evidence which corroborates it… Most reference

. . . [more]

Hmm. I didn’t know about InfoSource, the government of Canada’s Sources of Federal Government Information. Definitely time in the penalty box for that. Now, thanks to Slawyer and blogger-in-his-own-right Library Boy, I do. What’s particularly handy is that they offer a downloadable pdf version (in two files). . . . [more]

Le jeune Barreau de Montréal ouvre ses forums!Bref billet pour annoncer, en avant-première, l'ouverture des forums de l'Association du Jeune Barreau de Montréal (AJBM).

The U.S. College of Law Practice Management has released the inaugural issue of Innovaction, an “e-zine” in pdf. It’s splendidly produced, with lots of dramatic colour and interesting articles, as befits a publication with a name like that.

Two of the reasons for its success may not be hard to find: just look for the tiny Canadian flags in their lapels. The Editor-in-chief was none other than Jordan Furlong, whose day job is editor of the CBA’s National, and one of the Editorial Advisory Group was Slaw’s own Simon Chester. Simon was also a member of the . . . [more]

Tomorrow’s Guardian has an amazing story about a British Government’s proposal to charge for access to legal information, when value has been added to the raw text.

A few juicy quotes:

Firstly, an astounding Crown copyright notice greets the reader: “The Statute Law Database and the material on the SLD website are subject to Crown copyright protection. The Crown copyright waiver that applies to published legislation generally does not apply to SLD because it is a value-added product. Any reuse of material from SLD will be the subject of separate and specific licensing arrangements. No such arrangements have yet been

. . . [more]

Last week law.com picked up an interesting item from American Lawyer “Software Glitch May Have Erased E-Mail Text in Enron Suits”. The information in the article is inconclusive as to the extent (if any) of the problem or the resolution.

News items such as this are a good reminder of the number of human decisions required to create an “automated” collection of information (or knowledge for that matter). I’m guessing it is impossible today to create a large database and actually test it to make sure it is 100% complete and accurate. Whether it is internal system or third . . . [more]