First Monday
Volume 11, Number 2 — 6 February 2006: Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace, Ten Years Later

Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace
by David R. Johnson and David G. Post (originally published in May 1996)

The Great Debate — Law in the Virtual World
by David G. Post and David R. Johnson

Virtual Borders: The Interdependence of Real and Virtual Worlds
by James Grimmelmann

Dispute Resolution Without Borders: Some Implications for the Emergence of Law in Cyberspace
by Ethan Katsh

The Life of the Law Online
by David R. Johnson

First

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My first post was about a resource I like out of BC, one that I never see reference to. Moving east, this is one I rely on from Alberta. I never see reference to it either but I think it’s a valuable resource.

When asked to find an old (and I mean “old”) version of an Alberta Act, I stumbled upon the Alberta Historical Law Collection and I was VERY impressed! It has been developed as part of the Alberta Historical Digitization Project (check out its other interesting offerings) and is produced by the University of Calgary Press with the . . . [more]

Once again, I have missed my post date by two days – in defence, I wll plead that this post may make more sense now that Simon has posted on “methodological moires (someone will have to send me some instructions on how to create french language characters!)

Prior to implementing our firm’s document management system and portal, we decided to impose a firm wide taxonomy. To save others from correcting me, I acknowledge that my Oxford Paperback Dictionary defines “taxonomy” as “the scientific process of classifying living things” – so either I have a warped view of paper and electronic . . . [more]

I’m at the point in a couple of projects at the law school where issues are starting to coalesce and cause interesting interference patterns — a methodological moiré.

In one project, I’m worried about the information architecture for the law school’s website that I’m restructuring: how much should be (and be presented as) hierarchical and how much should I feel free to web with linking strands across hierarchies; should content be used twice or only once and referenced twice if need be, etc. — and how should all of this get translated into a decently usable interface and navigation . . . [more]

Robert Ambrogi makes a few good points about the newest edition of Google Desktop Search (GDS) and the protection of client privacy. Specifically, if you enable the ‘Search Across Multiple Computers’ function, Google will upload copies of your documents to Google’s servers.

Canadian law firms, already on the lookout for protecting client data in the Patriot Act era, will have to be extra careful that this function is turned off.

I feel sorry for the systems people out there. This would seem to be yet another download that will have to be policed via firewall blocking and registry configurations.

Update: . . . [more]

Hello everyone – my first post, well overdue.

At last I have some news in response to Nick’s email some time ago querying the status of UK online legislation. An internal pilot of the Statute Law Database has recently been completed and is being evaluated.

The database is expected to be made available to Government departments in April. A pilot of the public service will follow in May, with the service expected to go live by the end of this year. The publicly-accessible database is intended to be freely available.

However our English colleagues are a little wary of these . . . [more]

In a less esoteric approach to this day of celebration of romance, here is a link to the history of Valentine’s Day you might enjoy, and use for office trivia banter… . . . [more]

Moving away from tales of love, I thought I’d mention a fabulous Web site from Oxford, called the Internet Library of Early Journals. It includes the full text facsmile and searchable versions of a number of very important early journals, or news magazines, the equivalent’s in part of today’s Macleans or Time. The collection includes titles like The Gentleman’s Magazine (no, not published by anyone named Hugh). As well as being a source of endless distraction for anyone who delves into them, as they include amusing letters and poetry, the journals are also an important source of legislative . . . [more]

Simon Chester has really covered the subject in his Valentine's Day post, and all that remains for me is to be picky and point out that, with one exception, the term “love” does not appear in any Canadian statute referring to love between adults.

The law can tell us a few things about love. Legislation, jurisprudence and doctrine.

Remember Wystan Auden’s poem, Law Like Love which you can hear read in the great man’s voice:

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,
Speaking clearly and most severely,
Law is as I’ve told you before,
Law is as you know I suppose,
Law is but let me explain it once more,
Law is The Law.

And Auden goes on to contrast that with love – but you really should read the work yourselves.

Let’s start with legislation. All young . . . [more]

Thanks to Steve Abram’s blog for a quite deliciously concise translation by Peter Binkley of Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan’s Five LawsRanganathan, S. R. (1957). The five laws of library science. London: Blunt and Sons, Ltd. The implications of Ranganathan’s work continue to be explored in the world of Web 2.0.

Libri utendi.
Omni libro lector.
Omni lectori liber.
Otium lectoris servandum.
Virescat biblioteca

So elegant in its simplicity . . . [more]

The front page of today's Globe and Mail had a piece on a project/application called Psiphon, which is aimed at helping those in closed societies circumvent government restrictions.