A driving force for the development of the internet was to provide certainty for internet service organizations on the liability exposure they may have for acts of third parties on their internet sites.

Given that many Canadian internet web sites do receive U.S. visitors and many also utilize a DMCA safe harbor provision, understanding the scope of protection that the safe harbor provides can be important to Canadians. The ongoing legal saga in Viacom International Inc., et al. v. YouTube, Inc., YouTube, LLC, and Google, Inc., 07 Civ. 2103 illuminates the scope of the DMCA safe harbor.

The DMCA . . . [more]

CBC news recently reported that the average Canadian spent over 41 hours online each month in the fourth quarter of 2012, and that Canadians are the world’s second-heaviest users of the internet (just behind Americans). While there is a great deal of variety when it comes to the nature of this online activity, there is no question that a substantial proportion of it leads to the creation of property that has value – whether it’s objective, measurable commercial value, or simply personal value.

In his article “The legal status of virtual goods” in the May 31 edition of the Lawyers . . . [more]

Unfortunately, Project Loon doesn’t have anything to do with Canada — yet. But there’s potential here for a great benefit to Canadians in rural areas, particularly in the far north.

Google, where people are paid to brainstorm and pursue ideas that are often “wacky,” has initiated a project to place a chain of balloons into “orbit” around the globe and to use them as a way of providing internet connectivity for people who would otherwise not be able to access the internet.

Of course, being balloons, these relay stations won’t actually be in orbit. They will be in the stratosphere, . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from forty-one recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Environmental Law and Litigation  2. SOQUIJ Blogue  3. Legal Feeds Blog  4. Legal Post  5. Thoughtful Legal Management

Environmental Law and Litigation
Oil Sands tailings pond management not meeting environmental targets
The Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board has released its 2012 Tailings Management Assessment Report, Oil Sands Mining Industry. . . . [more]

More back-seat drivers for the major legal publishers.

Robert Mackay’s recent post about how publishing is becoming an academic discipline highlights yet another source of analysis and commentary on the strategies being pursued with varying degrees of success by the legal publishers. To the growing list of blogs such as House of Butter and the Justitia Blawg, to name but two, has been now added the academic community.

This point was brought home to me by one of Robert’s students who recently completed an MA dissertation on corporate branding in the publishing industry. Her research included a survey of . . . [more]

The Quebec Soccer Federation (QSF)/ Fédération de Soccer du Québec (FSQ) has reversed its ban against turbans, relieving tensions reverberating across the country.

The move only came though after a suspension by the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA) on June 10, and a statement by on Friday by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) that it allowed soccer players to wear the religious headgear. Sikhs in Quebec were dismayed over being excluded from the sport, and Canadians outside of Quebec questioned the approach of the organization.

The incident served as a flash point over the issues of integration, accommodation and . . . [more]

Twitter has been ordered by French courts to reveal the names of people responsible for anti-semitic tweets (using a standard hashtag) to a number of public interest organizations. Though Twitter said it would cooperate if it received an order from the American courts acting on the request of the French courts, the Court of Appeal said it has to cooperate because the direct order of the French court.

Would such an order be made in favour of private parties here? Would the private bodies first have to begin a legal proceeding against the pseudonymous tweeters – a civil action? a . . . [more]

Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. Every Sunday we present a precis of the latest summaries, a fuller version of which can be found on MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries at cases.slaw.ca.

This week’s summaries concern:
Medical malpractice / Employment and discrimination / Building contracts and sureties:

Manary v. Strban et al. 2013 ONCA 319
Medicine – Liability of practitioners – Negligence – Team leader (incl. Most Responsible Practitioner/Physician)
A pregnant woman was admitted to hospital with chest pains. On the day she was to leave the hospital she died . . . [more]

On the second Sunday in each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, SupremeAdvocacyLett@r, to which you may subscribe.

Summary of all appeals and leaves to appeal granted (so you know what the S.C.C. will soon be dealing with). For leaves, both the date the S.C.C. granted leave and the date of the C.A. judgment below are added in, in case you want to track and check out the C.A. judgment. (May 8 – June 12, 2013).

APPEALS

Aboriginal . . . [more]

So do I need to point out that the NSA cell phone snooping story broke on the 64th anniversary of the publication of Orwell’s 1984?

By all accounts, privacy is dead, the question is do people care? Personally, I do; but I cannot deny that if you go online then you must accept that you are leaving a trail, but that does not mean that we have to exchange our love of the interwebs and mobile computing in exchange for our privacy.

I observed this comment by a friend of mine and I feel it needs to be spread more . . . [more]

Professor Tait recently sent me a 127 pages report on the topic of court remote appearances:

Rowden, E., Wallace, A., Tait, D., Hanson, M. & Jones, D. (2013), “Gateways to Justice: design and operational guidelines for remote participation in court proceedings” (University of Western Sydney: Sydney), accessed from: http://www.uws.edu.au/justice/justice/publications

This topic is very timely across all Canadian jurisdictions. The Canadian Centre for Court Technology – Centre canadien de technologie judiciaire (“CCCT”) chose remote appearances as a topic for its White Paper in 2012 (published in January 2013 and available here), and this week, the CCCT is offering a series . . . [more]

I hope I don’t disappoint you when I tell you that demonyms have nothing to do with demons. (For that I’d recommend The Dictionary of Demons by Belanger.) Rather, the demo is demos, a Greek word for the people and, more significantly for the fillip, the name for a certain type of municipality in Greece. Thus a demonym is a name given to describe a person from a particular place.

Eighty-two point seven percent of the time figuring out what to call someone from somewhere is no big deal. You throw –er or –al or –ian . . . [more]