Yesterday the Digital Public Library of America launched a partnership with HathiTrust, marrying the preservation mission of one with the access strengths of the other. The partnership will have the DPLA—itself only a couple of months post-launch—employ HathiTrust’s metadata to improve discoverability of and access to that content in HathiTrust that is in the public domain or otherwise freely available. HathiTrust’s own discovery and access platform will continue to develop as well. As has been noted previously here and elsewhere, HathiTrust preserves a fair amount of content useful for legal research.

Details of the partnership are in yesterday’s . . . [more]

A recent decision by a New York federal judge has raised a number of issues concerning unpaid internships. It was decided in this case that two interns working on the set of the film Black Swan should have been paid, given that the work they accomplished did not meet the six criteria used for determining that an internship may be unpaid, as published in a fact sheet by the U.S. Department of Labor (which are interestingly the same criteria published by the Ontario Ministry of Labour):

1. The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the

On Monday I chaired a joint LSUC /IT-Can afternoon on IT privacy law. One of the panels was on the anti-spam act, including representatives from the CRTC and Industry Canada. While there is no clear implementation date yet, Industry Canada expects the final Industry Canada regulations will be out in late summer or early fall. When those come out, an implementation date will be announced. Industry Canada is recommending that there be an implementation delay of several months to allow business to comply, but that decision is ultimately in the government’s hands.

The legislation is very complex, with exceptions layered . . . [more]

Today, the Women Lawyers Forum of the Manitoba Bar Association is gathering to honour and celebrate women appointed to the Bench in Manitoba or retiring from the Bench. Celebrating Success is an annual event to acknowledge the contribution these members of the judiciary have made to our profession, and to the cause of gender equality.

The event today recognizes Judge Cynthia Devine and Judge Margaret Wiebe, both appointed to the Provincial Court and Madam Justice Diana Cameron, promoted to the Court of Appeal from the Court of Queen’s Bench.

While it is always a lovely evening, I find . . . [more]

A brand new peer-reviewed academic journal has just come into being and is issuing a call for papers. The Journal of Open Access to Law (JOAL) is a project of Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (LII), the Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques (ITTIG-CNR), and the Institute of Law and Technology (IDT) of the Autonomous University in Barcelona.

From the main web page:

JOAL is an open-access, peer-reviewed academic journal of international scope. Its purpose is to promote international research on the topic of open access to law.

JOAL provides

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For the week of November 28 to December 4th:

1. Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, Local 30 v. Irving Pulp & Paper, Ltd. 2013 SCC 34
   

   [3] The legal issue at the heart of this case is the interpretation of the management rights clause of a collective agreement. This is a labour law issue with clear precedents and a history of respectful recognition of the ability

In theory, Canadians are pretty comfortable with the polluter pay principle, at least when it applies to other people. (We do not seem to feel the same way about carbon taxes.) In theory, the polluter-pay principle ensures that polluters, rather than the public or the immediate victims of pollution, bear the cost of repairing damage done to the natural environment.

As described by the Supreme Court of Canada in Imperial Oil Ltd. v. Quebec (Minister of the Environment):

In fact, that principle has become firmly entrenched in environmental law in Canada. It is found in almost all federal and

I used to have a working VHS player and a copy of the movie Speed. Often a scene from the movie will pop into my (overactive?) mind when I am looking for legislation from my desk:

01:03:38 – Jack, what did he say?
01:03:42 – What’s the matter?
01:03:49 – There’s a gap in the freeway. – What?
01:03:53 – What do you mean? – How big is a gap?
01:03:56 – 50 feet. A couple of miles ahead.

I remember when looking for legislation at my desk was rarely a reasonable option. Today, if I can’t browse my . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

Use Google Docs to Alter PDF Documents
Dan Pinnington

PDF documents are great when you want to make it easy for anyone to view or print a document. But what happens when you need to alter a PDF? You can, of course, do it with Adobe Acrobat or other expensive PDF Editors, but you can also do it for free with Google Docs! It’s easy. First, take the PDF . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada will announce Thursday at 9:45 am whether or not it will hear Magder’s appeal in the ongoing Rob Ford case.

In case you have been living under a rock (or outside of Toronto at least), Justice Hackland ordered the Mayor of Toronto out of office last September. The Mayor won his appeal before the Divisional Court in January, and was permitted to remain in office.

With an election scheduled for 2014, the Supreme Court ruling, should the Supreme Court elect to hear the appeal, will likely be largely academic.

Nevertheless, many will be . . . [more]

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]