Very shortly, at 7 pm ET, a presentation on Orphan Works and Digital Libraries will be live-streamed. The stream will be available at http://tfisher.org/hls1x-copyright.html.

For later viewing, the presentation and discussion will be archived in about a week at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/CopyrightX_Events_2013.htm.

The speakers are top-notch: Brewster Kahle, John Palfrey, and Robert Darnton. It seems likely their discussion will be set in the context of the Digital Public Library of America, which launched last week, and with which all are connected. Copyright themes likely will focus on US law.

More information on the DPLA is . . . [more]

In excess of 15% of the population of Manitoba face barriers to their full participation in the activities of daily living, according to recent estimates.  Addressing and removing these barriers is the purpose of Bill 26, Manitoba’s proposed Accessibility for Manitobans Act, introduced in the Legislature today.

This legislation has been in the works for some time. In its November 2010 Discussion Paper for Made in Manitoba Accessibility Legislation the government stated that:

“The proposed legislation will provide for a long-term, systematic and proactive approach to dealing with accessibility issues for seniors and persons with disabilities. With this approach,

Recently a precedent setting family law case involving a sperm donor claiming to be a parent of a child born to lesbian mothers was settled out of court. Not unlike many non-traditional families the women in this northern Ontario case conceived a child by way of donor sperm, but precedent setting in that the sperm donor applied to the courts to be declared a parent and for liberal access rights to the child.

Settling out of court is great for the parties involved who got to determine the details of their settlement agreement and put an end to long and . . . [more]

Earlier this month, Kirk Makin of the Globe and Mail scooped an announcement of a major set of Reports on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, an inititaitive that started with the Chief Justice’s challenge to the Canadian Bar Association last summer.

The four Reports from Working Groups chaired by Justice Thomas Cromwell were officially released this morning:
Backgrounder
Report of the Court Processes Simplification Working Group
Report of the Access to Legal Services Working Group
Report of the Prevention, Triage and Referral Working Group
Report of the Family Justice Working Group

And a background literature review: Family . . . [more]

We are always naming things – businesses, brands, trade-marks, domain names, and children. But what makes a good or valuable name? Naming anything can be a personal or emotional thing – but it is part science.

Take a brand name or trade-mark, for example. The first choice of many for their business or product name is one that describes their business or product. But that does nothing to distinguish that business or product from the competition. Much better to have one that is unique and memorable, rather than descriptive.

Over the past decade it has become more important to adopt . . . [more]

Slaw has just received word that the national Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters has placed four working group reports online. The Committee, established by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Beverley McLachlin, and chaired by Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell, was, in the words of the Backgrounder, also online, “convened to address the urgent and multiple issues surrounding access to justice in civil and family matters.”

The four reports made available are:

• Report of the Court Processes Simplification Working Group (29 pp.)
• Report of the Access to Legal Services Working Group (30

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 April 16 – 23:

1. R. v. Duncan 2013 ONCJ 160
   

   5. At heart, Mr. Duncan’s case was unremarkable. A minor alleged Highway Traffic Act offence led to a police-citizen interaction in the parking lot of Mr. Duncan’s apartment building in the wee hours of the morning. A request that Mr. Duncan produce his licence led to an alleged refusal, which led to an

Last month, the United States Supreme Court held in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons that it was non-infringing of copyright to import books into the United States that had been legally purchased elsewhere. The decision upheld the “first sale doctrine,” a concept that says once a publisher sells a copy of a work to a member of the public, the buyer is free to do sell or dispose of the copy as they wish. In Canada, the situation is less clear.

The defendant in the United States proceeding, Mr. Kirtsaeng was a student at Cornell University who bought foreign . . . [more]

The Legal Education Society of Alberta is recognizing the more that 600 people in Alberta, mostly lawyers, who volunteer their time to support legal education in our province. How are they doing that? By sharing a full day seminar with volunteers about a topic that is potentially useful to anyone on the legal community: social media.

Today we are in Edmonton (April 25 the session will be repeated). We are starting the day with Marliss Weber and Randy Brososky giving an overview titled Social Media 101.

Tweets about this session are at #lesaonline. . . . [more]

Slaw readers might like to take a look at Senate bill S-7, the Combating Terrorism Act, now before the House for third reading, a bill that proposes to abridge our civil liberties to a degree. As is often the case with bills the main purpose of which is to amend existing legislation, the text of the bill itself is nearly incomprehensible on its own unless you’re familiar with the relevant area of law.

The Globe and Mail has an article in this morning’s paper that will give you a brief sense of the bill’s main incursions into your Charter . . . [more]

Sunday morning 3:30 a.m. and my head finally hits a cushion. I have just done an Amsterdam – Istanbul – Sana’a in 11 hours. By Tuesday evening I have been totally submerged in Yemen, even though I do not speak Arabic. To compensate, I have become very sensitive to all other forms of communication: the voice of my interpreting colleague, the pronunciation of the few that speak English, and the sounds and body movements of those I communicate to.

The Minister of Justice, traditionally dressed, welcoming me in the name of Allah the Merciful, together with his ministry colleague, the . . . [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

Visit Factory-reset.com for Factory Reset Codes
Dan Pinnington

When electronic devices work properly, you have no worries. But when they don’t, it’s a real pain in the rear! One of the most common trouble-shooting options is a factory reset – that special and specific combination of button presses and steps that restarts the device with standard factory settings. Finding the right reset code usually requires finding the operation manual . . . [more]