Everyone is playing Words With Friends on their smartphones these days.

When even my 11-year old son and my 16-year-old daughter (and my no-way-will-I-reveal-her-age wife) became addicted, I thought it time to look into the phenomenon – that, and the fact that my son whispered to his Scrabble-loving father that he needed help in a game against his mom.

Let me lay out a fact pattern:

1. Words With Friends is similar to Scrabble – seven tiles at a time, points assigned to letters in inverse relation to their frequency in English words, a board with double- and triple-letter and double-

Simon Chester first mentioned the class-action proceeding launched by Lorne Waldman against Thomson Reuters for alleged breaches of copyright for providing original documents created by lawyers without their permission or compensation through their “Litigator” service. The resulting discussion highlighted much of the controversy and tensions around the issue.

Last Tuesday, Justice Perell certified the class action. The plaintiff introduced evidence that at least some of the factums used had been registered with Canadian Intellectual Property Office for copyright, whereas the defendant introduced evidence by Ronald G. Slaght on how these documents are created, using juniors and other precedents, and . . . [more]

No one lives in cyberspace, they say. A lot of people spend a lot of time visiting, though. They leave a lot of traces there, and they interact with the non-cyberspace (some prefer the term ‘real’) world from there. The border is more porous than most national borders, these days.

What happens when people with a presence in cyberspace (really) die? Does the presence continue indefinitely, but unrefreshed? What do their survivors do about their activities in cyberspace? How do they deal with online assets, or even discover real-world assets that may be locatable only online? How do estate . . . [more]

The Conference Planning Committee for CALL 2012 is fully immersed in the final details – making sure that the little things are under control, so that the big event looks effortless and professional. It’s nice to take a step back every now and again, and look at the big picture. And what a picture it is!

 We have dazzling venues, from the Royal York (our conference hotel), to the Ontario Legislature at Queen’s Park (the home of the opening reception), to the Liberty Grand (where we’ll be kicking off our 50^th anniversary year). You’ll be learning more about the . . . [more]

I have a friend who seems incapable of learning what colour puce is. It’s not one of those things where we look at turquoise and you see blueish but I see greenish. No, she always comes up with something chartreuse instead. It’s a naming problem. And when you get right down to it, names don’t cut it when it comes to colour, though we keep on trying.

Of course, there’s the whole marketing schtick, where you’re selling the sizzle as much as the steak. It’s not “beige.” Never “beige.” It’s “paper lantern” or “lemon meringue.” “Orange”? Oh no, you’re looking . . . [more]

This is a post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

 Matt Ridley wrote a book titled The Rational Optimist that was published in 2010.

Ridley is an English journalist with an education in science. In his book he is concerned with the origins of the prosperity that exists in the world, arguing that the road to prosperity began with exchanges that resulted in a benefit to both parties, including barter, a method of exchange that can be done without money. In many exchanges both parties may feel that the other is overpaying. Over time increases in exchanges resulted in specialization followed by innovation. Ridley states that the ever-increasing exchange of . . . [more]

Parliamentary websites are too often overlooked as sources for legal research. And that’s a shame because the best ones tend to offer access to an amazingly broad range of material.

The new website of the Australian Parliament, launched last week, is a case in point. There is a ton of stuff there. Most interesting, from my researcher point of view, are the research publications written by the Parliamentary Library, the bill digests (summaries) and the committee pages.

The Library of Congress blog, In Custodia Legis, has a description and evaluation of many of the site’s new features. . . . [more]

Lots of money and legions of online followers can generate a lot of successful business models. Ask our friends at Google, who have delved into everything from search, to email hosting, browser software, OS developer, and mobile hardware building. Google has applied their infrastructure to a lot of different businesses, and frequently finds success.

Having a person on the other end of the phone to solve problems? Unfortunately, that is not part of the Google toolbox. And when it works, few of us are likely to complain. We respect the idea of thoughtfully engineering activities to the point where human . . . [more]

Site news for those who read Slaw only via RSS or email

1. Comment Watch:

In the last week there were 34 comments. You might be particularly interested in these:

• The erudite comment by John Davis on “The Friday Fillip: Time… and Time Again”
• the comments elaborating on Adam Dodek’s post, “Reform-Minded BC Ready to Tackle Sacred Cows of Justice System”
• Nate Russell’s comment with the link to an XLS file of all the tweets involved in the recent Twitter moot introduced in Dave Bilinsky’s post, “First Ever Twitter Moot: #Twtmoot”.

You can subscribe to the comments on Slaw either . . . [more]

It hasn’t taken long for a court to apply the new tort of invasion of seclusion first recognized by the Ontario Court of Appeal in Jones v. Tsige January. While not providing a great deal of added nuance, the Small Claims Court’s decision in Connolly v. Telus Communications Co., [2012] O.J. No. 464, does provide some new insights. While providing little new insight into the substance of this new tort, the case is somewhat remarkable for its very subject matter.

First, it involves a lawsuit by an aggrieved Telus customer sued his mobile service provider over its perceived mishandling . . . [more]