Last month the respected German national newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) published an exposé in its Sunday edition Feuilleton about a German government computer surveillance program introduced into citizens’ computers some years ago and the ease with which it can be cracked and misused. The Staatstrojaner, or “state trojan,” is a key-logging program that can record everything entered into an infected computer via the keyboard, and, in this case I believe, control the computer to some degree.

The newspaper’s exposé is available in English as a PDF file via Edge.

To uncover and reverse engineer the trojan, FAZ teamed up . . . [more]

Cloud computing is often portrayed as an online-only world that enables a high degree of collaboration for lawyers. Here’s a reality check. That is not how many, perhaps most, lawyers practice and that perspective can fog some of the possibilities of blending your office technology with cloud-based systems. While software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a significant offering in the cloud world, with some strong companies dedicated to providing legal practice management applications, there are a number of other opportunities that require less dramatic changes to your practice.

One of the significant benefits to cloud computing is that it enables an as well . . . [more]

According to Victims of Violence the number of incidents of reported elder abuse increased by 14% since 2004. A third of these are committed by family members. Over 13% of the Canadian population is over 65, meaning elder abuse will be a growing concern.

One incident of alleged elder abuse that we will not have to worry about any more are the allegations against Brian Corrin, who was charged in February of this year on the accusations that an incident of family violence resulted in injuries to the Winnipeg Justice’s 89 year-old mother.

Based on contradictory testimony and the . . . [more]

♫ You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world …♫

Lyrics and music by Lennon/McCartney, recorded by The Beatles.

CTV.ca has released the complete text of the demands of the Occupy Vancouver protestors. A number of their demands are in the legal area, so I thought I would highlight a few of them from their total list of 60:

12. We demand that corporate person-hood is repealed.

I am not quite sure what they mean…the elimination . . . [more]

Yale law library’s Open Access publishing initiative produces enormous download rates for its authors, and makes the material available to scholars and others all over the world, without regard to their location or their institution’s budgetary priorities.

And many US libraries have taken this step: 55% of libraries in a just-released SPARC survey. Some other highlights:

• About three-quarters of the programs publish between one and six journals, the majority of which are only distributed electronically
• The vast majority of library publishing programs (almost 90%) were launched in order to contribute to change in the scholarly publishing system, supplemented by

Which is not the same thing as “beer me”—it’s too early on a Friday for any of that, though both have to do, perhaps, with a kind of adjustment.

I’m a typophile—which is very like being a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, as the Bard once put it, because nothing could be triflingly smaller than a single letterform or, indeed, the space between letters; and as for “unconsidered,” the job of type is to appear and yet to disappear at the same time so that the message comes through as clearly and as beautifully as possible. So what of kerning? What . . . [more]

This is a post in a series to appear occasionally, 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.

It’s funny how you can work in a field for a good number of years and completely miss an extremely pertinent term for that field. Then, suddenly it strikes you as particularly apt, and leaves you wondering how you had missed it. I have been working on questions of open access to research and scholarship for a little more than a decade, and last week I ran into intellectual philanthropy in a 2011 book by Taylor Walsh entitled Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading Universities Are Opening Up Access to Their Courses. Intellectual philanthropy struck me as . . . [more]

There is a lot of attention in the USA being paid to the impact of jurors, reporters and members of the public using social networking technologies in the courtroom. Canada is no stranger to the debate.

There is not as much material on the ethics of judges using the same tools such as Facebook or Twitter.

Michael Crowell of the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has written a paper on Judicial Ethics and Social Networking Sites that looks at the issue:

For some time now state bar regulatory agencies have been addressing

The Wall Street Journal has a new piece on Amazon’s e-book lending service. Operating under the Amazon’s $79/year Prime service, the e-book lending will only work on Kindle and Kindle Fire devices (not iOS friendly), and is intended to boost sales of the Kindle devices. And as you might guess, it’s not available in Canada.

The article also has an interesting portion at the end on the relationship of Amazon’s Prime lending program to its library lending program:

At the Seattle public-library system, e-book borrowing rose 32% in the month after Kindle books became available, said Seattle’s electronic-resources librarian

According to yesterday’s press release, Irwin Law and Quebec digital publisher Nubook have agreed to distribute Irwin’s ebooks on a Nubook reading app designed for use on a tablet computer.

Irwin publisher, Jeffrey Miller, says:

…the Nubook solution allows us to preserve the unique and attractive design that differentiates our law books, while providing our readers with great features like refined search, links, and markups set up according to our editorial choices for the best reading experience.

Nubook has already developed an equivalent app for Wilson & Lafleur, as well as its own general purpose app. . . . [more]

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

1. Comment Watch:

In the last week there were 55 comments. You might be particularly interested in the thoughtful discussion following Tamir Israel’s inaugural post on Crookes v. Newton and intermediary liability.

You can subscribe to the comments on Slaw either as a separate matter (RSS, email) or as part of a subscription combining posts and comments (RSS, email).

2. SlawTips

This week’s tips on SlawTips are:

• Tuesday: Technology: Four Tips for Easy Navigation of PowerPoint Slide Deck
• Wednesday: