Legal Commentary

Law makes it a crime not to report

Posted on January 26, 2009
For the London Free Press - January 26, 2009 Read this on Canoe Despite concerns over its practicality, Ontario legislators passed a new child pornography reporting law last month. Bill 37 — the Child Pornography Reporting Act, 2008 — passed at Queen’s Park Dec...

Photographers fight back

Posted on January 23, 2009
I’ve written before about how it is becoming too common in some countries for authorities to think that it is a crime for someone to simply take photographs.   In the UK, for example, there is a suspicion that if one is taking photographs of a public facility, you might be a terrorist...

Obama’s TIGR (Technology, Innovation and Government Reform) Team.

Posted on January 20, 2009
No point blogging on anything but Obama today.   Michael points to a video showing the TIGR team discussing how the US government should use technology and the web 2.0 tools we now have to better and more efficiently provide its services. This is absolutely the right approach - one we should be taking here in Canada as [...

Ottawa should follow U.S. lead on technology - CTO for Canada

Posted on January 19, 2009
For the London Free Press - January 19, 2009 Read this on Canoe Technology and its ramifications play an increasing role in our lives. Unfortunately, governments don’t always understand the social and political impacts of technology, or how their decisions and new legislation affects innovation and our use of technology...

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Precedent as context, not an operating manual

Posted on January 14, 2009
That’s the title of my Slaw post today. It Reads: I made that comment as an aside in an earlier post. This thought also ties in with a couple of Simon?s posts, and another of mine. This is true for not just legal documents, but for things like legislation, business and government policies, and processes...

Court overturns Alberta privacy decision for pawnshop records

Posted on January 13, 2009
David Fraser refers to an Edmonton Journal article stating “Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Joanne Veit ruled Alberta Information and Privacy Commissioner Frank Work was wrong when he concluded the city can’t force pawnshops to upload personal client details to an outside company’s database...

U.S. race reflects Facebook’s arrival as political force - SOCIAL networking: Activism has found an effective medium

Posted on January 12, 2009
For the London Free Press - January 12, 2009 Read this on Canoe What started as a social- networking system for Harvard University students is becoming a political force to be reckoned with. Founded in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg as a social-networking site, Facebook has quickly become an international phenomenon...

CES offers cool new products

Posted on January 09, 2009
The annual Consumer Electronics Show is under way in Las Vegas.   As usual, new products are shown that one just must have.  The only problem - it takes a while before they are available or affordable, or the product one now owns that it replaces will break...

Woman fired by Facebook message

Posted on January 08, 2009
The Calgary Herald reports that a woman was recently fired from her job by a message sent to her via Facebook.  She had only been at the job for 2 weeks.  So is “cyber sacking” the way of the future, or just a cruel/lazy way to terminate someone?

UK police can hack into PC’s without a warrant

Posted on January 07, 2009
Slashdot points to a Times article saying that “The Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people?s personal computers without a warrant. ” This of course doesn’t sit well with privacy advocates...

Early release of Microsoft Windows 7 system likely

Posted on January 05, 2009
For the London Free Press - January 5, 2009 Read this on Canoe It’s time to hazard some predictions for 2009 tech developments. REPLACING VISTA Microsoft probably will bring out its Windows 7 operating system early, given the cool reception Vista has received...

5 legal reasons Santa answers to no geo-political authority

Posted on December 24, 2008
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows: 1. Border crossings would delay his delivery. Imagine Santa explaining himself to a border guard/customs agent. 2. Reduces product liability risk for any defective toys. 3. Avoids scrutiny of privacy issues of the naughty/nice list...

Cameras as security theatre

Posted on December 23, 2008
Techdirt and Slashdot comment that some people have placed images of license plates belonging to people they are not fond of on their own cars, then speeding by photo radar, resulting in the other person getting a ticket.  Techdirt’s spin on this: In general, we have trouble with things like speed cameras and red light cameras — [...

Federal privacy watchdog weighs in

Posted on December 22, 2008
For the London Free Press - December 22, 2008 Read this on Canoe Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart recently published her 2007-08 annual report to Parliament on the Privacy Act. The report highlights concerns over the general increase in surveillance and the government’s lack of recognition that collecting and analysing a plethora of personal information from ordinary people [...

Yahoo to anonymize user data in 90 days

Posted on December 19, 2008
Yahoo announce this week that it would anonymize search user data (in most cases) after only 90 days.  That’s significantly less than Google or others - some of which until recently retained it for a couple of years.  There has been a lot of pressure to reduce the amount of time that user data is [...

12 days of EFF

Posted on December 17, 2008
I’ve referred to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) before.  The EFF describes itself as the leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world. They have summarized their work in 2008 by a video inspired by the 12 days of Christmas.

Document service by Facebook

Posted on December 16, 2008
Seems that an Australian court ordered a default judgement to be served on two defendants by sending a message to their Facebook pages.  See this article in the Australian Morning Herald. Cory Doctorow of Boing boing comments on how this is a bad idea, saying how “It’s like serving notice on me by sticking a post-it on [...

No shortage of ideas for gadget junkies

Posted on December 15, 2008
For the London Free Press - December 15, 2008 Read this on Canoe Struggling with ideas for Christmas gifts for those into gadgets or technology? Here are some suggestions. Buy a backup solution for their home computer to protect from the loss of data in case of hard drive failure or erasure...

Spend infrastructure money on a London Performing Arts Centre

Posted on December 12, 2008
If we are going to spend our way out of this recession by doing infrastructure projects, what better way than to build a performing arts centre in London. Lets get on with it and design/build a PAC that is the most environmentally friendly, functional and attractive PAC on the planet...

What Microsoft needs to fix with Windows mobile

Posted on December 11, 2008
BusinessWeek has an article entitled Windows Mobile: What Microsoft Needs to Fix.  It talks about how phones using the Windows mobile operating system are losing market share to the iPhone and Google Android, and what Microsoft needs to do to fix it. I hope Microsoft can pull it off with Mobile 7, and that they get [...

Another essential tech skill / pet peeve

Posted on December 10, 2008
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It was inspired by Dan Pinnington’s Slaw post from yesterday. It reads as follows: Dan?s 10 essential technology skills and practices contains some good tips (although I must admit I?m not good with keyboard shortcuts - I think more graphically and tend to use the mouse)...

CRTC new media hearing draws almost 100 written submissions

Posted on December 09, 2008
Michael comments that the real fight in these hearings will come down to 3 issues - the isp levy, the new media regulatory exemption, and net neutrality.   This will get interesting, as views range from complete hands off except to keep it neutral and open, to highly regulated Canadian content proposals...

Clear succession plan vital to business owners

Posted on December 08, 2008
For the London Free Press - December 8, 2008 Read this on Canoe With an aging baby boomer population, succession planning is quickly becoming one of the biggest issues facing business owners. Lawyers are beginning to see the negative effects of the failure to plan ahead...

Federal privacy commissioner releases annual report on the Privacy Act

Posted on December 05, 2008
The Privacy Act governs privacy issues regarding the Canadian federal government. Take a look at David Fraser’s post on it.  I may have more to say later after I’ve had a chance to peruse it.

.tel sunrise period begins - will it be shiny object or paperweight?

Posted on December 04, 2008
For more information on the unique new .tel TLD that I recently wrote about, take a look at this CircleID post. I’m not sure where this is headed.  If its use becomes widely accepted, having the right .tel address might become very valuable.  If not, it might become useless.

Small firms have a tech advantage

Posted on December 03, 2008
That’s the title of my Slaw post from this am.  It reads as follows: Speaking of ?Shouldn?t it just work?, I have been thinking that a sole practitioner or small firm actually is now at an advantage over larger firms regarding technology. Software required to run law firms - such as accounting and document management - has [...

Slaw makes ABA list of 100 best blogs

Posted on December 02, 2008
Slaw has made the American Bar Association list of “the 100 best Web sites by lawyers, for lawyers, as chosen by the editors of the ABA Journal.”  For those who don’t follow Slaw, it is a cooperative blog featuring posts by several contributors from various aspects of the legal profession...

Drew case makes bad precedent

Posted on December 02, 2008
I’ve written before about how the notion that “there ought to be a law against that” can lead to ineffective laws with unintended consequences.  The same can happen in the courts when it is perceived that someone has done something wrong - but it doesn’t fit neatly into the charges...

Domain name rules to change in 2009

Posted on December 01, 2008
for the London Free Press - Dec 1, 2008 Read this on Canoe A recent decision by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization responsible for global co-ordination of the Internet’s addressing system, will permit companies and individuals to turn their names into Web addresses: www...

Black friday deal? Buy a toaster - get a free bank

Posted on November 28, 2008
Take a look at this amusing coupon on the Infectious Greed site.

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