Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Nothing Is Certain (Except Death and Facebook)

Facebook announces a new approach for handling deceased users' pages:

"When someone leaves us, they don't leave our memories or our social network," Facebook director of security Max Kelly said in a blog post Monday.

"To reflect that reality, we created the idea of 'memorialized' profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who've passed."

Profiles of dead people do not turn up in friend recommendations or general searches at Facebook, according to Kelly. Privacy settings on memorialized accounts only let confirmed friends or family members see them.

Also see: Facebook to launch memorial profiles of deceased users

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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The End of the MP3?

I doubt it.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Baby You Can Drive My Car...

... But please don't ever try to park it, again:
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Win!

Leafs 6 - Ducks 3.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Monday, October 26, 2009

Ontario Drivers' Cell Phone Ban Now in Effect

Hands-free cell phone use is now the law in Ontario.

As noted in our April 23, 2009 post on the new provincial law, which took effect today:
The Countering Distracted Driving and Promoting Green Transportation Act, 2009, Ontario's new law banning use of cell phones while driving... amends the Highway Traffic Act to provide:

Hand-held devices prohibited

Wireless communication devices

78.1 (1) No person shall drive a motor vehicle on a highway while holding or using a hand-held wireless communication device or other prescribed device that is capable of receiving or transmitting telephone communications, electronic data, mail or text messages.

Entertainment devices

(2) No person shall drive a motor vehicle on a highway while holding or using a hand-held electronic entertainment device or other prescribed device the primary use of which is unrelated to the safe operation of the motor vehicle.

Certain exceptions to this basic rule are also established:

(3) Despite subsections (1) and (2), a person may drive a motor vehicle on a highway while using a device described in those subsections in hands-free mode.

Exceptions

(4) Subsection (1) does not apply to,

(a) the driver of an ambulance, fire department vehicle or police department vehicle;

(b) any other prescribed person or class of persons;

(c) a person holding or using a device prescribed for the purpose of this subsection; or

(d) a person engaged in a prescribed activity or in prescribed conditions or circumstances.

Same

(5) Subsection (1) does not apply in respect of the use of a device to contact ambulance, police or fire department emergency services.

Same

(6) Subsections (1) and (2) do not apply if all of the following conditions are met:

1. The motor vehicle is off the roadway or is lawfully parked on the roadway.

2. The motor vehicle is not in motion.

3. The motor vehicle is not impeding traffic.

All is not lost - my recently-purchased Motorola T505 Bluetooth hands-free unit adds much value by doubling as an MP3 player, sending tunes (and phone conversations) from my Blackberry to my car stereo, via FM signal.

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Sunday, October 25, 2009

Food Fight

Associated Press reports on yet another intractable battle that is rearing in the Middle East. This time it's a food fight, initiated in 2008 by a Lebanese economic organization, over the marketing of hummus as an Israeli delicacy:

The issue of food copyright was raised last year by the head of Lebanon's Association of Lebanese Industrialists, Fadi Abboud, when he announced plans to sue Israel to stop it from marketing hummus and other regional dishes as Israeli.

But to do that, Lebanon must formally register the product as Lebanese. The association is still in the process of collecting documents and proof supporting its claim for that purpose.

Lebanese industrialists cite, as an example, the lawsuit over feta cheese in which a European Union court ruled in 2002 the cheese must be made with Greek sheep and goats milk to bear the name feta. That ruling is only valid for products sold in the EU.

Abboud says that process took seven years and realizes Lebanon's fight with Israel is an uphill battle.

Also see: The Association of Lebanese Industrialists's Campaign to Protect OUR FOOD.

Wikipedia also tackles the thorny issue of hummus' origins:

According to Jana Gur, "While not a single Israeli will claim that this chickpea and tahini concoction is anything but Arabic, the status it has reached in Israel is unprecedented anywhere in the Middle East: In Lebanon or in Jordan, hummus is a simple morning fare or a part of a meze table. In Israel it is a religion. The best hummus restaurants, invariably owned by Arabs, are considered national treasures. Guides are dedicated to the best places to "mop up" hummus, books and essays discuss comparative virtues of fluffy Jerusalem hummus as opposed to chunky Galilean versions. ...and supermarket shelves burst with a variety of hummus products, sporting catchy names (most of them Arabic)".[33] According to Gur, "The success of certain brands of Israeli hummus abroad may have been what brought about Abboud's [Fadi Abboud, the president of the Lebanese Industrialist's Association] anger", leading him to claim that Israel has been "stealing" their country's national dishes, like hummus, falafel,tabbouleh and bab ghanouj.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Saturday, October 24, 2009

Cudos to JD Supra

JD Supra is rapidly emerging as the legal profession's deepest and most credible online repository for legal articles, precedents and documentation.

A recent experience with the site, however, reveals that JD Supra also offers the added benefit of a truly personal touch that demonstrates, quite unexpectedly, another manner in which the site appears to be a cut above its many social media competitors.

A few weeks ago, after uploading an initial draft of my paper, Lawyers in the Cloud - A Cautionary Tale, to the site, I noted a few, remaining formatting issues. After completing a further revision, I posted my final, updated version at JD Supra.

I was having difficulties deleting the earlier, superseded version. I didn't report the issue to the site, however.

Shortly thereafter, I received the email below from the site:
Dear Mr. Wise,

http://www.jdsupra.com/profile/wiselaw/

Just touching base with you quickly to be sure that this morning's document on your JD Supra profile is indeed the one you want live and in public view. We see that you tried to replace - and it looks like you have succeeded in getting the correct one up there, but want to be sure.

We've noticed a technical issue to do with your initial attempt to replace the original document (an issue overcome, it seems, by the fact that you then uploaded a second time).

Suffice to say: we just want to be sure that this is the document you want live on the site. Please let me know. If so, we will delete the other versions currently in limbo on JD Supra's servers. If it isn't the version you want live, we'll take care of things.

We like the doc and want to feature it in our network later, and so I want to be certain it is the correct one.

Please let me know.

Adrian Lurssen
@JDSupra

As someone who has at times waited literally weeks for any response at all from Facebook, Google and Technorati (among others) to my technical and account-related enquiries, I can't tell you how pleasant a surprise it was to encounter a site that actually has a real, human interface - and beyond that - is genuinely proactive in addressing its users' issues.

The email discussions following Mr. Lurssen's initial contact were just as pleasant and helpful. He was even good enough to point out to me that the Twitter bugs had already tweeted on the original.

Well done, JD Supra, and thank you, Adrian Lurssen.

Our article article on cloud computing, by the way, is now featured at JD Supra's Electronic Discovery Document Center.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Friday, October 23, 2009

Recently Tweeted - October 23, 2009 Edition

recently tweetedWith the weekend upon us, here are the leading legal headlines we've been following on Twitter, this past week or so - we note that Craigslist has certainly been prominent in the news of late:

A good weekend to all.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Video: The FOX News War on Obama

Who started it?

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Saturday, October 17, 2009

U.K. Supreme Court Officially Opened

Washington Post reports on yesterday's opening of the new, U.K. Supreme Court, which replaces the venerable Law Lords as the nation's court of last resort:
Queen Elizabeth II formally opened Britain's new Supreme Court on Friday in a ceremony attended by high court justices from the United States and around the world.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown and top judges from Canada, Australia, India, South Africa and Europe attended the ceremony for a court the government says will make the workings of justice visible and accessible to the British public.
U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia watched the ceremony, which included prayers led by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and a verse for the new court by former poet laureate Andrew Motion.

For more background on the modernization of the U.K. judicial system, also see:

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Quoteworthy

MSNBC writer, Daniel Harrison on Google Wave, which reportedly heralds "either the death or the future of e-mail:"
All the average Joe wants to know, of course, is: Do I have to worry about all this Google Wave stuff or can I go back to poking people on Facebook for a few more months?
See: Google Wave: What is it? Why Should You Care?

Legal professionals may be particularly interested in David Carns' comments on the complications Google Wave will pose in the context of e-discovery and document retention:
The Wave allows you to use dynamic web technologies (such live maps, automatic content generation, live news content, etc) to augment each wave conversation. This means that, unlike email, a wave has the potential to change each time you view it. The idea of creating a TIFF image of a wave is as vexing as creating a TIFF image of a Facebook page - it may never be the same twice. Time and context in the wave matter just as much as content.

...Robots are participants in a wave, just like a client or colleague, but they are fully automated. Robots can check your typing for spelling errors and fix them. Robots can “sanitize” a wave, by going back and omitting expletives from some one’s text. Robots can even write whole paragraphs in a wave on your behalf (imagine a stock broker who mentions a stock in a wave to a customer and a Robot which immediately comes behind and inserts disclaimer text about risks and assurances). And although every action a Robot makes is recorded in a wave’s XML file (so we know what was automated and what was “hand-written”) there is the potential for lots of confusion about who wrote what and when.

Gadgets are possibly even worse for e-discovery. Gadgets are wave add-ons that extend the wave and add outside content. A Gadget can be a map, a slideshow to a Flickr photo gallery or local weather. They can look fancy, but in the end a Gadget is simply an XML file that can store data in a wave. What makes Gadgets frustrating from an e-discovery perspective is that Gadgets are hosted outside the Wave on a separate web server. In order to piece together the content of a Gadget, you will need to collect information not only from the Wave server, but also the web server that published the Gadget. It can get very confusing and it is leap-years more complex than today’s email.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Headline of the Day

All-male college cracks down on cross-dressing - from CNN.

(The real story-within-the-story here may be about the apparent discrimination by a gay students' organization against its own, small minority-within-a-minority).

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Lawyers in The Cloud

My paper on cloud computing, Lawyers in the Cloud, A Cautionary Tale, from yesterday's Law Society of Upper Canada Teleseminar, Security For Lawyers in a Wired World, is now up at JD Supra.

Below is a brief excerpt from my conclusions:

The litany of security concerns, mishaps and challenges documented in this paper must militate against any overly-enthusiastic embrace of the Cloud by the legal profession – at least for now.

Practitioners, however, should resist any false sense of security arising from the limited protections represented by their current in-house, local systems and software.

In or out of the Cloud, personal security habits are the greatest predictor of information safety.

In spite of the significant threats discussed in this paper, the Cloud also offers added layers of protection for data, through redundant storage, automated security patches and upgrades, and overall reliability of access.

Such discussions aside, however, the bottom line, however, is that the Cloud’s time is – or will soon be - upon us.

If the legal profession’s history of tentative, but eventual adaptation of new technologies is any guide, we will slowly incorporate the Cloud into our practices. As the Cloud’s popular appeal increases and its track-record on security stabilizes, our clients will increasingly embrace these services and demand that we do so as well.

Even if nothing does last forever online, this next generation of services and tools has arrived.

Software as a service and the Cloud will increasingly tempt our profession with increased efficiencies, convenience and functionality. It is the trend to watch in our profession’s digital future, now just ahead.

And it will continue to be so - until the next ‘breakthrough,’ that is.

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Meanwhile in "Post-Racial" America

I had trouble believing my eyes when I saw this, via Associated Press:

NEW ORLEANS – A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.

The A.C.L.U. has now intervened:

"It is really astonishing and disappointing to see this come up in 2009," said American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana attorney Katie Schwartzmann. She said the Supreme Courtruled in 1967 "that the government cannot tell people who they can and cannot marry."

The ACLU sent a letter to the Louisiana Judiciary Committee, which oversees the state justices of the peace, asking them to investigate Bardwell and recommending "the most severe sanctions available, because such blatant bigotry poses a substantial threat of serious harm to theadministration of justice.

"He knew he was breaking the law, but continued to do it," Schwartzmann said.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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The Procreation Argument

The "procreation argument," dealt a fatal blow by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, at a hearing of a challenge to Californa's ban on gay marriage.

Law.com reports:

Many of the arguments discussed for two hours in court on Wednesday centered on the more philosophical issue of why the government would be in the business of sanctioning marriages at all. Cooper argued that marriage existed to support and to encourage “natural procreation” – something that gay couples can’t do.

Judge Walker scoffed at that idea, saying the last wedding he officiated was between people aged 95 and 83. “I did not demand that they prove they intended to engage in procreation,” he said.

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Quotable

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, to appellate counsel Paul Clement during argument before the Supreme Court on the entitlement of lawyers to significant fee enhancements for the achievement of exceptional results:
"Maybe we have a different perspective. You think the lawyers are responsible for a good result, and I think the judges are."

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Top 10 Legal News Headlines: Recently Tweeted - October 14, 2009 Recap

Time to catch up on the best of the legal headlines we've posted to Twitter since our last recap.

Here are Wise Law Blog's Top 10 Recently Tweeted legal news stories from the previous ten days:

  1. A Day About Bad Lawyering at the U.S High Court http://bit.ly/Wp82
  2. Quebec specialists support legalizing euthanasia http://bit.ly/2OACxM
  3. A Facebook Poke Can Put You in the Pokey - PC World http://bit.ly/4dXoOl
  4. Jury vetting's legal upshot - National Post http://bit.ly/ZvXJG
  5. “Criminal Defendant Escapes After Being Mistaken for Lawyer” http://bit.ly/hZUS0
  6. Dismissal of NHL Ref for Union Activity? http://bit.ly/mTS9j
  7. Court Hears Free-Speech Case on Dogfight Videos http://bit.ly/VtcFP
  8. Throw out 'bizarre' prostitution laws, court told - CBC.ca http://bit.ly/Sb4Sj
  9. Harper Government proposes random breathalyzer tests http://bit.ly/2gC6vg
  10. Legal Sector Lost 2,000 Jobs in September http://bit.ly/3dkD03
See you again, shortly.

In the meanwhile, follow us on Twitter, for timely updates on breaking legal and political news.
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