Legal Commentary

Black lawsuit not a case of libel tourism

Posted on October 04, 2010
For the London Free Press – October 4, 2010 Read this on Canoe The case deals with defamation on the Net and how to decide where to sue for it (NOTE: The title in the newspaper version was “Black lawsuit a case of libel tourism” – which is incorrect...

$455 million decision in class action against Great West Life and London Life

Posted on October 04, 2010
Congratulations to my colleagues at Harrison Pensa who represented the plaintiffs in this class action.  The judgement was released Friday, almost exactly a year after the lengthy trial began.  It’s not over yet, though, as it is being appealed...

Why internet back door laws are not a good idea

Posted on September 30, 2010
As I mentioned earlier, there is a proposal in the US for legislation to require backdoor internet access to law enforcement.  There have been similar proposals in Canada for “lawful access”. Bruce Schneier has a good post entitled Wiretapping the Internet that explains why this is a bad idea...

Blackberry Playbook – RIM enters tablet wars

Posted on September 29, 2010
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows: Given that lawyers are heavy users of Blackberrys, most Slaw readers will already know that RIM just announced the Playbook tablet, which is an iPad competitor. RIM has taken an interesting approach...

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US bills introduced to wiretap the net, and arbitrarily shutdown alleged infringers

Posted on September 28, 2010
We get upset when governments outside of North America insist on being able to monitor internet based communications.   But we shouldn’t get too smug about it, as the same thing happens in North America.  See these posts that talk about a new attempt to legislate backdoor internet access in the US, why its a problem, [...

Scareware forms a fake security software

Posted on September 27, 2010
For the London Free Press – September 27, 2010 Read this on Canoe Most of us are familiar with the terms “software” and “hardware”. Over the years, many other “ware” words have been coined to describe the myriad applications available today...

Bruyea – Privacy as an asymmetrical concept

Posted on September 23, 2010
The media has been reporting that “Hundreds of federal bureaucrats accessed the private records of a longtime veterans’ rights advocate and went as far as briefing the minister on his psychiatric records, the former soldier revealed this week...

Global Privacy Enforcement Network

Posted on September 22, 2010
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows. The Canadian Privacy Commissioner announced the formation of the Global Privacy Enforcement Network, or GPEN.  It includes 13 privacy enforcement authorities from around the world...

Grey-market satellite TV suffers a legal blow

Posted on September 20, 2010
For the London Free Press – September 20, 2010 Read this on Canoe An Ontario Superior Court recently upheld an interlocutory injunction against several defendants alleged to be engaged in the grey market sale of DirectTV to Canadians. The case of DirectTV, Inc...

Minor breaches may add up

Posted on September 20, 2010
For the London Free Press – September 13, 2010 Read this on Canoe The concept they may accumulate to equal a material breach is consistent with our case law The United Kingdom Court of Appeal recently held that many minor breaches of contract can combine to be treated the same as a single material breach...

Social media – privacy, transparency, and new metrics

Posted on September 08, 2010
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows. There is a lot written about what people post about themselves on social media, and whether or not that is a good thing.   New location based services such as foursquare ramp up that controversy...

Alberta Court of Appeal wrongful dismissal decision

Posted on September 02, 2010
Michael Fitzgibbon has a good article summarizing a recent case in which the court made some very clear comments on various aspects of damage awards for wrongful dismissal on his Thoughts from a Management Lawyer blog. Its a worthwhile read. Even though I’ve used the common term “wrongful dismissal” - the court points out that there [...

Cleaning files from hard drives

Posted on September 01, 2010
That’s the title of my Slaw post from today.  It reads as follows: Most of us realize that merely deleting a file doesn’t really remove it from the hard drive or other storage media it resides on.  (For some background on this issue see a post I wrote a while back...

Privacy has shades of grey – but privacy settings are binary

Posted on August 31, 2010
Mathew Ingram wrote an interesting piece on Gigaom entitled Privacy is Hard Because People Change Their Minds.  From the article: “Why is privacy so hard? Sociologist Danah Boyd, who specializes in the way people use social networks, says in the latest issue of MIT?s Technology Review magazine that it?s because ?the way privacy is encoded into [...

Open data presents opportunity, pitfalls

Posted on August 30, 2010
For the London Free Press – August 30, 2010 Read this on Canoe The open data movement – the concept that certain data should be made available to everyone to use without restriction- is growing steadily in popularity. An example of open data use is the eatsure...

Facebook v Privacy Commissioner

Posted on August 26, 2010
David Fraser points out that the year Facebook said it needed to address privacy issues raised by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner is over, and there is speculation that the Commissioner may not be satisfied. It will indeed be interesting to see how this shakes out...

Personal, work life overlap with social media

Posted on August 23, 2010
For the London Free Press – August 23, 2010 Read this on Canoe Best Buy employee nearly fired for online video poking fun at iPhone consumers The amusing (though sprinkled with colourful language) iPhone 4 vs. HTC EVO video on YouTube almost cost the creator — a Best Buy employee — his job...

Customer data most popular stolen item for departing workers

Posted on August 20, 2010
An article in the Out-Law News entitled Customer data most popular stolen item for departing workers, claims industry survey refers to a survey that found a significant % of workers would take electronic and customer information with them when they leave a job...

Customer Service – don’t cross the line into pester and peeve territory

Posted on August 18, 2010
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.   It reads as follows. Following my customer service post last week, I had an experience on the weekend where store clerks were so intrusive that it was annoying.  So much so that it makes me wonder if I want to go back to that store again...

While copyright collectives help, royalties issue muddy

Posted on August 17, 2010
For the London Free Press – August 16, 2010 Read this on Canoe [UPDATE: Also take a look at this related Techdirt post entitled The Insanity Of Music Licensing: In One Single Graphic ] Radio royalties are complex. On July 9, 2010, the Copyright Board of Canada issued its long-awaited Commercial Radio tariff and reasons...

Customer wifi easy to set up – but make sure its secure

Posted on August 12, 2010
There is a growing trend for places like restaurants and retail stores to provide free wifi access for customers.  Its easy to set up – just plug a wifi router in to your internet modem, right?  Not quite.  It is important to set it up and maintain it so it is properly protected by a [...

Customer service – often touted – less often delivered

Posted on August 11, 2010
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows: Customer service is something that many different types of service providers talk about.  But it often fails in execution.  While many customer service concepts should be obvious, it is often not done well...

PIPEDA governs how data is collected and used

Posted on August 09, 2010
For the London Free Press – August 9, 2010 Read this on Canoe Case involves actions undertaken by insurer State Farm on behalf of a client The Federal Court of Canada recently released an important decision on the parameters of “commercial activity” under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA): State Farm v [...

Our gut based decisions may be better than rational thought

Posted on August 06, 2010
The Wired Science blog as a post entitled We Are All Talk Radio Hosts that refers to a paper based on a wide range of evidence concluding “that human reason has nothing to do with finding the truth, or locating the best alternative. Instead, it?s all about argumentation...

The seeping data problem

Posted on August 05, 2010
We all backup our data on computers, smartphones, and wherever else it is held.  That’s a good thing – but an article on the StorefrontBacktalk blog entitled  Are Data Backups Unintentionally Expanding Your PCI Scope? talks about how payment card data can seep into places you don’t want it to, which is then in turn backed up...

RIM Blackberry security irks UAE, Saudi Arabia

Posted on August 04, 2010
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows. There has been a lot of press over the latest countries that don’t want Blackberries in their country unless they can get access to monitor user communications.  See, for example, the Washington Post, Techdirt, Engadget...

Court rules activist can post officials’ Social Security numbers

Posted on July 30, 2010
I tweeted this yesterday, but thought it merited more comment.  According to an article in the Washington Post: “Betty “B.J.” Ostergren wanted to persuade Virginia to take sensitive personal data off state Web sites. To make her point, she created her own site and then posted public records that included the Social Security numbers of [...

The paperless or virtual office – it’s a mindset

Posted on July 28, 2010
That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows. There has been much written on Slaw and other places about the paperless office, or the virtual office.  My personal view is that for the most part, we either already have the tools to accomplish it, or if we don’t have them, [...

Copyright bill c-32, digital locks, and US MGE v GE decision

Posted on July 27, 2010
One of the most controversial aspects of the copyright reform bill is the digital lock provisions, which make it unlawful to break digital locks, even if it is only to exercise a right copyright law actually gives you. A new US case has limited the effect of the US DMCA digital lock provisions, saying that [...

Twitter example of the business costs of inadequate security

Posted on July 26, 2010
For the London Free Press – July 26, 2010 Read this on Canoe Customers and regulators take a dim view of companies that don’t safeguard private information Twitter recently agreed to settle the Federal Trade Commission’s charges that it deceived consumers and put their information at risk through inappropriate and inadequate privacy measures...

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