Chris Castle is Managing Partner of Christian L. Castle Attorneys, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Google has reached a settlement of the "Google Books" case brought by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google and several of Google's library business partners in the Google Books enterprise. (The 300-page settlement agreement has […]
The balance between private and public interests is usually the centre of most intellectual property policy debates, but this can be said to be especially significant with medical research performed by publicly funded institutions. In a nation such as ours where the health of our citizens is a responsibility of the government, public funds invested […]
A six year quest of the Toronto Star has been finally put to rest by an Ontario Court of Appeal decision favouring a ‘freedom of information’ request filed by the Star. The landmark decision held that municipal government institutions, such as the Toronto Police Services Board (the "Board"), are required to produce electronically stored information that the public […]
Simon Fodden (Professor Emeritus, Osgoode Hall Law School) is founder of the Canadian cooperative law blog Slaw (http://www.slaw.ca). Five years ago, Joel Tenenbaum, now a 24-year-old graduate student at BU, may have downloaded seven tunes via a P2P network. At least that's what the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) alleges -- and now it wants […]
Rex Shoyama is a Visiting Professor and the Assistant Director of IP Osgoode. The general presumption in the Web 2.0 world is that a greater level of sharing and interoperability is a better thing. However, the method in which this sharing is attained should not be ignored as it can have significant legal ramifications. Rushing […]
The federal privacy gatekeepers identified a new market for identity thieves when they addressed the issue of online posting of decisions of federal administrative and quasi-judicial proceedings in the Annual Report of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) of Canada. This report on the Privacy Act was tabled by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, […]
Last Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights made an important ruling on the privacy of a person’s unique genetic information. The European Court, citing a Supreme Court of Canada decision with approval, determined that it was an illegal violation of a person’s rights to keep a person’s DNA sample when they had no prior […]
Ever since the inception of YouTube, people have been extremely creative in finding applications of this user-friendly platform. Owing to its profound integration into our daily lives, its uses have emerged beyond the realm of entertainment. Today, YouTube is being used for everything from uploading user generated videos for sharing with family and friends, to […]
E-mail emerged as an informal and humble means of electronic global communication. Now ubiquitous in business communications and transactions, e-mail is on the verge of becoming a key mover and shaker of modern day contract law. One of the most important features of a contract is offer and acceptance, which is often referred to as […]
The buzz around ‘net neutrality’ has started again. ‘Net neutrality’ is a term that became widely used and debated in the early 2000s. Simply put ‘net neutrality’ means ‘absolute non-discrimination’ against any site or content on the net. In particular, the term suggests that users should have equal access to the internet and that broadband […]