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Quebec Court of Appeal declares your Terms of Use useless

Internet law basics, The Courts

It's a nice building

The Court of Appeal of Québec and its multiple phallic columns

It has been a very busy couple of weeks for internet law in Canada. Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada declared Alberta’s privacy law unconstitutional and essentially junked the whole thing. This week, the Conservative government introduced Bill C-13, the so-called “Cyberbullying legislation”, which some are already calling a bullshit excuse for more of the lawful access crap we had with Bill C-30. That’s some important stuff I’ll write about eventually, I swear. But I want to go back to the heady days of two weeks ago, when the Quebec Court of Appeal made a ruling against eBay that essentially makes my job drafting Terms of Use a complete waste of time. That’ll teach me to charge people hundreds of dollars an hour for it.

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That’s it for isoHunt :(

Copyright, The Courts

Slow servers, but god I love them

Back in March of this year we wrote “isoHunt is toast“. We were speaking figuratively at the time. Well now we can say it literally – isoHunt is toast. Well, not literally in the sense of the delicious breakfast food, but in the sense that it is over, done, kaput, closed forever. Off to the great website resting place in the sky, where it will party with AltaVista and GeoCities. We haz a sad, but we knew this was coming.

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Tour the interwebz with a lawyer as your guide

Commentary, Internet law basics

It may take a while

As the summer winds down, we’ve been feeling kind of philosophical. What does it all mean, and all that. As a practicing lawyer, I tend to focus on the little picture. We’ve got a problem, it relates to one thing, we try to solve it. FOCUS, dammit. That translates to the way I’ve written here at AM.com. A new piece of legislation passes, an interesting court case comes out, some government body releases a report, and we write about the minute details of a very small slice of law and the internet. We’ve never really looked at the big picture and the big issues. Until now.

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Bell has a deficient privacy policy? I am SHOCKED. SHOCKED, I tell you

Privacy

it's purdy

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has just released the first results of their investigation into online privacy policies, as part of the Global Privacy Enforcement Network Internet Privacy Sweep, whatever the hell that is. The OPC found some interesting stuff. As they say in their blog post, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Major Canadian corporations with crappy privacy policies? Well obviously they need to hire a decent internet lawyer. (call me!)

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Come to Quebec and sue Apple

The Courts

We'd all like a bite of that sweet sweet Apple cash

A few weeks ago a decision came out of a Montreal courtroom that could end up landing you some of that sweet, sweet Apple cash. You know, if you are into that sort of thing. Do you own an iPhone or iPad and live in Quebec? Continue reading!

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Internet surveillance: here’s what you should really be worried about

Commentary

they are watching you

They are watching us. Whether you spend too much time on sites like https://www.maturepornvideos.xxx/, or you’re too busy trying to uncover some of the governments deepest, darkest secrets, apparently they’re watching us. That’s all we’ve heard for the last couple of weeks. And over that time, many people (ok, like one guy on Twitter) have asked me my opinion, as an alleged expert on internet legal issues. In fear the government was reading me, I have been twiddling my thumbs for a week. Screw it, let’s do this thing. And you may be surprised at my reaction.

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Some thoughts on online defamation because apparently I am an expert now

Defamation, Internet law basics

pssstt....If you have read the news in the last couple of weeks, or turned on CBC radio, or listened to talk radio, you may have read some quotes from me or heard the dulcet tones of my voice. I have been media whoring like, well, a media whore. Last week it was the Brian Burke lawsuit. This week it was the sad story of the British Columbia teacher who was totally screwed by his ex-girlfriend online and is still suffering for it. These cases have brought to light the messy ugly side of the internet. Or as some people have argued, a terrible overreaction in the Brian Burke case. Let’s use these cases to talk about online defamation, what you should know about it, and the effects on you as both a potential plaintiff and defendant, you cocksucking whore (see what i did there?).

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