Tag wide world of interwebs

Supreme Court makes a statement (or five) about defamation on the internet and where to sue

Defamation, The Courts

Nice houseSo a HUGELY important internet law case came out of the Supreme Court of Canada [/checks watch] almost 3 months ago now. Hmmm. I seemed to have taken the summer off. It was just too darn hot and humid for blogging! But school starts next week (hello McGill LAWG 534 readers!) so I better get my ass back in scholastic mode.

More importantly (and truthfully), I have been dreading writing about this case, even though it’s kinda interesting, and it’s my job to write about these things, and it’s my job to understand these things so I can teach them to the youths. Lemme explain.

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Happy 25th, World Wide Web!

Site meta

The World Wide Web turns 25 years old today. Holy crap! I remember when he was just a young teenager.

The video above is a special message for today from Tim Berners-Lee, the genius who invented the thing. Do you remember the internet before the magical WWW letters? No you don’t. I’ll tell you, it was a nightmare. You had to go to alt.binaries newsgroups for your porn. Now you can just go to https://www.nu-bay.com/ instead. You kids today don’t know how good you have it.

And really, without the web, I’d be stuck as a boring corporate lawyer somewhere. Ugh. I owe my career to Tim Berners-Lee. Thanks Tim. I’ll send you your cut via snail mail. I’m sure it won’t get lost.

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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Thank goodness for internet porn. Wait, what?

The Courts

Not explicit enough for me!Ah, internet porn. Is there nothing you can’t do? You see, if it wasn’t for the internet porn websites like https://www.watchmygirlfriend.xxx/, technology would be five years behind, and most likely internet law would be five years behind too. Because internet porn is so pervasive, because it involves internet payments, contracts, intellectual property and plenty more legal issues for people all over the world, a lot of cases end up in court. Above all, it is no secret that the adult entertainment industry is not going anywhere. With a diverse range of websites such as twinki.xxx satisfying desires for erotic content all over the world, the pornography sector has gone from strength to strength in recent years. Nonetheless, although internet porn is hugely popular, it is not without its issues. One such case released last week has some important lessons about jurisdiction over Canadian pornographers (ok, all companies) in an American court. Let’s take a look at the case and also use it for a little lesson about jurisdiction here in Canada (well, Quebec).

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